Plashers Mead and the Rectory were not the only romantic houses in
Wychford. Indeed, the little town as a whole had preserved by reason of
its remoteness from railways and important highroads the character given
to it during the many years of prosperity which lasted until the reign
of Charles the First. From that time it had slowly declined; and now
with a stagnation that every year was more deeply accentuated by modern
conditions it was still declining. New houses were never built, and even
the King's Head, a pledge of commercial confidence in the Hanoverian
succession, seemed to flaunt with an inappropriate modernity its red
bricks mellowed by the passage of two centuries. Apart from this rival
to the Stag Inn the fabric of Wychford was uniformly gray, to which,
notwithstanding Miss Peasey's declaration of sameness, variety was amply
secured by the character of the architecture. Gables and mullions; oaken
eaves and corbels carefully ornamented; latticed oriels and sashed bows;
roofs of steep unequal pitch to which age had often added strange
undulations; chimney stacks of stone and Gothic entries--all these gave
variety enough; and if the whole effect was too sober for Miss Peasey's
taste, the little town on the hillside was now safe for ever from the
brightening of the dolls-house spirit.
Wychford could still be called a town, for it possessed a few
side-streets, along the grass-grown cobbles of which there still existed
many houses of considerable beauty and dignity. These had lapsed into a
more apparent decay, because a dwindling population had avoided their
direct exposure to the bleak country and had left them empty. In the
High Street this melancholy of bygone fame was less noticeable, and here
scarcely a house was unoccupied. Some buildings, indeed, had been
degraded to unworthy usages; and it was sad to see Perpendicular
fireplaces filled with cheap lines in drapery, or to find an ancient
chantry trodden by pigs and fowls. Generally, however, the High Street
to the summit of its steep ascent had an air of sedate prosperity that
did not reflect the reality of a slow depopulation.
About half-way up the hill on the other side of the town from Plashers
Mead and the Rectory was a side-street called Abbey Lane that, instead
of leading to open country, was bounded by a high stone wall. This
blocked the thoroughfare except so far as to allow a narrow path to
skirt its base and give egress along some untidy cottage gardens to a
cross-road farther up the hill.
In the middle of the wall confronting the street two columns surmounted
with huge round finials showed where there had once been a gate wide
enough to admit a coach. Above the wall a belt of high trees obscured
the view and gave a dank shadow to the road beneath. At one corner a
small wooden wicket with a half-obliterated proclamation of privacy
enabled any one to pass through the wall and enter the grounds of
Wychford Abbey. This wicket opened directly on a path that wound through
a plantation of yews interspersed with tall beeches and elms, whose
overarching tops intensified even in Wintry leaflessness the prevalent
gloom. The silence of this plantation made Wychford High Street seem in
remembrance a noisy, cheerful place, and the mere crackling of twigs and
beech-mast induced the visitor to walk more quietly, fearful of
profaning the mysteriousness even by so slight an indication of human
presence. The plantation continued in tiers of trees down the hill to
the Greenrush, which had been deepened by a dam to support this gloom of
overhanging branches with slow and solemn stream. The path, however,
kept to the level ground and emerged presently upon a large square of
pallescent grass the farther side of which was bounded by a deserted
house.
There were no ruins of the ecclesiastical foundation to fret a Gothic
moonlight, but Wychford Abbey did not require these to justify the
foreboding approach; and the great Jacobean pile, whose stones the
encroaching trees had robbed of warmth and vitality, brooded in the
silence with a monstrous ghostliness that was scarcely heightened by the
signs of material decay. Nevertheless, the casements whose glass was
filmy like the eyes of blind men or sometimes diced with sinister gaps;
the cracks and fissures in the external fabric; the headless supporters
of the family coat; and the roof slowly being torn tile from tile by
ivy--did consummate the initial impression. Within, the desolation was
more marked. A few rotten planks had been nailed across the front door,
but these had been kicked down by inquisitive explorers, and the hall
remained perpetually open to the weather. In some of the rooms the
floors had jagged pits, and there was not one which was not defiled by
jackdaws, owls, and bats. Strands of sickly ivy, which had forced an
entrance through the windows, clawed the dusty air. A leprosy had
infected the plaster ceilings so that the original splendor of their
moldings had become meaningless and scarcely any longer discernible; and
the marble of the florid mantelpieces was streaked with abominable damp.
