Guy threw the letter down in a rage. He would almost have preferred a
flat refusal to this request for money to enable some jaded hack to read
his poems. The proposal appeared merely insolent, and he wrote curtly to
Mr. William Worrall to demand the immediate return of his manuscript.
But after all, if Worrall did not accept his work, who would? Money was
an ulterior consideration when the great object was to receive such
unanimous approval as would justify the apparent waste of time in which
he had been indulging. The moment his father acknowledged the right he
had to be confident, he in turn would try to show by following his
father's advice that he was not the wrong-headed idler of his
reputation. Perhaps he would send the guinea to Worrall. He tore up his
first letter and wrote another in which a cheque was enclosed. Then he
began to add up the counterfoils of his cheque book, a depressing
operation that displayed an imminent financial crisis. He had overdrawn
L5 last quarter. That left L32 10s. of the money paid in on December 21.
The quarter's rent was L4 10s. That left L28. Miss Peasey's wages were
in arrears, and he must pay her L4 10s. on the fifteenth of this month.
That would leave L23 10s. and he must knock off 7s. 6d. for Bob's
licence. About L3 had gone at Christmas and there were the books still
to pay. L20 was not much for current expenses until next Lady Day.
However, he decided that he could manage in Wychford, if he did not have
to pay out money for Oxford debts, the creditors of which were pressing
him harder each week.
L s. d.
_Lampard._ Books. 39 15 0
_Harker._ Furniture. 17 18 0
_Faucett._ Books. 22 16 6
_Williamson._ Books. 13 19 0
_Ambrose._ Books. 4 7 0
_Brough._ Tobacco. 9 19 0
_Clary._ Clothes. 44 4 0
_Miscellaneous._ Books, Clothes,
Stationery, Chemist,
etc., etc. about L50
A total of L202 18s. 6d. Practically he might say that L200 would clear
everything. Yet was L50 enough to allow for those miscellaneous
accounts? Here for instance was a bill of L11 for boots and another of
L14 for hats apparently, though how the deuce he could have spent all
that on hats he did not know. It would be wiser to say that L250 was
required to free himself from debt. Guy read through the tradesmen's
letters and detected an universal impatience, for they all reminded him
that not merely for fifteen months had they received nothing on account
of large outstanding bills, but also they made it clear that behind
reiterated demands and politeness strained to breaking-point stood
darkly the law. That brute Ambrose, to whom after all he only owed L4
7s., was the most threatening. In fact he would obviously have to pay
the ruffian in full. That left only L15 13s. for current expenses to
Lady Day, or rather L14 12s., for by the way Worrall's guinea had been
left out of the reckoning.
Guy wondered if he ought to get rid of Miss Peasey and manage for
himself in future. Yet the housekeeper probably earned her wages by what
she saved him, and if he relied on a woman who 'came in' every morning,
that meant feeding a family. It would be better to sell a few books. He
might raise L50 that way. Ten pounds to both Lampard and Clary, and six
fivers among the rest would postpone any violent pressure for a while.
Guy at once began to choose the books with which he could most easily
part. It was difficult to put aside as many as might be expected to
raise L50, for his collection did not contain rarities, and it would be
a sheer quantity of volumes, the extraction of which would horribly
deplete his shelves, upon which he must rely.
The January rain dripped monotonously on the window-sills, while Guy
dragged book after book from the shelves that for only fifteen months
had known their company. They were a melancholy sight, when he had
stacked on the floor as many books as he could bear to lose, each shelf
looking as disreputable as a row of teeth after a fight. A hundred
volumes were gone, scarcely a dozen of which had he sacrificed without a
pang. But a hundred volumes in order to raise L50 must sell at an
average of ten shillings apiece, and in the light of such a test of
value he regarded dismayfully the victims. Precious though they were to
him, he could not fairly estimate the price they would fetch at more
than five shillings each. That meant the loss of at least a hundred more
books. Guy felt sick at the prospect and looked miserably along the rows
for the farther tribute of martyrs they must be forced to yield. With
intense difficulty he gathered together another fifty, and then with a
final effort came again for still another fifty. Here was the first
edition of Swinburne's Essays and Studies. That must go, for it might
count as ten shillings and therefore save a weaker brother. Rossetti's
Poems in this edition of 1871 must go in order to save the complete
works, for he could copy out the sonnet which was not reprinted in the
later edition. Here was Payne's translation of Villon which could
certainly go, for it would fetch at least fifteen shillings, and he
still possessed that tattered little French edition at two francs. The
collected Verlaine might as well go, and the Mallarme with the Rops
frontispiece: the six volumes would save others better loved. Besides,
he was sick of French poetry, wretched stuff most of it. Yet, here was
Heredia and the Pleiad and de Vigny, all of whom were beloved
exceptions. He must preserve too the Italians, (what a solace Leopardi
had been), though here were a couple of Infernos, one of which could
surely be sacrificed. He opened the first:
_Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona,_
_Mi prese del costui piacer si forte,_
_Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona._
The words were stained with the blue anemone to which he had likened
Pauline's eyes that first day of their love's declaration. He opened the
other:
_Ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse,_
_Quando leggemmo il disiato riso_
_Esser baciato da cotanto amante,_
_Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,_
_La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante:_
And in this volume the words were stained with a ragged robin which
unnoticed had come back to Plashers Mead in his pocket that May eve and
which when it fell out later he had pressed between those burning pages.
