It was a blowy afternoon early in October, and Pauline was sitting by
the window of what at Wychford Rectory was still called the nursery. The
persistence of the old name might almost be taken as symbolic of the way
in which time had glided by that house unrecognized, for here were
Monica, Margaret, and Pauline grown up before any one had thought of
changing its name even to school-room. And with the old name it had
preserved the character childhood had lent it. There was not a chair
that did not appear now like the veteran survivor of childish wars and
misappropriations, nor any table nor cupboard that did not testify to an
affectionate ill-treatment prolonged over many years. On the walls the
paper which had once been vivid in its expression of primitive gaiety
was now faded; but the pattern of berries, birds, and daisies still
displayed that eternally unexplored tangle as freshly as once it was
displayed for childish fancies of adventure. Pauline had always loved
the window-seat, and from here she had always seen before any one else
at the Rectory the first flash of Spring's azure eyes, the first graying
of Winter's locks. So now on this afternoon she could see the bullying
southwest wind thunderous against whatever laggards of Summer still
tried to shelter themselves in the Rectory garden. Occasionally a few
raindrops seemed to effect a frantic escape from the fierce assault and
cling desperately to the window-panes, but since nobody could call it a
really wet day Pauline had been protesting all the afternoon against
her sisters' unwillingness to go out. Staying indoors was such a
surrender to the season.
"We ought to practise that Mendelssohn trio," Monica argued.
"I hate Mendelssohn," Pauline retorted.
"Well, I shall practise the piano part."
"Oh, Monica, it will sound so dreadfully empty," cried Pauline. "Won't
it, Margaret?"
"I'm reading _Mansfield Park_. Don't talk," Margaret murmured. "If I
could write like Jane Austen," she went on, dreamily, "I should be the
happiest person in the world."
"Oh, but you are the happiest person already," said Pauline. "At least
you ought to be, if you'd only...."
"You know I hate you to talk about him," Margaret interrupted.
Pauline was silent. It was always a little alarming when Margaret was
angry. With Monica one took for granted the disapproval of a fastidious
nature, and it was fun to tease her; but Margaret with her sudden
alternations of hardness and sympathy, of being great fun and
frightfully intolerant, it was always wiser to propitiate. So Pauline
stayed in the window-seat, pondering mournfully the lawn mottled with
leaves, and the lily-pond that was being seamed and crinkled by every
gust of the wind that skated across the surface. The very high gray wall
against which the Japanese quinces spread their peacock-tails of foliage
was shutting her out from the world to-day, and Pauline wished it were
Summer again so that she could hurry through the little door in the wall
and across the paddock to the banks of the Greenbush. In the Rectory
punt she would not have had to bother with sisters who would not come
out for a walk when they were invited.
The tall trees on either side of the lawn roared in the wind and
showered more leaves upon the angry air. What a long time it was to
Summer, and for no reason that she could have given herself Pauline
began to think about the man who had taken Plashers Mead. Of course it
was obvious he would fall in love either with Monica or with Margaret,
and really it must be managed somehow that he should choose Monica.
Everybody fell in love with Margaret, which was so hard on poor Richard
out in India, who was much the nicest person in the world, and whom
Margaret must never give up. Pauline looked at her sister and felt
afraid the new tenant of Plashers Mead would fall in love with her, for
Margaret was so very adorable with her slim hands and her somber hair.
"Really almost more like a lily than a girl," thought Pauline. Somehow
the comparison reassured her, since it was impossible to think of any
one's rushing to gather a lily without a great deal of hesitation.
"I wish poor Richard would write and tell her she is like a lily,
instead of always writing such a lot about the bridge he is building,
though I expect it's a very wonderful bridge."
After all, Monica with her glinting evanescence was just as beautiful as
Margaret, and even more mysterious; and if she only would not be so
frightening to young men, who would not fall in love with her! Pauline
wondered vaguely if she could not persuade Margaret to go away for a
month, so that the new tenant of Plashers Mead might have had time to
fall irremediably in love with Monica before she came back. Richard
would certainly be dreadfully worried out in India when he heard of a
young man at Plashers Mead, and certainly rather ... yes, certainly in
church on Sunday he had appeared rather charming. It was only last
Spring that poor Richard had wished he could be living in Plashers Mead
himself, and they had had several long discussions which never shed any
light upon the problem of how such an ambition would be gratified.
"I expect Monica will be like ice, and Margaret will seem so much easier
to talk to, and if I dared to suggest that Monica should unbend a
little she would freeze me as well. Oh, it's all very difficult," sighed
Pauline to herself, "and perhaps I'd better not try to influence things.
Only, if he does seem to like Margaret much better than Monica, I shall
have to bring poor Richard into the conversation, which always makes
Margaret cross for days."
