_December._
_My dear Richard,_
_I am sorry that I've not written to you for so long, but I know
you'll forgive me, because I have to think about so many things.
Margaret has just told me you are coming back in April. Be sure it
is April, because my birthday is on the first of May, you know, and
you must be in England for my birthday. Margaret looked very happy
when she said you were coming home. Richard, I am sure that
everything will be perfect. Guy's book is finished, and perhaps it
will be published in March. If it's published early in March, I
will send you a copy so that you can read it on the steamer coming
home. There are two poems about Margaret, who was very sympathetic
with Guy over me! That's one of the reasons why I'm sure that
everything will be perfect for you. Guy wants to meet you very
much. He says he admires action. That's because I told him about
your bridge. Your father and mother are always very sweet to us
when we go and have tea with them. Miss Verney is going to wear
caps. Birdwood asked if you would bring him back a Goorcha's--is
that the way to spell it--a Goorcha's knife because Godbold won't
believe something he told him. Birdwood said you were a grand young
chap and were wasted out in India. Father won a prize at Vincent
Square for a yellow gladiolus. It's been christened--now I've
forgotten what, but after somebody who had a golden throat. Guy's
dog is a lamb. A merry Christmas, and lots of love from_
_Your loving_
_Pauline._
Pauline looked forward to Richard's return because she hoped that if
Margaret married him her own marriage to Guy would begin to appear more
feasible, it being at present almost too difficult to imagine anything
like marriage exploding upon the quietude of the Rectory. The return of
Richard, from the moment she eyed it in relation to her own affairs,
assumed an importance it had never possessed before when it was only an
ideal of childish sentiment, and Pauline made of it a foundation on
which she built towering hopes.
Guy, as soon as he had decided to publish his first volume, instantly
acquired doubts about the prudence of the step, and he rather hurt
Pauline's feelings by wanting Michael Fane to come and give him the
support of his judgment.
"I told you I should never be enough," she said sadly.
He consoled her with various explanations of his reliance upon a
friend's opinion, but he would not give up his idea of getting him and
he wrote letter after letter until he was able to announce that for a
week-end in mid-December Michael was actually pledged.
"And I do want you to like him," said Guy earnestly.
Pauline promised that of course she would like him, but in her heart she
assured herself she never would. It was corulean winter weather when the
friend arrived, and Pauline who had latterly taken up the habit of often
coming into the churchyard to talk for a while with Guy across the
severing stream, abandoned the churchyard throughout that week-end. Guy
was vexed by her withdrawal and vowed that in consequence all the
pleasure of the visit had been spoilt.
"For I've been rushing in and out all the time to see if you were not in
sight, and I'm often absolutely boorish to Fane, who by the way loves
your Rectory bedroom so much."
"Has he condescended to let your book appear?" asked Pauline.
"Oh, rather, he says that everything I've included is quite all right.
In fact he's a much less severe critic than I am myself."
Pauline had made up her mind, if possible, to avoid a meeting with
Michael, but on Monday she relented, and they were introduced to each
other. The colloquy on that turquoise morning, when the earth smelt
fresh and the grass in the orchard was so vernally green, did not help
Pauline to know much about Michael Fane, save that he was not so tall as
Guy and that somehow he gave the impression of regarding life more like
a portrait by Vandyck than a human being. He was cold, she settled, and
she, as usual shy and blushful, could only have seemed stupid to him.
That afternoon, when the disturbing friend had gone, Pauline and Guy
went for a walk.
"He admired you tremendously."
"Did he?" she made listless answer.
"He said you were a fairy's child, and he also said you really were a
wild rose."
"What an exaggerated way of talking about somebody whom he has only seen
for a moment."
"Pauline," said Guy, affectionately rallying her, "aren't you being
rather naughty--rather wilful, really? Didn't you like Michael?"
"Guy, you can't expect me to know whether I liked him in a minute. He
made me feel shyer than even most people do."
"Well, let's talk about the book instead," said Guy. "What colour shall
the binding be?"
"What colour did he suggest?"
"I see you're determined to be horrid about my poor harmless Michael."
"Well, why must he be brought down like this to approve of your book?"
"Oh, he has good taste, and besides he's interested in you and me."
"What did you tell him about us?" Pauline asked sharply.
"Nothing, my dearest, nothing," said Guy, flinging his stick for Bob to
chase over the furrows. "At least," he added turning and looking down at
her with eyebrows arched in pretended despair of her unreasonableness,
"I expect I bored him to death with singing your praises."
Still Pauline could not feel charitable, and still she could not smile
at Guy.
"Ah, my rose," he said tenderly. "Why will you droop? Why will you care
about people who cannot matter to us? My own Pauline, can't you see that
I called in a third person because I dare not trust myself now. All the
day long, all the night long you are my care. I'm so dreadfully anxious
to justify myself: I long for assurance at every step: once I was
self-confident, but I can't be self-confident any longer. Success is no
responsibility in itself, but now...."