It was doubtless the worst kind of sentiment, but the two books must go
back upon their shelves, and never must they be lost, even if everything
but Shakespeare went.
Guy put his hand to his forehead and found that it was actually wet
with the agony of what on this January afternoon he had been compelling
himself to achieve. Each book before it was condemned he stroked fondly
and smelt like incense the fragrant mustiness of the pages, since nearly
every volume still commemorated either the pleasure of the moment when
he had bought it or some occasion of reading equally good to recall.
Then he covered the pile with a shroud of tattered stuff and wrote a
letter offering them to the only bookseller in Oxford with whom he had
never dealt. Two days later an assistant came over to inspect the booty.
"Well?" said Guy painfully, when the assistant put away his note-book
and shot his cuffs forward.
"Well, Mr. Hazlewood, we can offer you L35 for that little lot."
Guy stammered a repetition of the disappointing sum.
"That's right, sir. And we don't really want them."
"But surely L50...."
The assistant smiled in a superior way.
"We must _try_ and make a _little_ profit," he murmured.
"Oh, God, you'll do that. Why, I must have paid very nearly a hundred
for them, and they were practically all second hand when I bought them."
The assistant shrugged his shoulders.
"I'm sorry, sir, but in offering you L35, I'm offering too much as it
is. We don't really want them, you see. They're not really any good to
us."
"You're simply being damned charitable in fact," said Guy. "All right.
Give me a cheque and take them away when you like ... the sooner the
better."
He could have kicked that pile of books he had with such hardship
chosen; already they seemed to belong to this smart young assistant with
the satin tie; and he began to hate this agglomeration which had cost
him such agony and in the end had swindled him out of L15. The
assistant sat down and wrote a cheque for Guy, took his receipt and
bowed himself out, saying that he would send for the books in the course
of the week.
Through the rain Guy went for consolation to Pauline. He told her of his
sacrifice and she with all she could give of exquisite compassion
listened to his tale.
"But, Guy, my darling, why don't you borrow the money from Father? I am
sure he'd be delighted to lend it to you."
Guy shook his head.
"It's impossible. My debts must be paid by myself. I wouldn't even
borrow from Michael Fane. Dearest, don't look so sad. I would sell my
soul for you. Kiss me. Kiss me. I care for nothing but your kisses. You
must promise not to say a word of this to any one. Besides, it's no
sacrifice to do anything that brings our marriage nearer by an inch.
These debts are weighing me down. They stifle me. I am miserable too
about the poems. I haven't told you yet. It's really a joke in one way.
Yes, it's really funny. Worrall wrote to ask for a guinea before he read
them. Now, don't you think there is something very particularly humorous
in being charged a guinea by a reader? However, don't worry about that."
"How could he be so stupid?" she cried. "I hope you took them away from
him."
"Oh, no. I sent the guinea. They must be published. Pauline, I must have
done something soon or I shall go mad! Surely you see the funny side of
his offer? I think the notion of my expecting to get five shillings
apiece out of a lot of readers, and my only reader's getting a guinea
out of me is funny. I think it's quite humorous."
"Nothing is funny to me that hurts you," Pauline murmured. "And I'm
heartbroken about the books."
"Oh, when I'm rich I can buy plenty."
"But not the same books."
"That's mere sentiment," he laughed. "And the only sentiment I allow
myself is in connection with things that you have sanctified."
Then he told her about the flowers pressed in the two volumes of Dante,
both in that same fifth canto.
"And almost you know," Guy whispered, "I value most the ragged robin,
because it commemorates the day you really began to love me."
"Ah, no," she protested. "Guy, don't say that. I always loved you, but I
was shy before. I could not tell you. Sometimes, I wish I were shy now.
It would make our love so much less of a strain."
"Is it a strain?"
"Oh, sometimes," she cried nearly in tears, her light brown hair upon
his shoulder. "Oh, yes, yes, Guy. I can't bear to feel.... I'm
frightened sometimes, and when Mother has been cross with me, I've not
known what to do. Guy, you won't ever ask me to come out again at
night?"
"Not if it worries you afterward."
"Oh, yes, it has, it has. Guy, when shall we be married?"
"This year. It shall be this year," he vowed. "Let us believe that,
Pauline. You do believe that?"
"Oh, Guy, I adore you so wildly. It must be this year. My darling, my
darling, this year ... let it be this year."
Guy doled out very carefully the L35 he had accumulated by the sale of
his books. Lampard and Clary had to be content with L7 apiece. Five more
creditors received L4, or rather one of them only L3 19s., so that the
guinea left over could be put back into the current account for poetic
justice. There was for the present nothing more to do but await the
verdict of Worrall's reader, and in a fortnight Guy heard from the
publisher to say this had been favourable enough to make Mr. Worrall
wish to see him in order to discuss the matter of publication. Guy was
much excited and rushed across to the Rectory in a festivity of
hopefulness. He had wired to say he would be in London next day, and all
that evening the name of Worrall was lauded until round his unknown
personality shone the aureole of a wise and benevolent saint. There
seemed no limit to what so discerning a publisher might not do for Guy,
and he and Pauline became to themselves and to her family the hero and
heroine of such an adventure as never had been. In the course of the
evening Guy had an opportunity of talking to Margaret, and for the first
time for a long while he availed himself of it.