As she came to this resolution Pauline looked half apprehensively at her
sister reading in the tumble-down arm-chair by the fire. How angry
Margaret would be if she guessed what was being plotted, and Pauline
actually jumped when she suddenly declared that _Mansfield Park_ was
almost the best book Jane Austen ever wrote.
"Is it, darling Margaret?" said Pauline, with a disarming willingness to
be told again that it certainly was.
"Or perhaps _Emma_," Margaret murmured, and Pauline hid herself behind
the curtains. How droll Father had been about the "new young creature"
at Plashers Mead! It had been so difficult to persuade him to interrupt
one precious afternoon of planting bulbs to do his duty either as a
neighbor or as Rector of the parish. And when he came back all he would
say of the visit was:
"Very pleasant, my dears. Oh yes, he showed me everything, and he really
has a most remarkable collection of dish-covers--quite remarkable. But I
ought not to have deserted those irises that Garstin sent me from the
Taurus. Now perhaps we shall manage that obstinate little plum-colored
brute which likes the outskirts of a pine forest, so they tell me."
Just as Pauline was laughing to herself at the memory of her father's
visit, the Rector himself appeared on the lawn. He was in his
shirt-sleeves; his knees were muddy with kneeling; and Birdwood, the
gardener, all blown about by the wind, was close behind him, carrying an
armful of roots.
Pauline threw up the window with a crash and called out:
"Father, Father, what a darling you look, and your hair will be swept
right away, if you aren't careful."
The Rector waved his trowel remotely, and Pauline blew him kisses until
she was made aware of protests in the room behind her.
"Really," exclaimed Monica. "You are so noisy. You're almost vulgar."
"Oh no, Monica," cried Pauline, dancing round the room. "Not vulgar. Not
a horrid little vulgar person!"
"And what a noise you do make," Margaret joined in. "Please, Pauline,
shut the window."
At this moment Mrs. Grey opened the door and loosed a whirlwind of
papers upon the nursery.
"Who's vulgar? Who's vulgar?" asked Mrs. Grey, laughing absurdly. "Why,
what a tremendous draught!"
"Mother, shut the door--the door," expostulated Margaret and Monica,
simultaneously. "And do tell Pauline to control herself sometimes."
"Pauline, control yourself," said Mrs. Grey.
When the papers were settling down, Janet, the maid, came in to say
there was a gentleman in the drawing-room, and in the confusion of the
new whirlwind her entrance raised Janet was gone before any one knew who
the gentleman was.
"Ugh!" Margaret grumbled. "I never can be allowed to read in peace."
"I was practising the Mendelssohn trio, Mother," said Monica,
reproachfully.
"Let us all practise. Let us all practise," Mrs. Grey proposed, beaming
enthusiastically upon her daughters. "That would be charming."
"Father is so sweet," said Pauline. "He's simply covered with mud."
"Has he got his kneeler?" asked Mrs. Grey.
Pauline rushed to the window again.
"Mother says 'have you got your kneeler?'"
The Rector paused vaguely, and Birdwood tried to indicate by kicking
himself that he had the kneeler.
"Ah, thoughtful Birdwood," said Mrs. Grey in a satisfied voice.
"And now do you think we might have the window shut?" asked Margaret,
resignedly.
Monica was quite deliberately thumping at the piano part she was
practising. Mrs. Grey sat down and began to tell a long story in which
three poor people of Wychford got curiously blended somehow into one, so
that Pauline, who was the only daughter that ever listened, became very
sympathetic over a fourth poor person who had nothing to do with the
tale.
"And surely Janet came in to say something about the drawing-room," said
Mrs. Grey, as she finished.
"She said a gentleman," Pauline declared.
"Oh, how vague you all are!" exclaimed Margaret, jumping up.
"Well, Margaret, you were here," Pauline said. "And so was Monica."
"But I was practising," said Monica, primly. "And I didn't hear a word
Janet said."
There was always this preliminary confusion at the Rectory when a
stranger was announced, and it always ended in the same way by Mrs. Grey
and Monica going down first, by Pauline rushing after them and banging
the door as they were greeting the visitor, and by Margaret strolling in
when the stage of comparative ease had been attained. So it fell out on
this occasion, for Monica's skirt was just disappearing round the
drawing-room door when Pauline, horrified at the idea of having to come
in by herself, cleared the last three stairs of the billowy flight with
a leap and sent Monica spinning forward as the door propelled her into
the room.
"Monica, I am so sorry."
"Pauline! Pauline!" said Mrs. Grey, reprovingly. "So like an avalanche
always."
Guy, who had by now been waiting nearly a quarter of an hour, came
forward a little shyly.
"How d'ye do, how d'ye do," said Mrs. Grey, quickly and nervously.