"It's my responsibility," cried Pauline melting to him. "Oh, forgive me
for being jealous. Darling boy, it's just my foolish ignorance that
makes me jealous of some one who can give you more than I."
"But no one can!" he vowed. "I only asked Michael's advice because you
are too kind a judge. My success is of such desperate importance to us
two. What would it have mattered before I met you? Now my failure would
... oh, Pauline, failure is too horrible to think of."
"As if you could fail," she chided gently. "And if you did fail, I would
almost be glad, because I would love you all the more."
"Pauline, would you?"
"Ah, no I wouldn't," she whispered. "Because I could not love you more
that I do now."
The dog with a sigh dropped his stick: he was become accustomed to these
interludes.
"Bob gives us up as hopeless," Guy laughed.
"I'm not a bit sympathetic, you jealous dog," she said. "Because you
have your master all day long."
The next time Guy came to the Rectory, he brought with him the
manuscript, so that Pauline could seal it for luck; and they sat in the
nursery, while Guy for the last enumeration turned over the pages one by
one.
"It represents so much," he said, "and it looks so little. My father
will be rather surprized. I told him I should wait another year. I
wonder if I ought to have waited."
"Oh, no," said Pauline. "Everything else is waiting and waiting. It
makes me so happy to think of these pages flying away like birds."
"I hope they won't be like homing pigeons," said Guy. "It will be rather
a blow if William Worrall rejects them."
"Oh, but how could he be so foolish."
"I don't think he will really," said Guy. "After all, a good many people
have endorsed the first half, and I'm positive that what I've written
here is better than that. I rather wish I'd finished the Eclogues
though. Do you think perhaps I'd better wait after all?"
"Oh, no, Guy, don't wait."
So, very solicitously the poems were wrapped up, and when they were tied
and sealed and the parcel lay addressed upon the table, Mrs. Grey with
Monica and Margaret came in. They were so sympathetic about the possible
adventures in sight for that parcel, and Guy was so much his rather
self-conscious self that the original relation between him and the
family seemed perfectly restored. Pauline was glad to belong to them,
and in her pride of Guy's achievement she basked in their simple
affection, thrilling to every word or look or gesture that confirmed her
desire of the cherished accord between Guy and the others.
"Now I'm sure you'd both like to go and post Guy's poems," Mrs. Grey
exclaimed. "Yes ... charming ... to go and post them yourselves."
Pauline waited anxiously for a moment, because of late Guy had often
seemed impatient of these permissions granted to him by her mother, but
this afternoon he was himself and full of the shy gratitude that made
her wonder if indeed nearly a year could have flown by since their love
had been declared. Dusk was falling when they reached the post-office.
"Will you register it, Mr. Hazlewood?" asked the postmistress.
Guy nodded, and the parcel left their hands: in silence they watched it
vanish into the company of other parcels that carried so much less: then
back they came through the twilight to tea at the Rectory, both feeling
as if the first really important step toward marriage had been taken.
"You see," said Guy, "if only these poems of mine are well received, my
father must acknowledge my right to be here, and if he once admits that,
what barrier can there be to our wedding?"
Pauline told him how much during the last month the distant prospect of
their marriage had begun to weigh upon her, but now since that parcel
had been left at the post-office, she said she would always talk of
their wedding because that was such a much less remote word than
marriage.
"Come out to-night," said Guy suddenly.
She put her hand on his arm.
"Guy, don't ask me again."
He was penitent at once, and full of promises never to ask her again to
do anything that might cause an instant's remorse. They had reached the
hall of the Rectory and in the shadows Pauline held him to her heart,
suddenly caught in the flood of tenderness that a wife might have for a
husband to whose faults she could be indulgent by the measure of his
greater virtues kept, as it might be, for her alone.
_January_
Guy, as soon as he had sent off the poems to a publisher, was much less
violently driven by the stress of love, which latterly had urged him
along so wayward a course. He began to acquire a perspective and to lose
some of that desperately clinging reliance upon present joys. The need
of battling against an uncertain future had brought him to the pitch of
madness at the thought of the hours of Pauline's company that must be
wasted; but now when to his sanguine hopes marriage presented itself as
at last within sight, sometimes even seeming as close as the fall of
this new year, he was anxious to set Pauline upon more tranquil waters,
lest she too should like himself be the prey of wild imaginations that
might destroy utterly one untempered by any except the gentler emotions
of a secluded life. Her mother and sisters, whom he had come to regard
as hostile interpreters of convention, took on again their old features
of kindliness and grace; and he was able to see without jealous torments
how reasonable their attitude had been throughout, nay more than
reasonable, how unworldly and noble-hearted it had been in confiding
Pauline to the care of one who had so few pretensions to deserve her. He
upbraided himself for having by his selfishness involved Pauline in the
complexities of regrets for having done something against her judgment:
and in this dreary rain of January, free from the burden of uncompleted
labour, he now felt a more light-hearted assurance than he had known
since the beginning of their love.