"Are you really going to talk to me then?" she asked in mock surprize.
"Margaret, I've been rather objectionable lately," said Guy, remembering
with an access of penitence that it must be almost exactly a year ago
that he and Margaret in that snowy weather had first talked about his
love for Pauline.
"Well, I have thought that you were forgetting me," said Margaret. "I
shall be sad if we are never going to be friends again."
"Oh, Margaret, we are friends now. I've been worried, and I thought that
you had been rather unkind to Pauline."
"I haven't really."
"Of course not. It was absolutely my fault," Guy admitted. "Now that
there seems a chance of our being married in less than ten years, I'm
going to give up this continual exasperation in which I live nowadays.
It's curious that my first impression of you all should have been as of
a Mozart symphony, so tranquil and gay and self-contained and perfectly
made did the Rectory seem. How clumsily I have plunged into that life,"
he sighed. "Really, Margaret, I feel sometimes like a wild beast that's
escaped from a menagerie and got into a concert of chamber-music. Look
here, you shall never have to grumble at me again. Now tell me, just to
show that you've forgiven my detestable irruption ... when Richard
comes back...."
Margaret gave him her hand for a moment, and looked down.
"And you're happy?" he asked eagerly.
"I'm sure I shall be."
"Oh, you will be, you will be."
Pauline asked him afterward what he had said to Margaret that could have
made her so particularly sweet, and when Guy whispered his discovery,
Pauline declared that the one thing necessary to make this evening
perfect had been just that knowledge.
"Guy, how clever of you to make her tell you what she will never tell
us. You don't know how much it has worried me to feel that you were
always angry with Margaret. How I've exaggerated everything! And what
friends you really are, you dears!"
"I've never been angry with her except on your account."
"But you won't ever be again, because I'm so foolish. I'm really a sort
of young Miss Verney."
They laughed at this idea of Pauline's, and soon it was time for Guy to
go. He thought luxuriously as he walked up the drive how large a measure
of good news he would bring back with him from London.
Guy was surprized to be kept waiting when he enquired for Mr. Worrall at
three o'clock on the following afternoon. All the way up in the train he
had thought so much about him and so kindlily that it seemed he must the
very moment he entered the dusty Georgian antechamber shake his
publisher warmly by the hand. He had pictured him really as looking out
for his coming, almost as vividly indeed in his prefiguration of the
scene as to behold Mr. Worrall's face pressed tight against a pane and
thence disappearing to greet him from the step.
It was a shock to be invited to wait, and he repeated his name to the
indifferent clerk a little insistently.
"Mr. Worrall will see you in a minute," the clerk repeated.
Guy looked at the few objects of interest in the outer office, at the
original drawings of wrappers and frontispieces, at the signed
photograph of a moderately distinguished poet of the 'nineties, at a
depressing accumulation of still unsold volumes. The window was grimy,
and the raindrops seemed from inside to smear it as tears smudge the
face of a dirty child. The clerk pored over a ledger, and from the grey
afternoon the cries of the porters in Covent Garden came drearily in. At
last a bell sounded, and the clerk invited him 'to step this way,'
lifting the counter and pointing up a narrow staircase beyond a glass
door. Guy went up and at last entered Mr. Worrall's private office.
The publisher was a short fat man with a bald and curiously conical
head, reminding Guy very much of a dentist in his manner. The poet sat
down and immediately caught in his first survey Mr. William Worrall's
caricature by Max Beerbohm. As a result of this observation Guy
throughout the interview could only perceive Mr. Worrall as the
caricaturist had perceived him, and like a shape in a dream his head all
the time grew more and more conical, until it seemed as if it would soon
bore a hole in the festooned ceiling.
"Well, Mr. Hazlewood," said the publisher referring as he spoke to Guy's
card with what Guy thought was a rather unnecessary implication of
oblivion. "Well, Mr. Hazlewood, my reader reports very favourably on
your poems, and there seems no reason why I should not publish them."
Guy bowed.
"No reason at all," Mr. Worrall continued. Then making a gothic arch
with his fingers and looking up at the ceiling, he added:
"Though, of course, there will be a risk. However, my reader's opinion
was certainly favourable."
And so it ought to be, thought Guy, for a guinea.
"And I don't think," Mr. Worrall went on, "that in the circumstances we
need be very much afraid. Have you any ideas about the price at which
your sheaf, your little harvest is to be offered to the public?"
"Oh, I should leave that to you," said Guy hastily.
"Precisely," said the publisher. "Yes, I think perhaps we might say five
shillings or ... of course it might be done in paper in the Covent
Garden Series of Modern English Poets. Yes, the reader speaks most
highly of your work. You know the Covent Garden series of modern poets?
In paper at half-a-crown net?"
"I should be very proud to appear in such a series," said Guy
pleasantly. The series as a matter of fact was one that could do him no
discredit.
"It's a charming idea, isn't it?" said Mr. Worrall, fondling one of the
set that lay on his desk. "Every five volumes has its own floral emblem.
We've done The Rose, The Lily, The Violet. Let me see, your poems are
mostly about London, aren't they?"
"No, there isn't one about London," Guy pointed out rather sharply.
"No, precisely, then of course they would not come in The London Pride
set which still has a vacancy. Perhaps The Cowslip? What does the reader
say? Um, yes, pastoral. Precisely! Well, then why not let us decide that
your poems shall be Number Three in The Cowslip set. Capital! I think
you'd be wise to choose the Covent Garden series in paper. The cost of
publication is really less in that series, and I have always chosen my
poets so carefully that I can be sure the Press will pay attention
to--er neophytes. That is a great advantage for a young writer, as you
no doubt realize without my telling you?"
"The cost?" echoed Guy in a puzzled voice.
"It will run you in for about L30--as a guarantee of course. The terms
I suggest are simply a written agreement that you will guarantee L30
toward the cost. Your royalty to be ten per cent on the first thousand,
twelve and a half on the next thousand and fifteen over two thousand. We
might fairly say that in the event of selling a thousand you would have
nothing to pay, but of course if you only sell twenty or thirty, you
will have to--er--pay for your piping."
"And when should I have to produce this L30?" Guy asked.
"Well, I might ask for a cheque to be placed to my account on the day of
publication; and then of course I should send in a written statement
twice a year with the usual three months' margin for settlement."
"So that supposing my book came out in March?" Guy enquired.
"By the following November I should hope to have the pleasure of sending
you back your L30 and a cheque on account of royalties," said the
publisher briskly.
"They don't seem very good terms somehow," said Guy.
Mr. Worrall shrugged his shoulders, and his conical head grew more
conical.
"You forget the advantage of being in the Covent Garden series of modern
poets. However, don't, pray do not, entrust your manuscript to my
pilotage unless you are perfectly satisfied. I have a good many poems to
consider, you know."
"May I write within a week or so and give you my decision?" Guy asked.
"Naturally."
"Well, good-bye."
"Good-bye, Mr. Hazlewood. Clever fellow, isn't he?"
Guy had given a farewell glance at Max Beerbohm's caricature.
"Very clever," the poet fervently agreed.
Guy left Mr. William Worrall's office and wandered dismally across
Covent Garden, wondering where on earth he was going to be able to raise
L30. He had intended to spend the night in town and look up some old
friends, but foreseeing now the inevitable question 'What are you
doing?' he felt he had not the heart to explain that at present he was
debating the possibility of spending L30 in order to produce a book of
poems. All the people whom he would have been glad to see had held such
high hopes of him at Oxford, had prophesied for his career such
prosperity; and now when after fifteen months he emerged from his
retirement it was but to pay a man to include him in the Covent Garden
series of modern poets. The rain came down faster, and a creeping fog
made more inhospitable the dusk of London. He thought of a quick train
somewhere about five o'clock, and in a sudden longing to be back in the
country and to sleep, however dark and frore the January night that
stretched between them, nearer to Pauline than here in this city of
drizzled fog, he took a cab to Paddington.
During the railway journey Guy contemplated various plans to raise the
money he wanted. He knew that his father at the cost of a long letter
would probably have given him the sum: but supposing a triumph lay
before him, all the sweets of it would have been robbed by paternal
help. Moreover if the book were paid for thus, there would be a
consequent suspicion of all favourable criticism: it would never seem a
genuine book to his father, and the reviews would give him the
impression of being the work of well-disposed amateurs or of personal
friends. There was the alternative of borrowing the money from Michael
Fane; and then as the train went clanging through the night Guy made up
his mind to be under an obligation to nobody and to sacrifice all the
rest of his books if necessary that this new book might be born.
When he was back at Plashers Mead, his resolution did not weaken:
coldly and unsentimentally he began to eviscerate the already mutilated
library. At the end of his task he had stacked upon the floor five
hundred volumes to be offered as a bargain to the bookseller who had
bought the others. All that was left indeed were the cheapest and most
ordinary editions of poets, one or two volumes of the greatest of all
like Rabelais and Cervantes, and the eternally read and most
companionable like Boswell and Gilbert White and Sir Thomas Browne. In
the determination that had seized him he rejoiced in his bare shelves,
so much exalted by the glories of abnegation that he began to despise
himself in his former attitude as a trifler among books and to say to
himself, as he looked at the volumes which had survived this heartless
clearance, that now he was set on the great fairway of literature
without any temptation to diverge up the narrow streams of personal
taste. The bookseller's assistant was not at all eager for the proferred
bargain, and in the end Guy could only manage to obtain the L30 and not,
as he had hoped, another L10 towards his debts. Nevertheless he locked
the cheque up in his desk with the satisfaction of a man who for the
first time in his life earns money, and later on went across to tell
Pauline the result of the visit to London.
There was a smell of frost in the air that afternoon, and the sharpness
of the weather consorted well with Guy's mood, taking away the heavy
sense of disappointment and giving him a sparkling hopefulness. He and
Pauline went for a walk on Wychford down, and in the wintry cheer he
would not allow her to be cast down at the loss of his books or to
resent Worrall's reception of the poems.
"Everything is all right," he assured her. "The more we have to deny
ourselves now, the greater will be my success when it comes. The law of
compensation never fails. You and I are Davidsbuendler marching against
the Philistines. So be brave, my Pauline."
"I will try to be brave," she promised. "But it's harder for me because
I'm doing nothing."
"Oh, nothing," said Guy. "Nothing except endow me with passion and
ambition, with consolation ... oh, nothing, you foolish one."
"Am I really all that to you?"
"Forward," he shouted, hurling his stick in front of him and dragging
Pauline at the heels of Bob across turf that was already beginning to
crackle in the frost. Pauline could not resist his confidence, and when
at last they had to turn round and leave a smoky orange sunset, they
came home glowing to the Rectory, both in the highest spirits. Guy wrote
to the publisher that night and announced his intention of accepting the
"offer," a word which he could not resist framing with inverted commas
in case the sarcastic shaft might pierce Mr. Worrall's hard and conical
head.
Sitting back in his chair and thinking over his poems, all sorts of
verbal improvements suggested themselves to Guy; and he added a note
asking for the manuscript to be sent back for a few corrections. He
looked at his work with new eyes when it arrived, and bent with all the
enthusiasm that fruition gave his pen upon reviewing each line for the
hundredth time. He had enjoyed few things so well in his life as going
to bed tired with the intense consideration of a rhyme and falling
asleep in the ambition to reconsider it early next morning.
About ten days had passed since Guy sold the second lot of books, and
the poems were now as good as he could make them until print should
reveal numbers of fresh faults. He hoped that Worrall would hurry on
with the printing in order to allow him plenty of time for an even more
severe scrutiny; and he wrote to suggest April as the month of
publication, so anxious was he to have one specially bound copy to offer
Pauline on her birthday.
On the very morning when the manuscript had been wrapped up and was
ready to be sent off a disturbing letter arrived from Lampard, his
favourite Oxford bookseller, to say that having made a purchase of books
two or three days ago he had been surprized to find among them a large
number of volumes with Mr. Hazlewood's name inscribed on the fly-leaves,
for which Mr. Hazlewood had not yet paid him. He ventured to think it
was only by an oversight that Mr. Hazlewood had not paid his long
outstanding account before disposing of the books and in short he was
anxious to know what Mr. Hazlewood intended to do about it. His bill,
L32 15s., was enclosed. Guy wrote back to say that it was indeed a most
unaccountable oversight on his part, but that he hoped in order to mark
his sympathy with Mr. Lampard's point of view to send him another cheque
very shortly, reminding the bookseller at the same time that he had
scarcely three weeks ago sent him L7 on account. Mr. Lampard in his
reply observed very plainly that Guy's letter was no reply at all and
threatened politely to make matters rather unpleasant if the bill were
not paid in full instantly. Guy tried once more a letter full of bland
promises, and received in response a letter from Mr. Lampard's
solicitor. The L30 intended for Mr. Worrall had to be sacrificed, and
even L2 15s. had to be taken from his current account. Savagely he tore
the paper from the manuscript, wrapped it up again and despatched it to
another publisher. The bad luck of the Lampard business made him only
the more resolute not to invoke aid from his father or anyone else. He
was a prey to a perverse determination to do everything himself; but it
was gloomy news that he had to tell Pauline that afternoon, and she
broke down and cried in her disappointment.
_February_
Pauline had been looking forward to the entrance of February with joyful
remembrance of what last February had brought her; and that the
anniversary of Guy's declaration of his love should be heralded by such
a discomfiture of their plans was a shock. The renewal of his
uncertainty about the fate of the poems destroyed the progress of a love
that seemed to have come back to its old calm course, and brought back
with all the added sharpness of absence the heartache and the
apprehension. Pauline sat in the nursery window-seat and pondered
dolefully the obstacles to happiness from which her mind, however hard
it tried, could not escape. Most insistently of these obstacles Guy's
debts haunted her, harassing and material responsibilities that in great
uncouth battalions swept endlessly past. Even in the middle of the night
she would wake gasping in an effort to escape from being stifled by
their vastness pressing down upon her brain. The small presents Guy had
given her burned through the darkness to reproach her: even the two
rings goaded her for the extravagance they represented. It was useless
for Guy to explain that his debts were a trifle, because the statement
of a sum so large as L200 appalled her as much as if he had said L2000.
She longed for a confidante whose sympathy she could exact for the
incubus that possessed her lover; and fancying a disloyalty to him if
she discussed his money affairs with her family, she could think of no
one but Miss Verney to whom the burdensome secret might be entrusted.
"William had the same difficulty," sighed the old maid. "Really it
seems as if money _is_ the root of all evil. L200, you say? Oh, dear,
how uncomfortable he must feel, poor young man."
"If only I could make some money, dear Miss Verney. But how could I?"
"I used to ask myself that very question," said the old maid. "I used to
ask myself just that very identical question. But there was never any
satisfactory answer."
"It seems so dreadful that he should have sold nearly all his books and
still have debts," moaned Pauline. "It seems so cruel. Ought I to give
him up?"
"Give him up," repeated Miss Verney, her cheeks becoming dead white at
the question. "Oh, my dear, I don't think it could be right for you to
give him up on account of debts. Patience seems to me the only remedy
for your troubles, patience and constancy."
"No, you've misunderstood me," cried Pauline. "I'm afraid that I hamper
him, that I spoil his work. If I gave him up, he would go away from
Wychford and be free. Besides perhaps then his father would pay his
debts. Miss Verney, Mr. Hazlewood didn't like me, and I think Guy has
quarrelled with him over me. Oh, I'm the most miserable girl in England,
and such a little time ago I was the happiest."
"Money," said Miss Verney slowly and seeming to address her cats rather
than Pauline. "The root of all evil! Yes, yes, it is. It's the root of
all evil."
Pauline was a little heartened by Miss Verney's readiness to consider so
seriously the monster that oppressed her thoughts; yet it was
disquieting to regard the old maid, whose life had been ruined by money
and who all alone with cats stayed here in this small house at the top
of Wychford town, the very image of unhappy love. It was disquieting to
hear her reflections on the calamity of gold uttered like this to cats,
and in a sudden dread of the future Pauline beheld herself talking in
the same way a long time hence. She shivered and bade Miss Verney
farewell; and now to all the other woes that stood behind her in the
shadows was added the vision of herself mumbling to cats in February
dusks of the dim years ahead.
The idea of herself as the figure of an unhappy tale of love grew
continuously more definite, and once she spoke of her dread to Guy, who
was very angry.
"How can you encourage such morbid notions?" he protested. "You really
must cultivate the power to resist them. People go mad by indulging
their depression as you're doing."
"Perhaps I shall go mad," she whispered.
"Oh, for God's sake don't talk like that," he ejaculated in angry alarm;
and Pauline, realizing how she had frightened him was sorry and went to
the other extreme of high spirits.
"I thought we had agreed to wait ten years or twenty years, if
necessary," said Guy. "And now after one year you are finding the strain
too much. Why won't you have confidence in me? It's unfortunate about
Worrall, I admit. But there are plenty of other publishers."
He mentioned names one after another, but to Pauline they were the names
of stone idols that stared unresponsively at her lover's poems.
"If we had only done what Mother wanted and not seen so much of each
other," she lamented.
Guy's disposal of her vain fears was without effect, for his eloquence
could not contend with these deepening regrets; and as fast as he threw
down the material obstacles to their happiness Pauline saw them
maddeningly rise again in the path before them, visible shapes of ill
omen, grotesquely irrepressible. Guy used to asseverate that when Spring
was really come she would lose all these morbid fancies, and with his
perpetual ascription to wintry gloom of all the presentiments of woe
that flocked round their intercourse, Pauline did begin to fancy that,
when the trees were green, he and she would rejoice as of old in their
love. The knowledge that Spring could not linger always was the only
consoling certainty she now possessed, and from the window-seat she
greeted with a passionate welcome each dusky azure minute that on these
lengthening eves was robbed from night. The blackbirds sang to her now
more personally, these sombre-suited heralds who had never before seemed
to proclaim so audaciously masterful Spring; and when the young moon
cowered among the ragged clouds of a rainy golden sky and the last bird
slipped like a shadow into the rhododendrons, such airs and whispers of
April would steal through the open window. Every day too there were
flowery tokens of hope and in sheltered corners of the garden the
primroses came out one by one, an imperceptible assemblage like the
birth of stars in the luminous green West. This grey-eyed virginal month
had now such memories of the last progress it made through her life that
Pauline could not help imputing to the season a sentimental
participation in her life: there was a poignancy in the reopening of
those blue Greek anemones which Guy, a year ago, had likened to her
eyes, a poignancy that might have been present if the flowers had been
consciously reminding her of vanished delights. Yet it was unreasonable
to encourage such an emotion, or did she indeed, as sometimes was half
whispered to her inmost soul, regret the slightest bit everything since
that day of the anemones?
It was one evening toward the end of the month that Monica joined her
and walked up and down the edge of the lawn where in the grass a drift
of purple crocuses had lately been flaming for her solitary adoration.
"In a way," said Pauline, "they are my favourite flowers of all. I don't
think there is any thrill quite like the first crocus bud. It seems to
me that as far as I can look back, oh, Monica, ever so far, that always
the moment I've seen my crocuses budding winter seems to fly away."
"I remember your looking for them when you were tiny," Monica agreed. "I
can see you now kneeling down, and the mud on your knees, and your eyes
screwed up when you told me about your discovery."
They talked for a while of childish days, each capping the other's
evocation of those hours that now in retrospect appeared like the gay
pictures of an old book long ago lost, and found again on an idle
afternoon. They talked too of Margaret and whether she would marry
Richard; and presently, without the obvious transition that would have
made her silent, Pauline found that they were discussing Guy and
herself.
"I notice he doesn't come to church now so much as he did," said Monica.
Pauline was startled by an abrupt statement of something which among all
the other worries she had never defined to herself, but which now that
Monica revealed its shape she knew had occupied a dark corner at the
back of her mind more threatening than any of the rest. Of course she
began at once to make excuses for Guy, but her sister, who brought to
religion the same scrupulous temperament she gave to her music, would
not admit their validity.
"Don't you ever ask him why he hasn't been?" she persisted.
"Oh, of course not. Why, I couldn't, Monica. I should never feel ... oh,
no, Monica, it would really be impossible for me to talk to Guy about
his faith."
"His faith seems rather to have frozen lately," said Monica.
"He's been upset and disappointed."
"All the more reason for going to church," Monica argued.
"Yes, for you, darling, or for me; but Guy may be different."
"There's no room for moods in one's religious duties. The artistic
temperament is not provided for."
That serene and nun-like conviction of tone made Pauline feel a little
rebellious, and yet in its corroboration of her own uneasiness she could
not laugh it aside.
"Well, even if there's no excuse for him and even supposing it made me
dreadfully anxious," she affirmed, "I still wouldn't say a word to him."
"Does he know you go to Confession?"
Pauline blushed. Monica was like a Roman Catholic in the matter-of-fact
way in which she alluded to something that for Pauline pierced such
sanctities as could scarcely even be mentioned by herself to her own
soul.
"Monica, you don't really think that I ought to speak of that," she
stammered. Not even to her sister could she bring herself to utter the
sacramental word.
"I certainly think you should," said Monica. "When you and Guy are
married it would be terrible if your duties were to be the cause of a
disagreement. Why, he might even persuade you to give up going to
Confession."
"Darling Monica," said Pauline nervously, "I'd rather you didn't talk
about this any more. You see, you're so much better than I and you've
thought so much more deeply than I have about religion. I don't think I
shall ever be able to make my faith so narrow a ... so strict a rule as
yours is. No, please, Monica, don't let us talk about this subject any
more."
"I only mentioned it because I'm afraid that with your beautiful nature
you will be too merciful to that Guy of yours."
"Oh, and I'd really rather you didn't say my nature was beautiful,"
Pauline protested. "Truthfully, Monica, darling, it's a very ugly nature
indeed, and I'm afraid it's getting uglier every day."
Her sister's cloistral smile flickered upon the scene like the wan
February sunlight.
"I do hope Guy really appreciates you," was what she said.
"See how the sparrows have pulled the crocuses into ribbons," Pauline
exclaimed. And so that Monica could not talk to her any more, she hailed
her father, who was wandering along toward the house on the other side
of the lawn. When he sauntered across to them she pointed out the
destructiveness of the sparrows.
"Ah, well, my dear," he chuckled, "most florists are worse."
"Perhaps _I'm_ a florist," Monica whispered, "and Guy may be only a
mischievous sparrow."
Pauline smiled at Monica and took her arm gratefully and affectionately.
"We shall have all the daffs gone before we know where we are," said the
Rector. "Maximus is out under the oaks. And King Alfred is just going to
turn down his buds."
"Dear King Alfred," said Pauline. "How glad I shall be to say
good-morning to him again."
Yes, all the daffodils would soon be here and then gone; and beyond this
austere afternoon already she could fancy a smell of March winds.
After Monica's question it was no longer possible for Pauline when she
was alone to avoid facing the problem of Guy's attitude toward religion.
The repression of her anxiety on this point had only increased the force
of it when it was set free like this to compete with and in fact
overshadow all other cares. Looking back to her earliest thoughts of the
world as it would one day affect herself, she remembered how, if she had
ever imagined someone in love with her, she had always created a figure
whose faith would be an eternal and joyful contemplation. She had never
invented for herself a marriage with someone merely good-looking or
rich or endowed with any of the romantic attributes that young girls
were supposed to award their ideals, as her cousins would say, of men.
When Guy entered her life, the only gift he brought her for which she
was at all prepared was the conviction of his faith. This indeed was his
spiritual and mental reality for her: the rest of him was a figment, a
dream that might pass suddenly away. The visit of his father had given
her a more clearly defined assurance of his existence on earth, but his
faith had been the heart of the immortal substance of her love for Guy.
The endlessness of their union was always present in her thoughts, the
ultimate consolation of whatever delays they might be called upon to
endure. Very often, even at the beginning of the engagement, Guy had
frightened her sometimes by his indifference to immortality, sometimes
by his harping upon the swift flight of youth, sometimes by his manifest
indulgence of her creed. All these doubts, however, of his sympathy were
allayed by his apparently deliberate pleasure in worship. She was angry
with herself then for her mistrust of him, and her contentment had been
perfect when in church he knelt beside her on that birthday of his, that
day of their avowed betrothal, and on all those other occasions when he
had given an outward proof of his faith. Now as she looked back on his
absence from church lately, she could not but wonder whether all his
attendance had not been a kind of fair-weather spoiling of her that
could not withstand the least stress of worldly circumstance. She began
to torment herself over every light remark that might have been a sneer
and to look forward dreadfully to Guy's abrupt declaration of a profound
disbelief in everything she held most sacred. His cleverness, as he
hated her to call it, intervened and seemed to wrench them asunder; and
the more she pondered his behaviour, the more she became convinced that
all the time Guy's religion had merely been Guy's kindness. This
discovery was not to make her love him less; but it did throw upon her
the responsibility of the knowledge that he had nothing within himself
to fortify his soul, should mishap destroy his worldly confidence.
For a long time Pauline lay awake in the darkness, fretting herself on
account of Guy's resourcelessness of spirit, and to her imagination
concentrated on this regard of him every hour seemed to make his
solitude more terrible. Of her own religion she did not think, and
Monica's anxiety about their agreement after marriage was without the
least hint of danger. The possibility of anyone's, even Guy's
influencing her own faith was inconceivable; nor was she at all occupied
with her own disappointment at not finding Guy constant to her belief in
him. Pauline's one grief was for him, that now when things were going
badly he should be without spiritual hope. Suddenly her warm bed seemed
to her wrong and luxurious in comparison with the chill darkness she
imagined about Guy's soul at this moment. Impulsively she threw back the
sheets and knelt down beside the bed to pray for his peace. So vividly
was she conscious of the need for prayer that she was carried to
undreamed of heights of supplication, to strange summits whereon it
seemed that if she could not pray she would never know how to pray
again. Ordinarily her devotions had been but a beautiful and simple end
or beginning of the day: they were associated with the early warmth of
the sunlight or with the gentle flutters of roosting birds: they were
the comforting and tangible pledges of a childhood not yet utterly
departed. Now the fires and ecstasies of a more searching faith had
seized Pauline. No longer did there pass before her eyes a procession of
gay-habited saints, glad celestial creatures that smiled down upon her
from a paradise not much farther away than the Rectory garden: no longer
did she find herself surrounded by the well-loved figures who when death
took her to them would hold out their arms in actual welcome and whom
she would recognize one by one. To-night these visions were
uncapturable, and beyond the darkness they had forsaken stretched a
terrifying void and beyond the void was nothing but light that seemed to
have the power of thinking: 'I am Truth!' A speck in that void she saw
Guy spinning away from her, and it seemed that unless she prayed he
would be spun irremediably out of her consciousness. It seemed that the
fierceness of her prayer was like the fierceness of a flame that was
granted the power to sustain him, for when sometimes the tongues of fire
languished Guy would sink so far that only by summoning fresh force from
the light beyond could she bring him back. Gradually, however, her power
was waning and with whatever desperate force she prayed he could never
be brought back to the point from which he had last slipped. He was
spinning away into a horror of blackness....
"O Holy Ghost, save him," she cried. Then Pauline fainted, and wondered
to find herself lying upon the cold floor when she woke as from a dream.
Yet it was not like the gasping rescue of oneself from a nightmare, for
she lay awake a long while afterward in peace, and she slept as if upon
a victory and very early in the morning went to church.
The days when the thrushes sang mattins were come and all the way she
heard freshets of holy song pouring down through the air. She and her
family always knelt apart from one another, and this morning Pauline
chose a place hidden from the others, a place where she could lean her
cheek against a pillar and be soothed by the cool touch of the stone
like the assurance of unfathomable and maternal love. Now to her calm
spirit returned the vision of those happy heavenly creatures, the
bright-suited and intimate companions of her childhood. They welcomed
her this morning and thronged about her downcast eyes with many angels
too that like Tobit's angel walked by her side. Only her father's
mellow voice spoke from the chancel of earth, and even he in his violet
chasuble took his place among the saints, and when she went up to the
altar Heaven was once again very near to her.
In the morning coolness it was almost impossible to believe that last
night she had fainted, and she began to believe the whole experience had
been a dream's agony. However, whether it were or not, she had made up
her mind to ask Guy a direct question this afternoon. If as she feared,
he was feeling hostile to religion she would accept the warning of the
night and give all her determination to prayer for his faith to return.
When they were together, it was for a long time impossible to begin the
subject, and it was not until Guy asked what was making her so
abstracted that Pauline could ask why he never came to church any more.
In the pause before he answered, she suffered anew the torment of that
struggle in the darkness.
"Does it worry you when I don't come?" he asked.
"Well, yes, it does rather."
"Then of course I will come," said Guy at once.
Now this was exactly the reason for which least of all she wanted him to
come, and a trace of her mortification may have been visible, because he
asked immediately if that did not please her.
"Guy, don't you want to come to church? You used to come happily, didn't
you?"
"I think I came chiefly to be near you," he said.
"That does make me so unhappy. I'd almost rather you came out of
politeness to Father."
"Well, that was another reason," Guy admitted.
"And you never came because you wanted to?" she asked miserably.
"Of course I wanted to."
"But because you believed?"
"In what?"
"Oh, Guy, don't be so cruel. Don't you believe in anything?"
"I believe in you," he said. "Pauline, I believe in you so passionately
that when I am with you I believe in what you believe."
"Then you haven't any faith?"
"I want to have it," said Guy. "If God won't condescend to give it to
me...." he broke off with a shrug.
"But religion is either true, or it isn't true, and if it isn't true,
why do you encourage me in lies?" she demanded with desperate entreaty.
"I'm ready to believe," he said.
"How can you expect to have faith if your reason for it is merely to sit
next me in church?" she asked bitterly.
"Now, I think it's you who are being cruel," said Guy.
"I don't care. I don't care if I am cruel. You'll break my heart."
"Good God," Guy exclaimed. "Haven't I enough to torment me without
religion appearing upon the scene? If you want me to hate it ... no,
Pauline, I'm sorry ... you mustn't think that I don't long to have your
faith. If I only could ... oh, Pauline, Pauline."
She yielded to his consolation, and when he told her of the poems sent
back almost by return of post from the second publisher she must open
wide her compassionate arms. Nevertheless he had somehow maltreated
their love; and Pauline was aware of a wild effort to prepare for sorrow
whether near at hand or still far off she did not know, but she seemed
to hear it like a wind rising at sunset.