"We're so delighted to see you. So good of you ... charming really.
Pauline is always impetuous. You've come to study farming at Wychford,
haven't you? Most interesting. Don't tug at me, Pauline. Monica, do ring
for tea. Are you fond of music?"
Pauline withdrew from the conversation after the whispered attempt to
correct her mother about Mr. Hazlewood's having taken Plashers Mead in
order to be a farmer. She wanted to contemplate the visitor without
being made to involve herself in the confusions of politeness. "Was he
dangerous to Richard?" she asked herself, and alas, she had to tell
herself that indeed it seemed probable he might be. Of course he was
inevitably on the way to falling in love with Margaret, and as she
looked at him with his clear-cut, pale face, his tumbled hair and large
brown eyes which changed what seemed at first a slightly cynical
personality to one that was almost a little wistful, Pauline began to
speculate if Margaret might not herself be rather attracted to him. This
was an unforeseen complication, for Margaret so far had only accepted
homage. Pauline definitely began to be jealous for Richard, whose homage
had been the most prodigal of any; and as Guy drawled on about his first
adventure of housekeeping she told herself he was affected. The
impression, too, of listening to some one more than usually
self-possessed and cynical revived in her mind; and those maliciously
drooping lids were obliterating the effect of the brown eyes. Sitting by
herself in the oriel window, Pauline was nearly sure she did not like
him. He had no business to be at the Rectory when Richard was building a
bridge out in India; and now here was Margaret strolling graciously in,
and almost at once obviously knowing so well how to get on with this
idler. Oh, positively she disliked him. So cold and so cruel was that
mouth, and so vain he was, as he sat there bending forward over
hand-clasped, long, stupid, crossed legs. What right had he to laugh
with Margaret about their father's visit? This stranger had assuredly
never appreciated him. He was come here to spoil the happiness of
Wychford, to destroy the immemorial perfection of life at the Rectory.
And why would he keep looking up at herself? Margaret could be pleasant
to anybody, but this intruder would soon find that she herself was loyal
to the absent. Pauline wished that, when he met them all on that night
of the moon, she had been so horridly rude as to make him avoid the
family for ever. How could Margaret sit there talking so unconcernedly,
when Richard might be dying of sunstroke at this very moment? Margaret
was heartless, and this stranger with his drawl and his undergraduate
affectation would encourage her to sneer at everything.
"What's the matter, Pauline dearest?" her mother turned round to ask.
"Nothing," answered Pauline, biting her lips to keep back surely the
most unreasonable tears she had ever felt were springing.
"You're not cross with me for calling you a landslide?" persisted Mrs.
Grey, smiling at her from the midst of a glory momentarily shed by a
stormy ray of sunshine.
"Oh, Mother," said Pauline, now fairly in the midway between laughter
and tears. "It was an avalanche you called me."
"Why do you always sit near a window?" asked Monica.
"She always rushes into a corner," said Margaret.
Pauline jumped up from her chair and would have run out of the room
forthwith; but in passing the first table she knocked from it a silver
bowl of potpourri and scattered the contents over the carpet. Down she
knelt to hide her confusion and repair the damage, and at the same
moment Guy plunged down beside her to help. She caught his eyes so
tenderly humorous that she too laughed.
"I think it must be my fault," he said. "Don't you remember how, last
time we met, your sister upset the mushrooms?"
Pauline knew she was blushing, and when the rose-leaves were all
gathered up, tea came in. Her attention was now entirely occupied by
preventing her mother from doing the most ridiculous things with cakes
and sugar and milk, and when tea was over Guy got up to go.
There was a brief discussion after his departure, in which Margaret was
so critical of his dress and of his absurdities that Pauline was
reassured, and presently, indeed, found herself taking their visitor's
part against her sisters.
"Quite right, quite right, Pauline," said Mrs. Grey. "He's charming ...
charming ... charming! Margaret and Monica so critical. Always so
critical."
Presently the family hurried out into the drive to protest against the
Rector's planting any more bulbs, to tell him how unkind he had been not
to come up to tea, and to warn him that the bell would sound for
Evensong in two minutes. He was dragged out of the shrubbery where he
had been superintending a clearance of aucubas, preparatory to planting
a drift of new and very deep yellow primroses.
"Really, my dears, I have never seen _Primula vulgaris_ so fine in
texture or color. My friend Gilmour has spent ten years working up the
stock. As large as florins."
So he boasted of new wonders next Spring in the Rectory garden, while
his wife and daughters brushed him and dusted him and helped to button
up his cassock.
"Doesn't Father look a darling?" demanded Pauline, as they watched the
tall, handsome dreamer striding along the drive towards the sound of the
bell, that was clanging loud and soft in its battle with the wind.