The back of the house seemed to go beyond the rest in the expression of
utter abandonment. Crumbling walls with manes of ivy inclosed a series
of gardens rank with docks and nettles and almost impenetrable on
account of the matted briers. As if to add the final touch of melancholy
the caretaker (for somewhere in the depths of the house existed
ironically a caretaker) had cultivated in this wilderness some dreary
patches of potatoes. Beyond the forsaken parterres stretched a great
unkempt shrubbery where laurels, peterswort, and hollies struggled in
disorderly and overgrown profusion for the pleasure of numberless birds,
and where a wide path still maintained its slow diagonal down the
hillside to the river's edge.
Such were the surroundings Guy chose to embower the doubts and
hesitations that followed close upon the morning when on Wychford down
he had been so nearly telling Pauline he loved her. Perhaps the almost
savage gloom of this place helped to confirm his profound hopelessness.
A black frost had succeeded the sparkle of Christmastide. The banks of
the river in such weather were impossible, for the wind came biting
across the water-meadows and piped in the withered reeds and rushes with
an intolerable melancholy. Here in the grounds of Wychford Abbey there
was comparative warmth, and the desolation suited the unfortunate end he
was predicting for his hopes. To begin with, it was extremely improbable
that Pauline cared about him. His assay with regard to Richard had not
been encouraging, and his worst fears of being too late for real
inclusion within the charm of the Rectory were surely justified. He had
known all along how much exaggerated were his ambitions, and he wished
now that in the first moment of their springing he had ruthlessly
strangled them. Moreover, even if Pauline did ultimately come to care
for him, how much farther was he advanced upon the road of a happy
issue? It were presumptuous and absurd with only L150 a year to propose
marriage, and if he gave up living here and became a schoolmaster at
home, he knew that the post would be made conditional upon a willingness
to wait as many years for marriage as the wisdom of age decreed.
Besides, he could not take Pauline from Wychford and imprison her at Fox
Hall to dose little boys with Gregory's Powder or check the schedule of
their underclothing. The only justification for taking Pauline away from
the Rectory would be to make her immortal in poetry. Yet encouraging as
lately one or two epithets had certainly been, he was still far from
having written enough to fill even a very thin book; and really as he
came to review the past three months he could not say that he had done
much more or much better than in the days when Plashers Mead was
undiscovered. Time had lately gone by very fast, not merely on account
of the jolly days at the Rectory, but also because weeks that were
terminated by weekly bills seemed to be endowed with a double swiftness.
"I really must eat less meat," said Guy to himself. "It's ridiculous to
spend eleven shillings and sixpence every week on meat ... that's
roughly L30 a year. Why, it's absurd! And I don't eat it. Bother Miss
Peasey! What an appetite she has got."
He wondered if he could break through the barrier of his housekeeper's
deafness so far as to impress upon her the fact that she ate too much
meat. She spent too much, also, on small things like pepper and salt.
This reckless buying of pepper and salt made the grocer's bill an
eternal irritation, for it really seemed absurd to be spending all one's
money on pepper and salt. Yet people did live on L150 a year. Coleridge
had married with less than that and apparently had got on perfectly
well, or would have if he had not been foolish in other ways. How on
earth was it done? He really must try and find out how much, for
instance, Birdwood spent every week on the necessities of life. That was
the worst of Oxford ... one came down without the slightest idea of the
elementary facts of domestic economy. There had been a lot of soda
bought last week. He remembered seeing it in one of those horrid little
slippery tradesmen's books. Soda? What was it for? Vaguely Guy thought
it was used to soften water, but there were plenty of rain-tubs at
Plashers Mead, and soda must be an unjustifiable extravagance. Then Miss
Peasey herself was getting L18 a year. It seemed very little--so little,
indeed, that when he paid her every month he felt inclined to apologize
for the smallness of the amount, but little as it was it only left him
with L132. Knock off L30 for meat and he had L102; L18 must go in rent,
and there was left L84. Then there was milk and bread and taxes and the
subscription to the cricket-club and the subscription to all the other
vice-presidencies to which the town had elected him. There was also
Graves, his deaf-and-dumb gardener, and a new bucket for the well. Books
and clothes, of course, could be obtained on credit, but even so some
time or other bills came in. Guy made a number of mental calculations,
but by no device was he able to make the amount required come to less
than L82. That left L2 for Pauline, and then, by the way, there was the
dog-license which he had forgotten. Thirty-two and sixpence for Pauline!