Bills came in by every post, but their ability to vex him had vanished
in the promise his manuscript gave of a speedy defeat of all material
difficulties. The reaction from the strain of decking his poems with the
final touches that were to precede the trial of public judgment gave
place to dreams. A dozen times Guy followed the manuscript step by step
of its journey from the moment the insentient mailcart carried it away
from Wychford to the moment when Mr. William Worrall threw a first
casual glance to where it lay waiting for his perusal on the desk in the
Covent Garden office. Guy saw the office-boy send off the formal
postcard of acknowledgment that he had already received; and in his
dream he rather pitied the youth for his unconsciousness of what a
treasure he was acknowledging merely in the ordinary routine of a
morning's work. Perhaps the packet would lie unopened for two or three
days--in fact probably Mr. Worrall might not yet have resumed work, as
they say, after a short Christmas vacation. Moreover when he came back
to business, although at Guy's request for sponsors the poems had been
vouched for by one or two reputed friends of the publisher with whom he
was acquainted, he would no doubt still be inclined to postpone their
examination. Then one morning he would almost inadvertently cut the
string and glance idly at a page, and then....
At this point the author's mental visions varied. Sometimes Worrall
would be so deeply transfixed by the revelation of a new planet swimming
into ken that he would sit spellbound at his own good fortune, not
emerging from a trance of delight until he sent a telegram inviting the
poet to come post haste to town and discuss terms. In other dreams the
publisher would distrust his own judgment and take the manuscript under
his arm to a critic of taste, anxiously watching his face and as an
expression of admiration gradually diffused itself knowing that his own
wild surmize had been true. There were many other variations of the
first reception of the poems, but they all ended in the expenditure of
sixpence on a telegram. Here the dream would amplify itself; and proofs,
binding, paper, danced before Guy's vision; while soon afterward the
first reviews were coming in. At this stage the poet's triumph assumed a
hundred shapes and diversities, and ultimately he could never decide
between a leader on his work in The Times headed A NEW GENIUS or an
eulogy on the principal page of The Daily Mail that galloped neck and
neck for a column alongside one of The Letters of an Englishman. The
former would bestow the greater honour: the latter would be more
profitable: therefore in moments of unbridled optimism he was apt to
allot both proclamations to his fortune. With such an inauguration of
fame the rest was easy dreaming. His father would take a train to
Shipcot on the same morning: if he read The Times at breakfast he would
catch the eleven o'clock from Galton and, travelling by way of
Basingstoke, reach Shipcot by half-past-two. Practically one might dream
that before tea he would have settled L300 a year on his son, so that
the pleasant news could be announced to the Rectory that very afternoon.
In that case he and Pauline could be married in April; and actually on
her twenty-first birthday she would be his wife. They would not go to
the Campagna this year, because these bills must be paid, unless his
father, in an access of pride due to his having bought several more
eulogies at bookstalls along the line, offered to pay all debts up to
the day of his wedding; in which case they could go to the Campagna:
_I wonder do you feel to-day_
_As I have felt since, hand in hand,_
_We sat down on the grass, to stray_
_In spirit better through the land,_
_This morn of Rome and May?_
They would drive out from the city along the Appian Way and turn aside
to sit among the ghostliness of innumerable grasses in those primal
fields, the air of which would be full of the feathery seeds and the dry
scents of that onrushing summer. There would be no thought of time and
no need for words: there would merely be the two of them on a morn of
Rome and May. And later in the warm afternoon they would drive home,
coming back to the city's heart to eat their dinner within sound of the
Roman fountains. Then all the night-time she would be his, not his in
frightened gasps as when wintry England was forbidding all joy to their
youth, but his endlessly, utterly, gloriously. They would travel farther
south and perhaps come to that Parthenopean shore calling to him still
now from the few days he had spent upon its silver heights and beside
its azure waters. In his dream Pauline was leaning on his shoulder
beneath an Aleppo pine, at the cliff's edge, Pauline whose alien
freshness would bring a thought of England to sigh through its boughs,
and a cooler world to the aromatic drouth. Theirs should be sirenian
moons and dawns, and life would be this dream's perfect fulfilment. In
what loggia, firefly-haunted, would he hold her? The desire with which
the picture flamed upon his imagination was almost intolerable, and here
he always brought her back to Plashers Mead on a June dusk. Then she
could be conjured in this house, summoned in spirit here to this very
room; and if they had loved Italy, how they would love England, as they
walked across their meadows, husband and wife. With such visions Guy set
on fire each January night that floated frorely into his bedroom, until
one morning a letter arrived from Mr. William Worrall, that made his
fingers tremble, as he broke the envelope and read the news: