_I shall arrive at two-thirty on the fifth (next Thursday). I wish
I could say I was looking forward to seeing this insane house of
yours._
There was something in the taste of marmalade very appropriate to an
unpleasant letter, and Guy wondered how many of them he had read at
breakfast to the accompaniment of the bitter savour and the sound of
crackling toast. He also wondered what was the real reason of his
father's coming. Was it curiosity, or the prospect of lecturing a
certain number of people gathered together to hear his opinion? Was it
with the hope of dissuasion, or was it merely because he had settled to
come on the fifth of September and could not bear to thwart that
finicking passion of his for knowing what he was going to do a month
beforehand?
Anyhow, whatever the reason, he was coming, and the next problem was to
furnish for him a bedroom. How much had he in the bank? L4 16s. and
there was a blank counter-foil which Guy vaguely thought represented a
cheque for L2. Of course Pauline's ring had lowered his balance rather
prematurely this quarter; he ought to be very economical during the next
one and, as ill luck would have it, next quarter would have to provide
fuel. L2 16s. was not much to spend on furnishing a bedroom even if the
puny balance were not needed for the current expenses of the three weeks
to Michaelmas. Could he borrow some bedroom furniture from the Rectory?
No doubt Mrs. Grey would be amused and delighted to lend all he wanted,
but it seemed rather an ignominious way of celebrating his engagement.
Could he sleep on the chest in the hall? and as it wobbled to his touch,
he decided that not only could he not sleep on it nor in it, but that it
would not even serve as a receptacle for his clothes.
"Miss Peasey," he said, when the housekeeper came in to see if he had
finished breakfast. "My father is coming to stay here on Thursday."
Miss Peasey smiled encouragingly with the strained look in her eyes that
always showed when she was hoping to find out from his next sentence
what he had told her. Guy shouted his information over again, when, of
course Miss Peasey pretended she had heard him all the time.
"Well, that will make quite a little variety, I'm sure."
"Where will he sleep?" Guy asked.
Miss Peasey jumped and said that there, she'd never thought of that.
"Well, think about it now, Miss Peasey."
Miss Peasey thought hard, but unfruitfully.
"Could you borrow a bed in the town?" Guy shouted.
"Well, wouldn't it seem rather funny? Why don't you send in to Oxford
and buy a bed, Mr. Hazlewood?"
Her pathetic trust in the strength of his financial resources, which Guy
usually tried to encourage, was now rather irritating.
"It seems hardly worth while to buy a bed for two or three days," he
objected.
"Which reminds me," said Miss Peasey, "that you'll really have to give
that Bob another good thrashing, for he's eaten all the day's butter."
"Well, we can buy more butter in Wychford, but we can't get a bed," Guy
laughed.
"Oh, he didn't touch the bread," said Miss Peasey. "Trust him for that.
I never knew a large dog so dainty before."
Guy decided to postpone the subject of the bed and try Miss Peasey more
personally.
"Could you spare your chest of drawers?" he asked at top voice.
Miss Peasey, however, did not answer and from her complete indifference
to his question Guy knew that she did not like the idea of such a loan.
It looked as if he would be compelled to borrow the furniture from the
Rectory; and then he thought how after all it would be a doubly good
plan to do so, inasmuch as it would partially involve his father in the
obligations of a guest. Moreover it could scarcely fail to be a slight
reproach to him that his son should have to borrow bedroom furniture
from the family of his betrothed.
Pauline was of course delighted at the idea of lending the furniture,
and she and Guy had the greatest fun together in amassing enough to
equip what would really be a very charming spare room. Deaf and dumb
Graves was called in; and Birdwood helped also, under protest at the
hindrance to his work, but at the same time revelling, if Birdwood could
be said to revel, in the diversion. Mrs. Grey presided over the
arrangement and fell so much in love with the new bedroom that she
pillaged the Rectory much more ruthlessly than Pauline, and in the end
they all decided that Guy's father would have the most attractive
bedroom in Wychford. Guy with so much preparation on hand had no time to
worry about the conduct of his father's visit, and after lunch on
Thursday he got into the trap beside Godbold and drove off equably
enough to meet the train at Shipcot.
Mr. Hazlewood was in appearance a dried-up likeness of his son, and Guy
often wondered if he would ever present to the world this desiccated
exterior. Yet after all it was not so much his father's features as his
cold eyes that gave this effect of a chilly force: he himself had his
mother's eyes and, thinking of hers burning darkly from the glooms of
her sick bed, Guy fancied that he would never wither to quite the
inanimate and discouraging personality on the platform in front of him.
"The train's quite punctual," said Mr. Hazlewood in rather an aggrieved
tone of voice, such as he might have adopted if he had been shown a
correct Latin exercise by a boy whom he was anxious to reprove.
"Yes, this train is usually pretty punctual," Guy answered, and for a
minute or two after a self-conscious handshake they talked about trains,
each, as it seemed, trying to throw upon the other the responsibility of
any conversation that might have promoted their ease.
Guy introduced his father to Godbold, who greeted him with a kind of
congratulatory respect and assumed toward Guy a manner that gave the
impression of sharing with Mr. Hazlewood in his paternity.
"Hope you're going to pay us a good long visit," said Godbold hospitably
flicking the pony.
Mr. Hazlewood, who squashed as he was between Guy and fat Godbold looked
more sapless than ever, said he proposed to stay until the day after
to-morrow.
"Then you won't see us play Shipcot on Saturday, the last match of the
season?" said Godbold in disappointed benevolence.
"No, I shan't, I'm afraid. You see, my son is not so busy as I am."
"Ah, but he's been very busy lately. Isn't that right, Mr. Hazlewood?"
Godbold chuckled with a wink across at Guy. "Well, we've all been
expecting it for some time past and he has our good wishes. That he has.
As sweetly pretty a young lady as you'll see in a month of Sundays."
His father shrank perceptibly from a dominical prevision so foreign to
his nature, and Guy changed the conversation by pointing out features in
the landscape.
"Extraordinarily inspiring sort of country," he affirmed.
"So I should imagine," said his father. "Though precisely what that
epithet implies I don't quite know."
Guy was determined not to be put out of humour and, surrendering the
epithet at once, he substituted 'bracing'.
"So is Hampshire," his father snapped.
"I hope Wilkinson's successor has turned out well," Guy ventured, in the
hope that such a direct challenge would force a discharge of grievances.
Surprizingly, however, his father talked without covert reproaches of
the successor's virtues, of the field-club he had started, of his
popularity with the boys and of the luck which had brought him along at
such short notice. At any rate, thought Guy, he could not be blamed for
having caused any inconvenience to the school by his refusal to take up
office at Fox Hall. The constraint of the long drive came to an end with
the first view of Plashers Mead, at which his father gazed with the sort
of mixture of resentment, interest and alarm he might have displayed at
the approach of a novel insect.
"It looks as if it would be very damp," was his only comment.
Here Godbold, who had perhaps for some time been conscious that all was
not perfectly well between his passengers, interposed with a defence of
Plashers Mead.
"Lot of people seeing it from here think it's damp. But it isn't. In
fact it's the driest house in Wychford. And do you know for why, sir?
Because it's so near running water. Running water keeps off the damp.
Doctor Brydone told me that. 'Running water,' he says to me, 'keeps off
the damp.' Those were his words."
Mr. Hazlewood eyed Godbold distastefully, that is so far as without
turning his head he could eye him at all. Then the trap pulled up by the
gate of Plashers Mead, Guy took his father's bag, and they passed in
together. The noise of wheels died away, and here in the sound of the
swift Greenrush Guy felt that hostility must surely be renounced at the
balm of this September afternoon shedding serene sunlight. He began to
display his possessions with the confidence their beauty always gave
him.
"Pretty good old apple-trees, eh? Ribston pippins nearly all of them.
The blossom was rather spoilt by that wet May, but there's not such a
bad crop considering. I like this salmon-coloured phlox. General
something or other beginning with an H it's called. Mr. Grey gave me a
good deal. The garden of course was full of vegetables, when I had it
first. I must send you some clumps of this phlox to Galton. Of course, I
got rid of the vegetables."
"Yes, of course," agreed Mr. Hazlewood dryly.
"Doesn't the house look jolly from here? It's pretty old, you know.
About 1590 I believe. It's a wonderful place, isn't it? Hulloa, there's
my housekeeper. Miss Peasey, here's my father. She's very deaf, so
you'll have to shout."
Mr. Hazlewood, who never shouted even at the naughtiest boy in his
school, shuddered faintly at his son's invitation and bowed to Miss
Peasey with a formality of disapproval that seemed to include her in the
condemnation of all he beheld.
"Quite a resemblance, I'm sure," Miss Peasey archly declared. "Tea will
be ready at four o'clock and Mr. Hazlewood Senior's room is all in order
for him." Then she disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.
"A little empty, I'm afraid," said Guy, as his father looked round the
hall.
"Is that water I hear?"
"Yes, the river washes the back of the house."
"And this place isn't damp?"
"Not a bit," Guy declared positively.
"Well, it smells of bronchitis and double-pneumonia."
Guy showed his father the dining-room.
"I've got it rather jolly, I think," he ventured.
"Yes, my candlesticks and chairs, that your mother lent you for your
rooms at Balliol, look very well," his father agreed.
Guy led the way to the spare bedroom.
"No wonder you spent all your money," Mr. Hazlewood commented, surveying
the four-post bed and the Jacobean furniture. "How on earth did you
manage to afford all this luxury?"
"Oh, I picked it up somehow," said Guy lightly. He had decided on second
thoughts not to reveal the secret of the Rectory's loan.
When his father had rid himself of the dust from his journey, Guy
introduced him proudly to his own room.
"Well, this is certainly quite a pleasant place," Mr. Hazlewood
admitted. "If not too draughty with those two windows."
"You must scratch a motto on the pane with the diamond-pencil," Guy
suggested.
"My motto is hard work."
"Well, write that. Or at any rate put your initials and the date."
His father took up the pencil with that expression of superiority which
Guy most hated, and scratched his name rather awkwardly on the glass.
"I hope people won't suppose that is my ordinary hand," he said, grimly
regarding the _John Hazlewood_ of his inscription. During tea Guy
wondered when he ought introduce the subject of Pauline. Beyond
Godbold's unfortunate allusion on the drive, nothing had been said by
either of them; and Plashers Mead had not as yet effected that
enchantment of his father's senses which would seem to proclaim the
moment as propitious. How remote they were from one another, sitting
here at tea! Really his father had not accorded him any salutation more
cordial than the coldly absent-minded 'good dog' he had just given to
Bob. Yet there must be points of contact in their characters. There must
be in himself something of his father. He could not so ridiculously
resemble him and yet have absolutely nothing mentally in common. Perhaps
his father did himself an injustice by his manner, for after all he had
presented him with that L150. If he could only probe by some remark a
generous impulse, Guy felt that in himself the affection of wonted
intercourse over many years would respond immediately with a warmth of
love. His father had cared greatly for his mother; and could not the
love they had both known supply them with the point of sympathetic
contact that would enable them to understand the ulterior intention of
their two diverging lives?
"It was awfully good of you, Father, to come down and stay here," said
Guy. "I've really been looking forward to showing you the house. I
think, perhaps, you understand now how much I've wanted to be here?"
Guy waited anxiously.
"I've never thought you haven't wanted to be here," his father replied.
"But between what we want and what we owe there is a wide gap."
Oh, why was a use to be made of these out-of-date weapons? Why could not
one or two of his prejudices be surrendered, so that there were a chance
of meeting him half-way?
"But sometimes," said Guy desperately, "inclination and duty coincide."
"Very rarely, I'm afraid, in this world."
"Do they in the next then?" asked Guy a little harshly, hating the
conventionality of the answer that seemed to crystallize the
intellectual dishonesty of a dominie's existence. He knew that the next
world was merely an arid postulate which served for a few theorems and
problems of education, and that duty and desire must only be kept apart
on account of the hierarchical formulae of his craft. He must eternally
appear as half-inhuman as all the rest of the Pharisees: priests,
lawyers and schoolmasters, they were all alike in relying for their
livelihood upon a capacity for depreciating human nature.
"I was merely using a figure of speech," said his father.
Exactly, thought Guy, and how was he ever to justify his love for
Pauline to a man whose opinions could never be expressed except in
figures of speech? He made up his mind to postpone the visit to the
Rectory until to-morrow. Evidently it was not going to be made even
moderately easy to broach the subject of Pauline.
"I expect you'd like to have a look at some of my work," he suggested.
"Very much," said Mr. Hazlewood; and in a moment with his dry assent he
had reduced all his son's achievement to the level of a fifth-form
composition. Guy took the manuscripts out of his desk, and disengaging
from the heap any poems that might be ascribed to the influence of
Pauline, he presented the rest to his father. Mr. Hazlewood settled
himself as comfortably as he could ever seem to be comfortable and
solemnly began to read without comment. Guy would have liked to get up
and leave him alone, for though he assured himself that the opinion
whether favourable or unfavourable did not matter, his suspense was
sharp and the inexpression of his father's demeanour, that assumption
of tutorial impartiality, kept him puzzling and unable to do anything
but watch the critic's face and toy mechanically with the hair of Bob's
sentimental head upon his knee.
At last the manuscripts were finished, and Guy sat back for the verdict.
"Oh, yes, I like some very much," said Mr. Hazlewood. "But I can't help
thinking that all of them could have been written as well in recreation
after the arduousness of a decent profession. However, you've burned
your boats as far as Fox Hall is concerned, and I shall certainly be the
first to congratulate you, if you bring your ambition to a successful
issue."
"You mean monetarily?" Guy asked.
His father did not answer.
"You wouldn't count as a successful issue recognition from the people
who care for poetry?" Guy went on.
"I'm not particularly impressed by contemporary taste," said Mr.
Hazlewood. "We seem to me to be living in a time when all the great men
have gone, and the new generation does not appear likely to fill very
adequately the gap they have left."
"I wonder if there has ever been a time when people have not said just
what you're saying? Do you seriously think you'd recognize a great man
if you saw him?"
"I hope I should," said his father looking perfectly convinced that he
would.
"Well, I don't believe you would," said Guy. "How do you know I'm not a
great man?"
His father laughed dryly.
"I don't know, my dear Guy, of course and nothing would gratify me more
than to find out that you were. But at least you'll allow me to observe
that _great_ men are generally remarkable for their modesty."
"Yes, after they've been accorded the homage of the world," Guy argued.
"They can afford to be modest then. I fancy that most of them were
self-confident in their youth. I hope they were, poor devils. It must
have been miserable for most of them, if they weren't."
"However," said Mr. Hazlewood. "All these theories of juvenile grandeur,
interesting though they may be, do not take us far along the road of
practical politics. I'm to understand, am I, that you are quite
determined to remain here?"
"For another year at any rate," Guy said. "That is until I have a volume
of poems ready."
"And your engagement?" asked his father.
Guy smiled to himself. It was a minor triumph, but it was definitely a
triumph to have made his father be the first to mention the subject that
had stood at the back of their minds ever since they met on the Shipcot
platform.
"Look here, before we discuss that I want you to see Pauline. I think
you'll understand my point of view more clearly after you've seen her.
Now, wouldn't you like to take a stroll round Wychford? The
architecture...."
Guy and his father wandered about until dusk, and in the evening after
dinner they played piquet.
"I suppose you wouldn't enjoy a walk in the moonlight?" Guy suggested
after the third hand.
"I have my health to think about. Term begins in a fortnight you know,"
said Mr. Hazlewood.
Guy had pulled back the curtains and was watching the full moon. This,
though ten days short of the actual anniversary, was the lunary festival
of the night when he first saw Pauline. Might it be accepted as a
propitious omen? Who could say? They talked of dull subjects until it
was time to go to bed.
Guy had sent a note to Mrs. Grey, suggesting that he should bring his
father to tea next day; and so about four o'clock they set out to the
Rectory, the lover in great trepidation of spirit. His father was
seeming much more than ever parched and inhuman, and Guy foresaw that
his effect upon Pauline would be disastrous. Nor did he feel that the
strain upon his own nerves was going to be the best thing for the
situation. On the way to the Rectory they met young Brydone, and Guy
very nearly invited him to accompany them, in a desperate impulse to
evoke a crowd in which he could lose this disturbing consciousness of
his father's presence. However, he managed to avoid such a subversion of
his attitude; and in a few minutes they were in the hall of the Rectory,
where Mrs. Grey, as nervously agitated as she could be, was welcoming
them. Luckily Margaret had arrived on the scene before Pauline, and Guy
managed to place his father next to her, while he took up the task of
trying to compose Mrs. Grey. At last Pauline came in, and Guy seemed to
be only aware of a tremendous increase in the noise of the conversation.