Guy roamed through the sad arbors of Wychford Abbey in the depths of
depression, and watched with a cynical amusement the birds searching for
grubs in the iron ground. He began to feel a positive sense of injury
against love which had descended with proverbial wantonness to
complicate mortal affairs. He tried to imagine the Rectory without
Pauline, and when he did so all the attraction was gone. Yet distinctly
when he had first met the Greys he had not thought more often of Pauline
than of her sisters. What perversity of circumstance had introduced
love?
"It's being alone," said Guy. "I feed myself upon dreams. Michael was
perfectly right. Wychford is a place of dreams."
He would cure this love-sickness. That was an idea for a sonnet. Damn!
"_I attempt from love's sickness to fly._" It need not be said again. At
the same time, poem or not, he would avoid the Rectory and shut himself
close in that green room which Margaret and Monica had thought so crude
with undergraduate taste. If this cold went on, there would be skating;
and he began to picture Pauline upon the ice. The vision flashed like a
diamond through these gloomy groves, and with the soughing of the skates
in his ears and the thought of Pauline's hands crisscross in his own,
Guy's first attack on love ended in complete surrender. Skating meant
long talks with never a curious eye to cast dismay; and in long talks
and rhythmic motion possibly she might come to love him. Guy's footsteps
began to ring out upon the iron-bound walk, and of all the sad ghosts
that should have haunted his path there was not one who walked now
beside him; for, as he dreamed upon the vision of Pauline, the
melancholy of that forsaken place was lightened with a sort of April
exultation and the promise of new life to gladden the once populous
gardens where lovers might have been merry in the past.
However, when he was back in his house, Guy's earlier mood returned, and
he made up his mind anew not to go to the Rectory. Nothing would do for
him but the metaphysics and passion of Dr. John Donne; and on the dreary
evening when the frost yielded to rain before there had been one day's
skating, Guy was as near as any one may ever have been to conversing
with that old lover's ghost who died before the god of Love was born.
All his plans wore mourning, and the bills that week rose
two-and-sixpence-halfpenny higher than their highest total so far. Guy
moped in his green library and, as he read through the manuscripts of
poetry that with the progress of the night seemed to him worse and
worse, he wished he could recapture some of that self-confidence which
had carried him so serenely through Oxford; and he asked himself if
Pauline's love would endow him once more with that conviction of
ultimate fame, to the former safe tenure of which he now looked back as
from a disillusioned old age.
Another week passed, and Guy wondered what they were thinking of him at
the Rectory for his neglect of all they might justly suppose had been
offered him. Absence from Pauline did not seem to have effected much so
far except a complete paralysis of his power to work with that diligence
he had always preached as the true threshold of art. Perhaps he had been
always a little too insistent upon the merit of academic industry, too
conscious of a deliberate embarkation upon a well-built career, too
careful of mere equipment in his exploration of Parnassus. So long as he
had been exercising his technical accomplishment, everything had seemed
to be advancing securely towards the moment when inspiration should
vitalize the promise of his craftsmanship. Now inspiration was at hand,
and accomplishment had betrayed him. These effusions of restless love
which he had lately produced were surely the most wretched cripples ever
sent to climb the Heliconian slope. Guy looked at his note-book and
marked how many apostrophes, the impulses to declaim which had seemed to
scorch his imagination with bright ardors, had, alas, failed to kindle
his uninflammable pencil. He derived a transient consolation from
Browning's "Pauline," which was surely as inadequate as his own verse to
celebrate the name. "_Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me._" That opening
half-line was the only one which moved him. But, after all, Browning did
not esteem his own Pauline, and had written it when he was twenty.
Himself was twenty-two, and could not declare his passion in one lyric.
A graceful sonnet for his father's birthday would not compensate for
this dismaying failure. Moreover, in rhymes, thought Guy, Pauline was no
niggard; and with a flicker of sardonic humor he recalled how many
Swinburne had found for Faustine.
It was Godbold who fed the vexations and torments of untried love with
the bitterest medicine of all. He had come down to see Guy about an old
chair that had to be fetched from a neighboring village, and, when his
business was over, seemed inclined to chat for a while.
"Have you ever noticed, Mr. Hazlewood," he began, "as there's a lot of
people in this world who know more than a man knows himself?"
Guy indicated that the fact had struck him.
"Well, now, just because I happen to see you with Miss Pauline the other
morning, there's half a dozen wise gabies in Wychford who've almost
married you to her out of hand."
Guy tried not to look annoyed.
"Oh, you may well frown, Mr. Hazlewood, for, as I said to them, it's
nothing more than nonsense to tie up a young man and a young woman just
because they happen to take a walk together on a fine morning."