"Oh, Pauline, run after him," said Mrs. Grey, "and remind him it's the
Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity. He started wrong last Sunday, and
to-day's Wednesday, and it so offends some of the congregation."
Pauline overtook her father in the church porch, and he promised he
would be careful to read the right collect. She had not stayed to get a
hat, and therefore must wait for him outside.
"Very well, my dear child; I sha'n't be long. Do go and see if those
sternbergias I planted against the south porch are in flower. Dear me,
they should be, you know, after this not altogether intolerably overcast
summer. Sun, though, sun! they want sun, poor dears!"
"But, Father, I can't remember what sternbergias look like."
"Oh yes, you can," said the Rector. "_Sternbergia lutea._ Amaryllidaceae.
A perfectly ordinary creature." And he vanished in the gloom of the
priest's door.
As Pauline came round the corner the wind was full in her face, and
under the rose-edged wrack of driving clouds the churchyard looked
desolate and savage. There were no flowers to be seen but beaten-down
Michaelmas daisies and bedabbled phlox. The bell had stopped immediately
when the Rector arrived; and the wind seemed now much louder as it went
howling round the great church or rasping through the yews and junipers.
The churchyard was bounded on the northerly side by the mill-stream,
along which ran a wide path between a double row of willows now hissing
and whistling as they were whipped by the blasts. Pauline walked slowly
down this unquiet ambulatory, gazing curiously over to the other bank of
the stream, where the orchard of Plashers Mead was strewn with red
apples. There in the corner by the house that was just visible stood the
owner, playing with a dog, a bobtail, too, which was the kind Pauline
liked best. She wanted very much to wave, but, of course, it was
impossible for the Rector's daughter to do anything like that in the
churchyard. Yet if he did chance to walk in her direction, she would,
whatever happened, shout to him across the stream to bring the dog next
time he came to the Rectory. Pauline walked four times up and down the
path, but first the dog disappeared and then the owner followed him, and
presently Pauline discovered that the path beside the abandoned stream
was very dreary. The crooked tombstones stood up starkly; the wind
sighed across the green graves of the unknown; the fiery roses were
fallen from the clouds. Pauline turned away from the path and went to
take shelter behind the east end of the church. From here, as she
fronted the invading night, she could see the gray wall of the Rectory
garden and the paddock sloping down to the river. How sad it was to
think of the months that must pass before that small meadow would be
speckled with fritillaries or with irises blow white and purple. The
wind shrieked with a sudden gust that seemed more violent, because where
she was standing not a blade of grass twitched. Pauline looked up to
reassure herself that the steeple was not toppling from the tower; as
she did so a gargoyle grinned down at her. The grotesque was frightening
in the dusk, and she hurried round to the priest's door. The Rector came
out as she reached it, and accepted vaguely the information that there
were no flowers to be seen but Michaelmas daisies and phlox.
"Ah, I told Birdwood to confiscate those abominable dahlias which
wretched Mrs. Godbold will plant every year. I gave her some of that new
saxifrage I raised. What more does the woman want?"
Pauline hung upon his arm while they walked back to the Rectory through
the darkling plantation.
"Isn't it a perfect place?" she murmured, hugging his arm closer when
they came to the end of the mossy path and saw the twinkling of the
drawing-room's oriel on the narrow south side, and the eleven steep
gables that cleft the now scarcely luminous sky, one after another all
the length of the house.
"I doubt if anything but this confounded cotoneaster would do well
against this wall," replied the Rector.
He never failed to make this observation when he reached his front door;
and his family knew that one day the cotoneaster would be torn down for
a succession of camellias to struggle with the east winds of unkind
Oxfordshire. In the hall Mrs. Grey and Margaret were bending over a
table.
"Guy has left his card," said Margaret.
"Is that the man who came to see me about the rats?" asked the Rector.
"No, no, Francis," said Mrs. Grey. "Guy is the young man at Plashers
Mead."
"Isn't Francis sweet?" cried Pauline, reaching up to kiss him.
"Hush, Pauline. Pauline, you must not call your father Francis in the
hall," said Mrs. Grey.
"How touching of Guy to leave a card," Pauline murmured, looking at the
oblong of pasteboard shimmering in the gloom.
"Now we've just time to practise the Mendelssohn trio before dinner,"
declared Mrs. Grey. "And that will make you warm."
The Rector wandered off to his library. Margaret and Pauline went with
their mother up shadowy staircases and through shadowy corridors to the
great music-room that ran half the length of the roof. Monica was
already seated at the piano, all white and golden herself in the
candle-light. Languidly Margaret unpacked her violoncello; Pauline tuned
her violin. Soon the house was full of music, and the wind in the night
was scarcely audible.