He realized that it was due to himself's talking nonsense at the top of
his voice and that Pauline was vainly trying to get on with his father.
Monica had gone to look for the Rector, and Mrs. Grey was displaying the
kind of treasures she would produce at a mother's meeting, treasures to
which his father paid but the most scant attention. The whole room
seemed to revolve round his father who for Guy had become the only
person in focus, as he stood there parched and inhuman and perhaps
himself a little shy of what he was evidently supposing to be a very mad
family. Guy, so miserable was he feeling at his father's coldness of
manner toward the Greys, wished passionately that his mother were alive,
because he knew how much she would have appreciated them. Monica had now
come back with information that the Rector was undiscoverable, so Mrs.
Grey volunteered to show Mr. Hazlewood the garden.
"She'll tell you all the flowers wrong," Pauline warned him.
Mr. Hazlewood bowed.
"I'm afraid I know nothing about flowers."
"Guy has learnt a lot from Father," said Pauline. "Haven't you, Guy?"
She was making the bravest effort, but it was hopeless, utterly
hopeless, Guy thought.
How the promenade round these gardens that were haunted with his and her
delights was banishing them one by one. How endless it was, and how
complete was the failure to incorporate his father in a life which his
advent had so detestably disturbed. Guy acknowledged that the meeting
between him and Pauline had served no purpose, and as he looked forward
to the final battle between their wills this evening, he set his teeth
with rage to defeat his father, at the moment caring not at all if he
never saw him again.
Guy knew, as they were walking back to Plashers Mead, how little worth
while it was to ask what his father had thought of the Greys; but
nevertheless he could not resist the direct enquiry.
"They seem a very happy-go-lucky family," was the reply. "I thought it
extremely strange that Mr. Grey did not take the trouble to be at home
for my visit. I should have thought that in regard to his daughter's
future I might be considered sufficiently ... however, it's all of a
piece."
Guy hated the mock-modest lacuna in the characterization, and he thought
of the many schoolmasters he had known whose consciousness of external
opinion never allowed them to claim a virtue for themselves, although
their least action always contained an implication of merit.
Guy made some excuse for the Rector's absence and rather moodily walked
on beside his father. The battle should be to-night; and after dinner he
came directly to the point.
"I hope you liked Pauline?"
"My dear Guy, your impulsiveness extends too far. How can I after a few
minutes' conversation pronounce an opinion?"
"But she's not a pathological case," cried Guy in exasperation.
"Precisely," retorted his father. "And therefore I pay her the
compliment of not rushing into headstrong approval, or disapproval.
Certainly she seemed to me superficially a very charming girl, but I
should be inclined to think somewhat excitable."
"Of course, she was shy."
"Naturally. These sudden immersions in new relationships do not make for
ease. I was myself a little embarrassed. But, after all, the question is
not whether I like--er--Pauline, but whether I am justified on her
account as well as on yours in giving my countenance to this ridiculous
engagement. Please don't interrupt me. My time is short, and I must as
your father fulfil my obligations to you by saying what I have to say."
Even in his speech he was epistolary, and while he spoke Guy was all the
time, as it were, tearing him into small pieces and dropping him
deliberately into the waste-paper-basket.
"Had I been given an opportunity," his father went on, "of speaking
privately with Mr. Grey, I should have let him plainly understand how
much I deplored your unjustifiable embarkation upon this engagement. You
have, frankly, no right to engage yourself to a girl when you are
without the means to bring the pledge to fruition. You possess, it is
true, an income of L150 a year--too little to make you really
independent, too much to compel you to relinquish your own mad scheme of
livelihood."
"I have had the privilege of reading your verse," he continued,
protesting against an interruption with upraised hand. "Well, I am glad
enough to say that it seems to me promising: but what is promising
verse? A few seedlings in a flower-pot that even if they come to
perfection will serve no purpose but of decoration. It is folly or mere
wanton self-deception for you to pretend that you can live by poetry.
Why, even if you were an American you couldn't live by poetry. Now
please let me finish. My commonsense no doubt strikes you as brutal, but
if, when it is your turn to speak, you can produce the shadow of a
probability that you will ever earn your own living, I shall be only too
willing to be convinced. I am not so much enamoured of my schoolmaster's
life as to wish to bind you down to that; but between being a
schoolmaster and being what the world would call an idle young poseur
lies a big gulf. Why did not you stick to your Macedonian idea? Surely
that was romantic enough to please even you. No, the whole manner of
your present life spells self-indulgence and I warn you it will
inevitably bring in its train the results of self-indulgence. My dear
Guy, _do_ something. Don't stay here talking of what you are going to
do. Say good-bye for the present to Pauline and do something. If she is
fond of you, she will be prouder of you when she sees that you are
determined to fight to win her. My boy, I speak to you very seriously
and I warn you that this is the last protest I shall make. You are
behaving wrongly: her parents are behaving wrongly. If you must write,
get some regular work. Why not try for the staff of some reputable paper
like The Spectator?"
"Good heavens!" Guy ejaculated.
"Well, there may be other reputable papers, though I confess The
Spectator is my favourite."
"Yes, I know. It probably would be."
"It's this terrible inaction," his father went on. "I don't know how you
can tolerate the ignominious position in which you find yourself. To me
it would be unendurable."
Mr. Hazlewood sighed with the satisfaction of unburdening himself and
waited for his son to reply, who with a tremendous effort not to spoil
the force of his argument by losing his temper began calmly enough:
"I have never contended that I should earn my living by poetry. What I
have hoped is that when my first book appears it would be sufficiently
remarkable to restore your confidence in me."
"In other words," his father interrupted, "to tempt me to support
you--or rather as it now turns out to help you to get married."
"Well, why not?" said Guy. "I'm your only son. You can spare the money.
Why shouldn't you help me? I'm not asking you to do anything before I've
justified myself. I'm only asking you to wait a year. If my book is a
failure, it will be I who pay the penalty, not you. My confidence will
be severely damaged whereas in your case only your conceit will be
faintly ruffled."
"Were I really a conceited man, I should resent your last remark," said
his father. "But let it pass, and finish what you were going to say."
Guy got up and went to the window, seeking to find from the moonlight a
coolness that would keep his temper in hand.
"Would you have preferred that I did not ask Pauline to marry, that I
made love to her without any intention of marriage?"
"Not at all," his father replied. "I imagine that you still possess some
self-restraint, that when you began to feel attracted to her you could
have wrestled with yourself against what in the circumstances was a
purely selfish emotion."
"But why, why? What really good reason can you bring forward against my
behaviour, except reasons based on a cowardly fear of not being
prosperous? You have always impressed on me so deeply the identity of
your youthful ambitions with mine that I don't suppose I'm assuming too
much when I ask what you would have done, if you had met Mother when you
were not in a position to marry her immediately? Would you have said
nothing?"
"I hope I should have had sufficient restraint not to want to marry
anybody until I was able to offer material support as well as a higher
devotion."
"But if ... oh, love is not a matter of the will."
"Excuse me," his father contradicted obstinately. "Everything is a
matter of will. That is precisely the point I am trying to make."
Guy marched over to the fireplace and, balancing himself on the fender,
proclaimed the attainment of a deadlock.
"You and I, my dear Father, differ in fundamentals. Supposing I admit
for a moment that I may be wrong, aren't you just as wrong in not trying
to see my point of view? Supposing for instance Tennyson had paid
attention to criticism--I don't mean of his work, but of his manner of
life--what would have happened?"
"I can't afford to run the risk of being considered the fond parent by
announcing you to the world as a second Tennyson. Thirty-five years of a
schoolmaster's life have at least taught me that parents as parents have
a natural propensity toward the worst excesses of human folly."
"Then in other words," Guy responded, "I'm to mess up my life to
preserve your dignity. That's what it amounts to. I tell you I believe
in myself. I'm convinced that beside will, there is destiny."
Mr. Hazlewood sniffed.
"Destiny is the weak man's canonization of his own vices."
"Well, then I _will_ succeed," retorted Guy. "Moreover I will succeed in
my own way. It seems a pity that we should argue acrimoniously. I shall
say no more. I accept the responsibility. For what you've done for me
I'm very much obliged. Would you care for a hand at piquet?"
"Oh, certainly," said his father.
Guy hugged himself with another minor triumph. At least it was he who
had determined when the discussion should be closed.
The next day, as Guy stood on the Shipcot platform and watched the slow
train puffing away into the unadventurous country, he had a brief
sentiment of regret for the failure of his father's visit and made up
his mind to write to him a letter to-morrow, which would sweeten a
little of the bitterness between them. The bees buzzing round the
wine-dark dahlias along the platform were once again audible: and close
at hand was the hum of a reaper-and-binder. But as he drove back to
Wychford his father passed from his mind, and mostly Guy thought of
walking with Pauline under the pale and ardent blue of this September
sky that was reflected in the chicory flowers along the sparse and dusty
hedgerow.
_October_
"MY dears, he frightened me to death," Pauline declared to her family
when Mr. Hazlewood had left the Rectory. "Only I expect, you know, that
really he's rather sweet."
"I don't think he approved of us very much," said Margaret.
"I didn't approve of him very much," said Monica.
"And where was Francis?" asked Mrs. Grey.
"Francis was a naughty boy," said Pauline.
Since they were sitting in the nursery, her mother allowed the Christian
name to pass without reproof.
"He was so exactly like Guy," said Margaret.
"Like Guy?" Pauline echoed incredulously.
"Yes, of course, didn't you notice that?" Margaret laughed.
"You're quite right, Margaret," said Mrs. Grey. "How clever of you to
see. Now of course I realize how much alike they were ... how clever you
are!"
"Without Pauline," Margaret went on, "Guy might easily become his father
all over again."
"But, my dears," said Pauline, "that would be terrible. I remember how
frightened I was of Guy the first day he came to the Rectory, and if he
grows more like his father, I don't think I shall ever be anything else
but frightened of him, even if we live for ever. For, though I'm sure
he's really very sweet, I don't believe one would ever get quite used to
Mr. Hazlewood."
Yet when Pauline was alone and had an opportunity to look back upon the
visit, its effect was rather encouraging than otherwise. For one thing
it curiously made Guy more actual, because until the personality of his
father projected itself upon the scene of their love he had always
possessed for Pauline a kind of romantic unreality. In the Spring days
and Summer days which had seemed to dedicate themselves to the service
of intimacy, Guy had talked a great deal of his life before they met,
but the more he had told her, the more was she in the state of being
unable to realize that the central figure of these old tales was not a
dream. When he was with her, she was often in a daze of wonder at the
credibility of being loved like this; and there was never an occasion of
seeing him even after the briefest absence that did not hold in the
heart of its pleasure a surprize at his return. The appearance of Mr.
Hazlewood was a phenomenon that gave the pledge of prosaic authority to
her love, like a statement in print that however absurd or uncomfortable
has a value so far beyond mere talk. She had often been made rather
miserable by Guy's tales of the ladies he had loved with airy
heedlessness, but these heroines had all faded out in the unreality of
his life apart from her, and they took their place with days of
adventure described in Macedonia or with the old diversions of Oxford.
The visit of Mr. Hazlewood with the chilly disapproval it had shed was
more authentic than, for instance, the idea of Guy's dark-eyed mother,
who had seemed in his narrations almost to threaten Pauline with her
son's fairy ancestry, as if from the grave she might at any moment
summon him away. Mr. Hazlewood had carried with him a wonderful
assurance of ordinariness. The merely external resemblance between him
and his son proved that Guy could grow old; and the sense of his
opposition was a trifling discomfort in comparison with the assurance he
offered of an imaginable future. She remembered that her first idea of
Guy had been that of someone dry and cynical; and no doubt this first
impression of his father was equally wrong. She who had been so shy and
speechless was no doubt much to blame, and the family had done nothing
to help out the situation. It had been unkind of her father to hide
himself, since to Mr. Hazlewood, who could not have understood that it
was the sort of thing her father would be sure to do, such behaviour
must have presented itself very oddly.
The Rector on Pauline's remonstrating with him was not at all penitent.
"When your marriage, my dear, comes on the horizon--I don't mind how
faint a horizon--of the probable, then it will be time to discuss
matters in the practical way I suppose Mr. Hazlewood would like them to
be discussed. Moreover in any case I forgot that the worthy gentleman
was coming."
Pauline was anxious to make excuses for the Rector to Guy, but Guy when
he came round next day was only apologetic for his own father's
behaviour; and he and she came to a conclusion in the end that parents
must be forgiven on account of their age.
"At the same time," Guy added, "I blame my father for his conventional
outlook. He doesn't seem able to realize the extraordinary help that you
are to my work. In fact he doesn't realize that my work _is_ work. He's
been teaching for so many years that now he can no longer learn
anything. Your father's behaviour is reasonable. He doesn't take us
quite seriously, but he leaves the situation to our disentanglement.
Well, we shall convince him that nothing in the world is so simple as a
love like ours; but the worst of my father is that even if he were
convinced he would be more annoying than ever."
"You must make allowances, Guy. For one thing how few people, even when
they're young, understand about love. Besides, he's anxious about your
career."
"What right has he to be anxious?" Guy burst out. "If I fail, I pay the
penalty, not he."
"But he would be so hurt if you failed," she urged.
"Pauline, if you can say that, you can imagine that I will fail. Even
you are beginning to have doubts."
"I haven't any doubts," she whispered. "I know you will be famous. And
yet I have doubts of another sort. I sometimes wonder if I shall be
enough when you are famous."
The question she had raised launched Guy upon a sea of eloquence. He
worried no more about his father, but only protested his dependence upon
Pauline's love for everything that he would ever have accomplished.
"Yes, but I think I shall seem dull one day," she persisted with a shake
of the head.
"No, no. How could you seem dull to me?"
"But I'm not clever...."
"Avoid that wretched word," he cried. "It can only be applied to
thieves, politicians and lawyers. I have told you a thousand times what
you are to me, and I will not tell you again because I don't want to be
an egotist. I don't want to represent you to myself as a creature that
exists _for_ me. You are a being to whom I aspire. If we live for ever I
shall have still to aspire to you and never be nearer than the hope of
deserving you."
"But your poetry, Guy, are you sure I appreciate it? Are you sure I'm
not just a silly little thing lost in admiration of whatever you do?"
Guy brushed her doubts aside.
"Poetry is life trembling on the edge of human expression," he declared.
"You are my life, and my poor verse faints in its powerlessness to say
so. I always must be alone to blame if the treasure that you are is not
proved to the world."
How was she to convince him of her unworthiness, how was she to persuade
this lover of hers that she was too simple a creature for his splendid
enthronement? Suddenly one day he would see her in all her dulness and
ordinariness, and turning from her in disillusion, he would hold her
culpable for anything in his work that might seem to have betrayed his
ambition.
"Guy," she called into the future. "You will always love me?"
"Will there ever be another Pauline?"
"Oh, there might be so easily."
"Never! Never! Every hour, every moment cries 'never!'"
In her heart she told herself that at least none but she could ever love
him so well; and in the strange confidence his father's visit had given
to her she told him in her turn how every hour and every moment made her
more dependent upon his love.
"I want nothing but you, nothing, nothing. I've given up everything for
you."
"What have you given up?" he demanded at once, jealously and
triumphantly regarding her.
"Oh, nothing really; but all the foolish little interests. Nothing, my
dearest; only pigeons and music and working woollen birds and visiting
poor people. Such foolish little things ... and yet things that were
once upon a time frightfully important."
"You mustn't give up your music and your pigeons."
They both laughed at the absurd conjunction.
"How can I play when I'm thinking of you always, every second? Why, when
I do anything but think of you, every object and every word floats away
as it does when I'm tired and trying to keep awake in a big room."
"You can play to me," he argued, "even when I'm not there."
"Guy darling, I do, I do; but you've no idea how hopelessly playing to
an absent lover destroys the time."
The memory of Mr. Hazlewood's visit was soon lost in the celebration of
their anniversary month. As they had promised themselves in Summer, they
went on moonlit expeditions to gather mushrooms; and at the waning of
the moon they rose early on many milkwhite dawns instead, when the
mushrooms at such an hour were veritably the spoil of dew, gleaming in
their baskets under veils of gossamer. On these serene mornings the
sound of autumnal birdsong came to them out of misted trees, so that
they used to talk of the woods in the next Springtime, themselves moving
about the wan vapours with that very air of people who scarcely live in
the present. There was in this plaintive music of robins and thrushes a
regret for the days of Summer spent together that were now passed away,
and yet a more robust melody might have affronted the wistful air of
these milkwhite dawns. The frail notes of the birds hinted at silence
beyond, and through the opalescent and transuming landscape Guy and
Pauline floated in fancy once more down the young Thames from
Ladingford. The sad stillness of the year's surrender to decline
admonished them to garner these hours, making a ghost even of the sun as
if to warn them of the fleeting world, the covetous and furtive world.