"I hope this sort of intolerable gossip isn't still going on," said Guy,
savagely.
"Oh, well, you see, sir, Wychford is a middling place for gossip. And if
it wasn't one of the Miss Greys it would be some other young miss
roundhereabouts. Human nature, like pigeons, is set on mating."
"I hope you'll contradict this ridiculous rumor," said Guy.
"Oh, I have done already. In fact, I may say that one of my principles,
Mr. Hazlewood, is to contradict everything. As I said to them, when they
was talking about it in the post-office the other night, and that
post-office is a rare place of gossip! Perhaps you've noticed that the
nosiest man in a town always gets made postmaster? Where had I got
to?--ah, yes, I said to them, 'You know a great lot about other people's
business,' I said, 'but when I tell you that old Mrs. Mathers who lives
in the last cottage but one in Rectory Lane says she's taken particular
note as Mr. Hazlewood has never been near the Rectory for the last
fortnight unless it was once when she heard footsteps and hadn't time to
get to the window to see who it was on account of the kettle being on
the boil at that moment, where's your Holy Matrimony?' I said. With that
up speaks Miss Burge from the back of The shop whose father used to keep
the King's Head before he dropped dead of the apoplexy on Shipcot
platform. 'That doesn't say he hasn't gone round by the field the same
as Mr. Burrows's servant used to when she was being courted by
We'll-mention-no-names.' 'No, and that he hasn't, either,' said I,
smacking the counter, for I was feeling a bit angry by now at all this
poking about in other people's business, 'that he hasn't,' I said,
'because the Rectory cook asked me most particular if there was anything
the matter down at Plashers Mead, seeing as Mr. Hazlewood hadn't been
near the Rectory for a fortnight. That doesn't look like Holy
Matrimony,' I said, and with that I walked out of the post-office. Mr.
Hazlewood," Godbold concluded, very earnestly, "the gossip of Wychford
is something as no one would believe, if they hadn't heard it, as I
have, every mortal day of my life."
Guy could have laughed on his own account, but the notion of Pauline's
being dragged into the chatter made him furious. Yet what could he do?
If he went frequently to the Greys' house he must be engaged, according
to Wychford. And if he did not go....
"I suppose they'll be saying next that the engagement has been broken
off," he inquired, with cold sarcasm.
"Oh, they have said it. Depend upon it, Mr. Hazlewood, it undoubtedly
has been said."
It began to appeal to Guy as extremely undignified--the way in which he
had let Godbold chatter on like this.
"I'm afraid I must be getting back to my work," he said, curtly.
"That's right. Work's the best answer to talk. Did you feel it much here
in that rainy spell?"
"The meadows were a bit splashy, of course, but the water never got
anywhere near the house."
"But it will. Don't you make any mistake. It will. Only, of course,
we've had a dry Autumn. Why, last June year Miss Peasey could have been
fishing for minnows in her kitchen. Now that seems a nice upstanding
sort of woman. A Wesleen, they tell me? I haven't seen her in church
that I can remember, and which would account for it. But I never talk to
the chapel folk, they being that uncivilized. She's rather deaf, isn't
she?"
"Yes, and therefore cannot gossip," Guy snapped.
"Well, I don't know," said Godbold, doubtfully. "Some of the most
unnatural scandals I ever heard were made by deaf women. Though that
doesn't mean I'm saying Miss Peasey is a talker."
"I'm sure she isn't," Guy agreed. "Good night, Mr. Godbold."
"Good night, Mr. Hazlewood. Don't you be discouraged by the gossip in
Wychford. I always say, if you believe nothing you hear, next to nothing
of what you read, and only half of what you see, no one can touch you.
Good night once more, sir. And don't you fret over what people say. I
remember they once said I tried to work a horse which had the blind
staggers, and Mrs. Godbold was that aggravated she went and washed a
shirt of mine twice over, worrying herself. Good night, Mr. Hazlewood."
This time the red-bearded carrier of Wychford (not an inappropriate
profession for him) really departed, leaving Guy in a state of
considerable resentment at the thought of the Wychford commentary.
