It was a letter of gloriously good news, thought Guy, though he was a
little disappointed not to have had the thrill of Pauline's endearment.
Then, on the blank outside page, he saw scrawled in writing that went
tumbling head over heels down the paper: _My darling Guy, I love you
and underneath I have kissed the letter for you._
The sentence died out in faint ink that seemed to show forth the whisper
in which it had been written. For Guy the tumbledown letters were
written in fire; and with the treasure in his heart of that small
sentence, read a hundred times, he did not know how he should endure ten
long days without Pauline, and in this old college garden, on this
sedate and academic lawn, he cried out that he adored her as if indeed
she were beside him in this laylocked air. At the sound of his voice the
birds close at hand were all silent: they might have stopped to listen.
Then a green-finch called 'sweet! sweet!', whose gentle and persistent
proclamation was presently echoed by all the other birds twittering
together again in the confused raptures of their Spring.
The days with Michael at St. Giles went by slowly enough, and their
fairness was a wasted boon. Guy wrote many long letters to Pauline and
received from her another letter in which she began with '_My dearest_'
as he had begged her. Yet when he read the herald vocative, he wished he
had not tried to alter that old abrupt opening, for never again would
she write in the faint ink of shyness such a sentence as had tumbled
down the back of her first letter.
Michael seemed to divine that he was in love, and Guy wondered why he
could not tell him about it. Once or twice he nearly brought himself to
the point, but the thought of describing Pauline kept him mute: Michael
must see her first. The canoe would be ready at the end of the week, and
Guy announced he should paddle it up to Wychford, travelling from the
Isis to the upper Thames and from the upper Thames turning aside at
Oldbridge to follow the romantic course of the Greenrush even to his own
windows.
"Rather fun," said Michael. "If the weather stays all right."
"By Jove," Guy exclaimed, "I believe it was at Oldbridge Inn that I
first met you."
"On May Day three years ago," Michael agreed.
And, thought Guy with a compassionate feeling for mere friendship, what
a much more wonderful May Day should be this when Pauline was twenty.
There was now her birthday present to buy, and Guy set out on the quest
of it with as much exaltation as Percival may have sought the Holy
Grail. He wished it were a ring he could buy for her; and indeed
ultimately he could not resist a crystal set on a thin gold circlet that
she, his rose of girls, would wear like a dewdrop. This ring, however,
could not be his formal gift, but it would have to be offered when they
were alone, and it must be worn nowhere but in the secret country they
haunted with their love. The ring, uncostly as it was, took nearly all
Guy's spare money, and he decided to buy a book for her, because in
Oxford bookshops he still had accounts running. The April afternoon wore
away while in his own particular bookshop kept by Mr. Brough, an ancient
man with a white beard, he took down from the shelves volume after
volume. At last he found a small copy of Blake's Lyrics bound in faded
apple-green calf and tooled in a golden design of birds, berries and
daisies. This must be for Pauline, he decided, since someone must have
known the pattern of that nursery wall-paper and, loving it, have wished
it to be recorded more endurably. What more exquisite coincidence could
assure him that this book was meant for Pauline? Yet he was half-jealous
of the unknown designer who had thought of something of which himself
might have thought. Oh, yes, this must be for Pauline; and, as Guy
rescued it from the dust and darkness of the old shop, he ascribed to
the green volume an emotion of relief and was half-aware of promising to
it a new and dearer owner who with cherishing would atone for whatever
misfortune had brought it to these gloomy shelves.
Next morning, when Guy was ready to start, Michael presented him with a
glazier's diamond pencil.
"When you fall in love, Guy, this will serve to scribble sonnets to your
lady on the lattices of Plashers Mead. I shall probably come there
myself when term's over."
"I wish you'd come and live there with me," said Guy in a last effort to
persuade Michael. "You see, if you shared the house, it wouldn't cost so
much."
"Perhaps I will," said Michael. "Who knows? I wonder what your Rectory
people would think of me."
"Oh, Pauline would like you. Pauline's the youngest, you know," added
Guy. "And I'm pretty certain you'd like Monica."
Michael laughed.
"Really, Guy, I must tell them in Balliol that, since you went down,
you've become an idle matchmaker. Good-bye."
"Good-bye. You're sure you won't mind the fag of forwarding my bicycle?
I'll send you a postcard from Oldbridge."
Guy, although there was still more than a week before he would see
Pauline, felt, as he hurried towards the boat-builder's moorings, that
he would see her within an hour, such airy freedom did the realization
of being on his way give to his limbs.
The journey to Wychford seemed effortless, for whatever the arduousness
of a course steadily upstream, it was nullified by the knowledge that
every time the paddle was dipped into the water it brought him by his
own action nearer to Pauline. A railway journey would have given him
none of this endless anticipation, travelling through what at this time
of the year before the season of boating was a delicious solitude. Guy
could sing all the way if he wished, for there was nothing but
buttercups and daisies, lambs and meadows and greening willows to
overlook his progress. He glided beneath ancient bridges and rested at
ancient inns, nearer every night to Pauline. Scarcely had such days a
perceptible flight, and were not May Morning marked in flame on his
mind's calendar, he could have forgotten time in this slow undated
diminution.
O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.
This was the song Guy flung before his prow to the vision of Pauline
leading him.
What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.
This was the song that Guy felt Shakespeare might have written to suit
his journey now, as he paddled higher and higher up the stream that
flowed toward Shakespeare's own country.
The banks of the Greenrush were narrower than the banks of the Thames:
and all the way they were becoming narrower, and all the way the stream
was running more swiftly against him. It was Sunday evening when he
reached Plashers Mead; and so massively welded was the sago on his
Sheraton table that Guy wondered if Miss Peasey to be ready for his
arrival had not cooked it a week ago. But what did sago matter, when in
his place there was laid a note from Pauline?
_My dearest,_
_I've had all your letters and I've been very frightened you'd be
drowned. To-morrow you've got to come to breakfast because I always
have breakfast in the garden on my birthday unless it pours. I'm
going to church at eight. I love you a thousand times more and I
will tell you so to-morrow and give you twenty kisses._
_Your own