They wonderfully enjoyed these hours, but Pauline when at breakfast the
mushrooms came fizzling to the table could never believe that she had
been with Guy, and she used often to be discontented on being reminded
by her mother of how much of the day she had already spent in his
company. Looking back at these immaterial mornings of autumnal mist, she
saw them upon the confines of sleep: silvery spaces they seemed that
were not robbed from any familiar time.
There was during all this month a certain amount of congratulation which
had to be endured, and Margaret was angry one day because Mr. and Mrs.
Ford came over from Little Fairfield and alluded at tea to their hope of
Richard and her soon being engaged. Pauline was naturally subject to
the inquisitiveness of everybody, but as she could not without being
absent-minded talk about anything except Guy, she found the general
curiosity not very troublesome. Guy, however, resented this atmosphere
of enquiry and was always more and more anxious to carry her out of
reach of Wychford gossip.
One day in mid-October they had set out together with the intention of
taking a long walk to the open upland country on the other side of the
town, when, as they were going up High Street, they saw two of the local
chatterboxes.
"I will not stop and talk to Mrs. Brydone and Mrs. Willsher," Guy
grumbled. "Let's cut up Abbey Lane."
They turned aside and were making their way to the path that led under
the Abbey wall to the high road, when they saw Dr. Brydone and his son
coming from that direction.
"Really, there's a conspiracy of Brydones to waylay us this afternoon,"
Guy exclaimed petulantly. "We shall have to go through the Abbey
grounds."
Pauline had passed the wicket, which he had impulsively flung open,
before she realized the violation of one of her agelong rules.
"It's really rather jolly in here to-day," said Guy. "I think we're
duffers not to come more often, you know."
The autumn wind was booming round the plantation, and sweeping up the
broad path down the hillside with a skelter of leaves that gave a wild
gaiety to the usually tristful scene.
"Why shouldn't we explore inside?" suggested Guy. "There's something so
exhilarating about this great West wind. Almost one could fancy it might
blow away that ghost of a house."
Pauline hesitated: since earliest childhood the Abbey had oppressed her
with ill omen, and she could not overcome her prejudice in a moment.
"You're not really afraid when you're with me?" he persisted.
Pauline surrendered, and they went across the etiolated lawn toward the
entrance. The wind was roaring through every crevice, and the ivy was
scratching restlessly at the panes or shivering where through the gaps
it had crept in with furry tendrils.
"It's rather fun to be walking up this staircase as if this were our own
house," said Guy.
Pauline had an impulse to go back, and she made a quick step to descend.
"Where are you going?"
"Guy, I think I feel afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Oh, not of anything. Just afraid."
"Come, foolish one," he whispered gently.
And she, though it was against her will, followed him up the echoing
empty stairs.
They went into every room, and Guy declared how they with their love
were restoring to each of them the life it had known in the past. Here
was a pleasant fancy, and Pauline hoped it might be true. In the thought
that their presence was in a way the bestowal of charity on these
maltreated halls she lost much of her alarm and began to enjoy the
solitude spent with Guy. Whether they looked out at the wilderness that
once was a garden or at the rank lawn in front, the thunderous wind
surging round the house brought them closer together in the
consciousness of their own shelter and their own peace in this deserted
habitation.
"Now, confess," said Guy. "Haven't we been rather stupid to neglect such
a refuge?"
"But, Guy, we haven't needed a refuge very often," objected Pauline, who
for all that she was losing some of her dread of the Abbey was by no
means inclined to set up a precedent for going there too often.
"Not yet," he admitted. "But with winter coming on and the wet days that
will either keep us indoors or else prevent us from doing anything but
walk perpetually along splashy roads, we shan't be sorry to have a place
like this to which we can retreat in comparative comfort."
"Oh, Guy," Pauline asked anxiously. "I suppose we ought to come here?"
"Why on earth not?"
"Don't be angry. But the idea just flashed through my mind that perhaps
Mother wouldn't like us to come here very often."
He sighed deeply.
"Really, sometimes I wonder what is the good of being engaged. Are we
for ever to be hemmed in by the conventions of a place like Wychford?"
"Oh, but I expect Mother wouldn't mind really," said Pauline, reassuring
herself and him. "I'm always liable to these fits of doubt. Sometimes I
feel quite weighed down by the responsibility of being grown up."
She laughed at herself, and the laughter ringing through the hollow
house seemed to return and mock her with a mirthless echo.
"Oh, Guy," she exclaimed. "Oh, Guy, I wish I hadn't laughed then. Did
you hear how strangely it seemed as if the house laughed back at me?"
She had gripped his arm, and Guy startled by her gesture exclaimed
rather irritably that she ought to control her nerves.
"Well, don't let's stay in this room. I don't like the green light that
the ivy is giving your face."
"What next?" he grumbled. "Well, let's go out on the balcony."
They went half way downstairs to the door that opened on a large
balustraded terrace with steps leading from either end into the ruined
garden. The wind beat against them with such force here that very soon
they went back into the house, and Guy found a small room looking out on
the terrace, in which he persuaded Pauline to come and sit for a while.
All the other rooms in the house had been so dreadfully decayed, so much
battered by every humiliation time could inflict upon them that this
small parlour was in contrast positively habitable. It gave the
impression of being perhaps the last place to which the long vanished
owners had desperately held. There was a rusty hob-grate and in the
window a deep wooden seat; while the walls were still painted with
courtly scenes, and the inlaid wooden floor gave a decency which
everywhere else had been destroyed by the mouldering boards.
"I say, it would be fun to light a fire some time," said Guy. "This is
just the room for us."
"It's rather a frightening room," said Pauline doubtfully.
"Dearest, you insist on being frightened by everything this afternoon,"
he answered.
"No, but this room is frightening, Guy," she persisted. "This seems so
near to being lived in by dead people."
"And what can dead people do to you and me?" he asked with that sidelong
mocking smile which she half disliked, half loved.
Pauline looked back over her shoulder once: then she came across to
where he invited her to sit in the window-bay.
"I ought to have brought my diamond pencil," he said. "This is such a
window for mottoes. Why, I declare! Somebody has scrawled one. Look,
Pauline. Pauline, look! _1770. R.G. P.F._ inside a heart. Oh, what a
pity it wasn't _P.G._ for Pauline Grey. Still the _G_ can stand for Guy.
Oh, really, I think it's an extraordinary coincidence! _P.F.?_ We can
find out which of the Fentons that was. We'll look up in the history of
the family. Darling, I am so glad we came to this little room. Think of
those lovers who sat here once like us. Pauline, it makes me cherish,
you so."
She sat upon his knee, because the window seat was dusty and because in
this place of fled lovers she wanted to be held closely to his heart.
The wind boomed and moaned, and the sun breaking through the clouds lit
up the walls with a wild yellow light.
Suddenly Pauline drew away from his arms.
"Shadows went by the window," she cried. "Guy, I feel afraid. I feel
afraid. There's a footstep."
She was lily-white, whose cheeks had but now been burning so fiercely.
"Nonsense," he replied half-roughly. "It was that burst of sunshine."
"Guy, there were shadows. Hark!"
She nearly screamed, because footsteps were going down the stairs of the
empty house.
"It must have been the caretaker," said Guy.
"I saw a white person. Guy, never never let us come here again."
"You don't seriously think you saw a ghost?" he asked.
"Guy, how do I know? Come away, into the air. We should never have come
here. Oh, this room! I feel as if I should faint."
"I'll see who it was," said Guy springing up.
"No, don't leave me. Wait for me. I'll come with you."
They hurried down the stairs and when they reached the pallid lawn they
saw Margaret and Monica in their white coats disappearing among the yew
trees by the entrance.
"There are your ghosts," said Guy laughing.
Yet, though Guy scoffed at her fears, Pauline was not sure that she
would not have preferred a ghost to that disquieting passage of her
sisters without hail or comment. Yet perhaps after all they had not
seen her and Guy in that sinister small parlour.
"Shall we catch them up?" he asked.
And Pauline with a breath of dismay was conscious of an inclination to
pretend that they had not been here this afternoon. She discovered
herself, as it were, proposing to Guy that they should not overtake
Monica and Margaret. A secretiveness she had never known before had
seized her soul, and she hoped that their presence in the Abbey was
unknown. Guy divined at once that she did not want to overtake her
sisters, and he kept her under the trees, where they watched each
assault of the wind tearing at the little foliage that still remained.
He guided her tenderly away from the sight of the house; and they walked
along the broad path down through the shrubbery, meeting a rout of brown
and red and yellow leaves that swept by them. She clung to Guy's arm as
if this urgent and tumultuous wind had the power to sweep her too into
the confusion: such an affraying journey was life beginning to seem.
This ghastly elation of the October weather would not allow her breath
to examine the perplexity in which she had involved herself. She felt
that if the wind blew any louder, she would have to scream out in
defiance of its violence or else surrender miserably and be whirled into
oblivion. A brown oakleaf had escaped from the perishable host and was
palpitating in a fold of her sleeve like a hunted creature; but when
Pauline would have rescued it at the same moment a gust came roaring up
the walk under the hissing trees, and the driven leaf was torn from its
refuge and flung high into the air to join the myriads in their giddy
riot of death.
"Come away from here," she cried to Guy. "Come away or I shall go mad in
this wind."
He looked at her with a sort of judicial demeanour, as if he were in
doubt whether he ought not to reprove such excitement.
"It was really beginning to blow quite fiercely," he said when they had
reached the comparative stillness of Abbey Lane.
Behind them Pauline still heard with terror and hatred the moaning of
the trees, and she hurried away from the sound.
"Never, never will I go there again. Why did you ask me to go there? I
would sooner have met a thousand Brydones than have been in that house."
"Pauline," he protested. "You really do sometimes encourage yourself to
be overwrought."
"Guy, don't lecture me," she said, turning upon him fiercely.
"Well, don't let the whole of Wychford see that you're in a temper," he
retorted. "People haven't yet got over the idea of us two as a natural
curiosity of the neighbourhood. I don't want ... and I don't suppose
you're very anxious for these yokels to discuss our quarrels in the
post-office to-night."
"I don't mind what anybody does," said Pauline desperately. "I only want
to be out of this wind--this wind."
She was rather glad that Guy, perhaps to punish her for the loss of
control, said he must go and work instead of coming back to tea at the
Rectory. It strangely gave her the ability to smile at him and be in
their parting herself again, whereas had he come back with her she knew
that she would still have felt irritated. Her smile may have abashed his
ill-humour, for he seemed inclined to change his mind about the need for
work; but she would not let him and hurried towards home at the back of
the west wind. Should she ask her sisters if they had seen her in the
Abbey? It would be better to wait until they said something first. It
would really be best to say nothing about this afternoon. Tea was in the
nursery that day, for the Rector was holding some sort of colloquy in
the drawing-room which he always used for parochial business, because
he dreaded having his seeds scattered by the awkward fingers of the
flock.
Tea had not come in yet, and Pauline took her familiar seat in the
window, glad to be out of the wind but pondering a little mournfully the
lawn mottled with leaves, and the lily-pond that was being seamed and
crinkled by every gust that skated across the surface. When the others
arrived, Pauline knew that she turned round to greet them defiantly,
although she would have given much not to feel excuseful like this.
"You didn't see Monica and me?" Margaret asked.
"Only after you'd gone too far for us to call to you," Pauline answered,
nervously assuring herself that Margaret had not tried to 'catch her
out,' as Janet would have said.
"We had taken the short cut through the Abbey," Monica explained.
Pauline felt that what Monica meant to say had been: 'we did not spy
upon you deliberately.' And that she should have had this instinct of
putting her sisters in the wrong prepared her for something unpleasant,
that and the fuss her mother was making over the tea-tray. Pauline was
more than ever grateful to the impulse which had not allowed Guy to
change his mind and come back with her. As soon as tea was over,
Margaret and Monica went away to practise a duet; and in the manner of
their going from the room Pauline felt the louring of the atmosphere.
Her mother began at once:
"Pauline, I'm surprized at your going into the Abbey with Guy."
"Well, it was really an accident. I mean it was because we wanted not to
meet any of the Brydones, who were rushing at us from every side."
Pauline tried to laugh, but her mother looked down at the milk jug and
flushed nearly to crimson in the embarrassment of something she was
forcing herself to say.
"It's not merely going into the Abbey ... no ... not merely that ... no,
not merely going into the Abbey ... but to let Guy make love to you like
that is so vulgar. Pauline, it's the sort of way that servants behave
when they're in love."
She sprang from the window-seat.
"Mother, what do you mean?"
"Margaret and Monica saw you sitting on Guy's knee. In any case I would
rather you never did that. In any case ... yes ... but in a place where
people passing might have seen ... yes, would have seen ... oh, it was
inexcusable.... I shall have to make much stricter rules...."
"Are you going to speak to Guy about this?" Pauline asked. The house
seemed to be whirling away like a leaf, such a shattering of her love
were these words of her mother.
"How can I speak to Guy about it?" Mrs. Grey demanded irritably. "How
can I, Pauline? It has nearly choked me to speak to you."
"I think Monica and Margaret are almost wicked," Pauline cried in
flames. "They are trying to destroy everything. They are, they are. No,
Mother, you shan't defend them. I knew they felt guilty when they went
out of the room like that. How dare they put horrible thoughts in your
mind? How dare they? They're cruel to me. And you're cruel to me. I
don't understand what's happening to everybody. You'll make me hate you
all, if you speak like that."
She rushed from the nursery and went first to the music-room where
Margaret was sounding deep notes, hanging over her violoncello, and
where Monica was playing one of those contained, somewhat frigid
accompaniments.
"Margaret and Monica," said Pauline standing in the doorway. "You're
never to dare to speak about me to Mother as you must have spoken this
afternoon. Because neither of you have any emotion but conceit and
selfishness, you shall not be jealous of Guy and me. Margaret, you can
have no heart. I shall write to Richard and tell him you're heartless.
Don't smile down at your violoncello. You shall not rule me into being
like yourself. Oh, I'll never play music with either of you again."
Then she left them and in her white room for an hour she listened
hopelessly to the trolling wind.
_November_
Guy was very indignant when he heard from Pauline the sequel of her
sisters' vigilance. That they should afterward have tried to atone with
gentleness for what they had made her suffer did not avail with him.
Monica and Margaret now impressed him with their unworldly beauty in a
strange way, for they became sinister figures like the Lady Geraldine in
Christabel, sly malignant sylphs set in ambush to haunt the romantic
path of his love. He was intensely aware that he ought not to resent
their interference, but that he ought in fact to acknowledge the justice
of it and by a stoical endeavour prove himself entitled to the cares of
this long engagement. Actually Guy was enduring a violent jealousy, and
illogically he began to declare how the others were jealous of him and
Pauline. The consciousness that he could not carry her off into
immediate marriage galled him and he suffered all the pangs of an
unmerited servitude. He and Pauline became the prisoners of tyrants who
were urging them to accept the yoke of convention; the more he suffered,
the more he knew in his heart that he was culpable, and the more
culpable he recognized himself, the more he chafed against the burden of
waiting. All the resolutions that with the announcement of their
betrothal had seemed to sail before a prospering breeze now turned and
beat up against adverse influences and were every moment in danger of
being irreparably wrecked.
Naturally coincident with all the stress of a situation, that owing to
the temperament of the Greys was never relieved by discussion, was a
complete failure to advance on the private road of his poetical
ambition. All that he had written was seeming vain and bad: all that he
was now trying to write deteriorated with every word painfully inscribed
upon the cheerless empty page. He had conceived a set of eclogues that
were to mark his contempt for the feverish incompetence of the modern
school, whose ears had been corrupted by Wagner's filthy din; and all he
could manage to achieve were seeming the banal inspirations of
Mendelssohn. Guy was like an alchemist perpetually on the verge of
discovering the stone that will transmute base metals to gold as he
tried to find the secret by which such an one as Beethoven could purify
with art the most violent emotions of humanity, yet always preserve
their intrinsic value. He craved the secret which even the most obscure
Elizabethans seemed to have possessed, that unearthly power of harmony
which could fuse all baseness in a glittering song. Passion had never
lost itself in arid decoration when they sang; nor yet had it ever
betrayed itself with that impudently direct appeal these modern lyrists
made, these shameless Rousseaus of verse. Yet he was as bad as any of
them, for he was either like them when he tried to write his heart, or
he expired in the mere sound of words like the degenerate ruck of the
Caroline heirs to a great tradition. He was almost on the point of
proclaiming his final failure, and if at that moment he could have
received from his father the offer to come and teach small boys at Fox
Hall, he would have gone.
And yet would he have gone? Could he abandon the delight of being with
Pauline? The nearer he came to confessing his failure, the more he
longed for her company. He was surely now in the midway of the thorny
path of love, and whether he progressed or retreated he could not escape
the spines. Well had he said to himself that night in May: '_La belle
Dame sans mercy bath thee in thrall_.'
All the fire and fever of his present life on the outskirts of a
haunted country was for his imagination alone. However timidly his pen
approached those dreams, they vanished; and whenever his pen betrayed
him, Guy turned despairingly again to Pauline herself. These days
without her were every day more unendurable. Once he had been content to
talk about her to Mrs. Grey and her sisters, to listen to their praise
of her: now every word they spoke wounded his pride. This madness of
love could only feed itself in the very dungeons of his mind; and unless
she were with him it did so horribly gorge itself that, if he had not
swiftly seen her again, the madness would have broken the bars of its
prison and ridden him like a hag.
It was when Guy had worked himself to this pitch of desire for the
remedy of her sweet presence that Pauline was denied to him. He knew he
must blame himself because, even after the warning of that afternoon in
the Abbey, whenever they were together he would carry her away into the
country, whence they would not return sometimes until night had fallen.
Worse than that, by his now continuous withdrawal from the life of the
Rectory he must have disquieted her family. He saw that they were
becoming anxious about Pauline, but for that very reason he could not
bring himself to mitigate a solitary doubt of theirs. Even to talk about
her in the lightest way was now become an outrage upon the seclusion of
their joint life. Such a conversation as that with Margaret about the
silver photograph frame was now unimaginable. What right had anyone to
know even what picture of Pauline burned upon his wall in the
night-time? At first Pauline herself when the memory of the shock her
mother's words had been to her died out, tried to justify the attitude
of guardianship. She would explain to Guy how, ever since she could
remember, her mother and sisters had treated her with this vigilance.
They had, as she said, always so much adored her that it was natural for
them to be unable at once to relinquish entirely to someone else the
complete possession of her. Yet Guy must not be jealous, because she
told them none of her secrets now: indeed she was distressed at the
thought of how far outside her confidence they reproachfully esteemed
themselves. Her love for him had severely shaken the perfect unity of
their immemorial life together, and he must be generous and understand
how gradual would have to be their renunciation of her to him. Guy,
however, would not allow Pauline to have regrets like this. The most
trivial consideration of her family aroused his jealousy; and when Mrs.
Grey said she thought it would be better if the old rule of only seeing
Pauline twice a week came into force again, Guy was determined that
Pauline should resent the step as bitterly as he resented it. All the
time he was with her he would be lamenting the briefness of their
permitted intercourse, and since the weather was now so wet that even
they could not reasonably claim beneath such streaming skies the right
to abscond into deserted country, November shed a gloom upon their love.
On the days when Guy did come to the Rectory, no one attempted to rob
them of their privacy; they were always granted the nursery to
themselves, and even sometimes they had tea there together, if visitors
came, so that the privilege of their few hours should not be infringed.
Nevertheless, the old sense of time and the world at their service was
lost. The dull November dusk came swiftly on; and out in the passage the
cuckoo with maddening reiteration proclaimed each fleeting fifteen
minutes. Often Guy was asked to dinner, but the old pleasure was mostly
gone, for in the evening he and Pauline were not expected to retire by
themselves; and there was always an implied reproach for his influence
when she refused to play her violin. Then there came a dreadful day,
because some cousins had arrived to stay at the Rectory; for these two
girls like everyone else had been accustomed to adore Pauline, and so
were determined to take an extreme interest in her engagement.
"We seem to have a ghastly lure for them," Guy groaned in exasperation,
when Pauline had managed at last to secure the nursery for themselves.
"Guy, they're only staying a week."
"Well," he protested, "and for me to stay with you a week takes months
of these miserable little hours we have. Oh, Pauline, I must see more of
you."
Then back came the adoring cousins, and Guy felt that no torture he
could imagine was bad enough for them. Their cordiality to him was so
great that he had to be superficially pleasant; and, as smile after
smile was wrung from him, by the end of the afternoon he felt sick with
the agony his politeness had cost.
"Hurry and dress! hurry! hurry!" he begged Pauline, in a whisper when
the gong sounded. "Let us at least have five minutes alone before dinner
comes and I must go."
Pauline was scarcely five minutes in coming down again, but Guy counted
each tick of the clock with desperate heartsickness.
"Oh, my darling, my darling," he said when she was held in the so dearly
longed for, the so terribly brief embrace. "I cannot bear the torment of
to-day."
She tried to soothe him; but Guy had reached the depths and this relief
after such effort was almost too late.
"Pauline, listen," he said quickly. "You must come and say good-night to
me in the garden. Do you hear? You must. You must. I shan't sleep unless
you do. You must."
"Guy," she murmured, "I couldn't."
"You must. Promise ... you must. Come down and say good-night to me on
the lawn. I shall wait there all night. I shall wait...."
The cuckoo burst out to cry seven o'clock.
"You must come. You must come. Promise."
"Perhaps," she whispered faintly. Then she said she could not.
Guy went to the door.
"Remember, I have not kissed you good-night," he proclaimed solemnly.
"And now I'm going. I shall wait from eleven o'clock, and stay all night
until you have kissed me."
"Oh, but Guy...."
"To-night," he said. "You promise?"
"Guy, if I dare, if I dare."
There were footsteps in the passage. He fled across the room, kissed her
momentarily and hurried out, saying good-bye to the cousins, as he
passed them, with a kind of exultant affection.
Outside, the November night hung humid and oppressive; Guy looking up
felt rain falling softly yet with gathering intensity, and he lingered a
few moments in the drive held by the whispering blackness. Behind him,
the lamplight of the Rectory windows seemed for the moment sad and
unattainable and gave him the fancy he was drifting away from a friendly
shore. Then suddenly he marched away along the drive, content; for the
thought of 'to-night,' which latterly had often brought such a
presentiment of loneliness, now sounded upon his imagination like the
rapture of a nightingale.
Plashers Mead had never appeared so desirable as now when it was the
prelude to such an enterprise as this of consecrating with a last
embrace the rain and gloom of November. If he had any hesitation about
the rightness or even, setting probity aside, about the prudence of such
an action, he justified himself with romantic reasons; and if he was
driven by conscience to an ultimate defence, he justified himself with
the exceptional circumstances that gave him a sanction to accept from
Pauline this sacrifice of her traditions. Impulses to consider what he
was doing were easily dismissed: indeed before he reached his house
there was not one left. Inside, the warmth and comfort of Plashers Mead
were additional incentives to prosecute his resolve; every gleaming
book, the breathing of the dog upon the mat before the fire, the gentle
purr of the lamp, all seemed to demand that voluptuous renunciation
which would later urge him forth again into the night. That it would
probably be raining was not to prove an obstacle: Pauline would be more
sure to come if she thought he were standing outside in the rain. It was
a second Eve of St. Agnes; and Guy went across to his shelf and took
down Keats. He had come to the knights and ladies praying in their dumb
oratories, when there was a knock at the front-door, and his mind leapt
to the thought that Pauline might have sent a note by Birdwood to
prevent his coming to-night. The knock sounded again, and as Miss Peasey
was evidently too deeply immersed in The Pilgrim's Progress, her
vespertine lectionary, to pay heed to visitors at this hour of nine
o'clock, he must go down and open the door himself.
"Are we disturbing you?"
It was the voice of Brydone, and with Willsher in his wake he came into
the hall.
"Charlie and I have made several shots to find you in, but of course we
know you're a busy man nowadays."
"Go on upstairs, will you?" said Guy making a tremendous effort to
appear hospitable. "I'll dig out the whisky."
He went along and shouted in Miss Peasey's ear what was wanted. She
looked up as if it were Apollyon himself come to affront her holy
abstraction.
"I think there's some left from that bottle we got in August.... I shall
lay it on the mat," she told him.
Guy nodded encouragingly and went upstairs to join his guests.
"Well, I suppose you'll be soon having a missus in charge here," said
Brydone heartily.
Willsher hummed Bachelor Boys as a contributory echo of the question.
"Oh, no, we're not getting married at once, you know," Guy explained.
"Well, you're quite right," Brydone declared heartily. "After all, being
close at hand like this, you're not much likely to draw a blank in the
lottery."
"Marriage is a lottery, isn't it?" said Guy with polite sarcasm.
"Rather," sighed Willsher. "Terrific!"
"I suppose I shall have to be looking round preparatory to getting
married in two or three years' time," Brydone added. "Well, you see,
after Christmas I shall be thinking about my finals, and then I'm going
to come in as the old man's partner. Country people like it best, if a
doctor's married. No doubt about that, is there, Charlie?"
The solicitor's son agreed it was indubitable.
"Of course if I had the cash to hang on in Harley Street for ten years
as a specialist, it would be another matter. But I can't, so there it
is."
Even this fellow had his dreams, Guy thought; even he would make
acquaintance with thwarted ambitions.
"Been doing anything with a rod lately?" asked Willsher, whose pastime,
when he could not be standing in action on the river's bank, was always
to steer a conversation in the direction of anglers' gossip.
"No, not lately," said Guy. "Though I knocked down a lot of apples with
one last month."
"Ha-ha! that's good," Brydone ejaculated. "That's very good, Hazlewood.
That's good, isn't it, Charlie?"
"Awfully good," agreed the angler.
Their appreciation seemed perfectly genuine, and Guy was touched by the
readiness of them to be entertained by his lame wit.
"I mustn't forget to tell the old man that," Brydone chuckled. "He's
always digging at me over the fish. Done anything with a rod lately? I
knocked down a lot of apples last month. Your governor will like that,
Charlie!"
Guy heard the clink of a tray deposited cautiously on the floor of the
passage outside. He allowed Miss Peasey time to retreat before he opened
the door, because it was one of the clauses in her charter that she was
never, as a lady-housekeeper, to be asked to bring a tray into a room
when anyone but Guy was present. He hoped that after they had drunk, his
visitors would depart; but alas, the unintended charm of his
conversation seemed likely to prolong their stay.
"Rabelais," Brydone read slowly as he saw the volumes on the shelves.
"That's a bit thick, isn't it?"
"In quantity or quality, do you mean?" asked Guy.
"I've heard that's the thickest book ever written," said Brydone.
"Do you read old French easily?" asked Guy.
"Oh, it's in old French, is it?" said Brydone in a disappointed voice.
"That would biff me."
A silence fell upon the room, a silence that seemed to symbolize the
'biffing' of the doctor's son by old French. Willsher took the
opportunity to steer the conversation back to fish, and ten o'clock
struck in the middle of an argument between him and his friend over the
merits of two artificial flies. Guy must be on the Rectory lawn by
eleven o'clock, and he began to be anxious, so animated was the
discussion, about the departure of these well-meaning intruders. He did
not want to plunge straight from their company into the glorious
darkness that would hold Pauline; and he eyed the volume of Keats lying
face downward on the table, hoping he would be allowed to come back to
the knights and ladies praying in their dumb oratories, while he
thought with a thrill of the moment when he should be able to read:
_And they are gone; ay, ages long ago_
_These lovers fled away into the storm._
"If you can't get a chub any other way, you can sometimes get him with a
bit of bacon," Willsher was saying. "And I know a fellow who caught one
of those woppers under Marston's Mill with a cherry. Fact, I assure
you."
"I know a man at Oldbridge, who caught a four pounder with a
bumble-bee."
"I caught a six pounder at Oxford with a mouse's head myself," Guy
declared.
The friends looked at him in the admiration and envy with which anglers
welcome a pleasant companionable sort of a lie. It was a bad move, for
it seemed as if by that lie he had drawn closer the bonds of sympathy
between himself and his guests. They visibly warmed to his company, for
Brydone at once invited himself to another 'tot' and was obviously
settling down to a competitive talk about big fish; while Willsher's
first shyness turned to familiarity, so completely indeed that he asked
if Guy would mind his moving the furniture in order to try to explain to
that fathead Brydone the exact promontory of the Greenrush where he had
caught thirty trout in an hour when the mayfly was up two years ago.
Half-past-ten struck from the church tower, and Guy became desperate.
There was nothing he hated so much as asking people to go, which was one
reason why he always discouraged them at the beginning; but it really
seemed as if he must bring himself to the point of asking Brydone and
Willsher to leave him to his work. He decided to allow them until a
quarter-to-eleven. The minutes dragged along, and when the quarter
sounded Guy said he was sorry but that he was very much afraid he would
have to work now.
"Right O," said Brydone. "We'll tootle off." But it took ten minutes to
get them out of the house, and when at last they disappeared into the
mazy garden Guy was in a fume of anxiety about his tryst. He could not
now go round by Rectory Lane, as he had intended at first. No doubt
Brydone and Willsher would stay talking half-an-hour on the bridge, for
the rain had stopped and they had given the impression of having the
night before them. In fact Brydone had once definitely announced that
the night was still young. Yet in a way the fact of their nearness and
of his having to avoid them added a zest to the adventure.
How dark it was and how heavily the trees dripped in the orchard. Guy
pulled the canoe from the shed and dragged it squeaking over the wet
grass: not even he in the exaltation of the moment was going to swim the
Hellespont.
When he was in the canoe and driving it with silent strokes along the
straight black stream; when the lantern was put out and the darkness was
at first so thick that like the water it seemed to resist the sweep of
his paddle, Guy could no longer imagine that Pauline would venture out.
He became oppressed by the impenetrable and humid air, and he began to
long for rain to fall as if it would reassure him that nature in such an
annihilation of form was still alive. Now he had swung past the
overhanging willows of the churchyard; his eyes grown accustomed to the
darkness discovered against a vague sky the vague bulk of the church,
and in a minute or two he could be sure that he was come to the Rectory
paddock. He was wet to the knees and his feet, sagging in the grass,
seemed to make a most prodigious noise with their gurgling.
Guy was too early when he crept over the lawn, for there were still
lights in all the upper windows, and he withdrew to the plantation,
where he waited in rapt patience while the branches dripped and
pattered, dripped and pattered ceaselessly. One by one the lights had
faded out, but still he must not signal to Pauline. How should he after
all make known to her his presence on that dark lawn? Scarcely would she
perceive from her window his shadowy form. He must not even whisper; he
must not strike a match. Suddenly a light crossed his vision and he
started violently before he realized that it was only a glow-worm moving
with laborious progress along the damp edge of the lawn. Black indeed
was the hour when a glow-worm belated on this drear night of the year's
decline could so alarm him. For a while he watched the creeping
phosphorescence and wondered at it in kindly fellowship, thinking how
like it was to a human lover, so small and solitary in this gigantic
gloom. Then he began to pick it up and, as it moved across his hand and
gave it with the wan fire a ghostly semblance, he resolved to signal
with this lamp to Pauline.
Midnight crashed its tale from the belfry, and nowhere in the long house
was there any light. There was nothing now in the world but himself and
this glow-worm wandering across his hand. He moved nearer to the house
and stood beneath Pauline's window; surely she was leaning out: surely
that was her shadow tremulous on the inspissate air. Guy waved, and the
pale light moving to and fro seemed to exact an answer, for something
fell at his feet and by the glow-worm's melancholy radiance he read
'_now_' on a piece of paper. Gratefully he set the insect down to vanish
upon its own amorous path into the murk. Not a tree quivered, not a
raindrop slipped from a blade of grass but Guy held out his arms to
clasp his long awaited Pauline. The '_now_' prolonged its duration into
hours, it seemed; and then when she did come she was in his arms before
he knew by her step or by the rustle of her dress that she was coming.
She was in his arms as though like a moth she had floated upon a
flower.
Their good-night was kissed in a moment, and she was gone like a moth
that cannot stay upon the flower it visits.
Guy waited until he thought he saw her leaning from her window once
more. Then he drew close to the wall of the house and strained his eyes
to catch the farewell of her hand. As he looked up, the rain began to
fall again; and in an ecstasy he glided back to Plashers Mead, adoring
the drench of his clothes and the soft sighing of the rain.