That night the raw drizzle turned to snow; and when he looked out of his
window next morning it was lying thick over the country and was making
his bedroom seem as gray as the loaded clouds above. That exhilaration
of a new landscape which comes with snow drove away some of Guy's
depression, and after breakfast he went out, curious to contemplate its
effect upon the Abbey. In the black frost the great pile had seemed to
possess scarcely more substance than a shredded leaf; and when it lay
sodden beneath the dripping trees, a manifest decay had made extinction
infamous with the ooze of a rotting fungus. The weather now had brought
a strange restoration to the abandoned house, and so completely had the
covering of snow hidden most of the signs of dissolution that Wychford
Abbey seemed no longer dead, but asleep in the quiet of a Winter
morning. The lawn in front stretched before it in decent whiteness, and
the veiling of the ragged, unhealthy grass took away from the front of
the house that air of wan caducity, endowing the stones by contrast with
tinted warmth and richness. The decrepit roof was hidden, and Wychford
Abbey dreamed under its weight of snow with all the placid romance of a
house on a Christmas card. The dark plantation was deprived of its
gloom, and what was usually a kind of haunted stillness was now
aspectful peace. Guy went over the crinching ground and strolled down
the broad walk through the shrubbery. Everywhere the snow glistened with
the footprints of many birds, but not a single call broke a silence
which was cold and absolute except for the powdery whisper of the snow
where it was sliding from the holly leaves.
When Guy reached the bottom of the shrubbery he sat down on a fallen
trunk by a backwater, which dried up here in the drift of dead leaves;
and he watched the surface of it glazing perceptibly, yet not so fast
but that the faint motion of the freezing air could write upon the
smoothness a tremulous reticulation. He had not been resting long when
he saw Margaret coming towards him down the walk, and with so light a
tread that in her white coat she might have been a figment created for
his fancy by the snow. He wondered if a sense of the added beauty her
presence gave the scene were in her mind. Probably it was, for Margaret
had a discreet vanity that would never gratify itself so well as when
she was alone; and plainly she must suppose herself alone, since here on
this snowy morning she would not have expected to meet anybody. Guy
thought it would be considerate to draw aside without spoiling her
dream, whatever the subject of the meditation. However, as he rose from
the log to take the narrow path along the backwater and so turn
homeward across the fields by the river, Margaret saw him and waved with
a feathery gesture. As Guy went up the path to greet her he was thinking
how much her hair was like a dark leaf that had shaken off the snow, so
easily might her blanched attire have fallen upon her from the clouds;
then, as he came close, every charming fancy was suddenly spoiled by a
remembrance of Wychford gossip, and he turned hastily round to see if
there were prying glances in the laurels.
"What are you looking at?" she asked.
"A squirrel," said Guy, quickly. He would not have had his absence from
the Rectory ascribed to any fear of gossip; moreover, since a meeting
with Margaret did not make his conscience the thrall of public opinion,
he would not have her discreet vanity at all impaired. Therefore it was
a squirrel he saw.
"We've been wondering what has become of you," she said.
"Well, I've been working rather hard; and as a matter of fact I was
going to the Rectory this afternoon. Isn't the snow jolly after the
rain? Especially here, don't you think?"
She nodded.
"I've got to go and visit an old woman who lives almost in Little
Fairfield, and I thought I'd avoid as much as I could of the highroad."
"Shall I come with you?" asked Guy, but in so doubtful a voice that
Margaret laughingly declared she was sure he was in a state of being
offended with the Rectory.
"Oh, Margaret, don't be absurd. Offended?"
"Over the curtains?" she asked.
"Why, if it wouldn't betray a gross insensibility to your opinion, I
should tell you I thought no more about what you said. Besides, we've
had reconciling Christmas since then."
"Ah, but you see, Pauline is always impressing on Monica and me our
cruelty to you, and by this time Mother has been talked into believing
in our hard and impenitent hearts."
"Pauline is...." Guy broke off and saw another squirrel. He could not
trust himself to speak of Pauline, for in this stillness of snow he felt
that the lightest remark would reveal his love; and there was in nature
this morning a sort of suspense that seemed to rebuke unuttered secrets.
"Well, as you're walking with me to Fairfield--or nearly to
Fairfield--your neglect of us shall be forgiven," Margaret promised.
"Here we are out of the warm trees already. I'm glad I came this way,
though I think it was rather foolish. Look how deep the snow seems on
that field we've got to cross."
"It isn't really," said Guy, vaulting over the fence that ran round the
confines of the Abbey wood.
"Ah, now you've spoiled it," she exclaimed. But Margaret did not pause a
moment to regret the ruffling of that sheeted expanse, and they walked
on silently, watching the toes of their boots juggle with the snow.
"It generally is a pity," said Guy, after a while.
"What?"
"Impressing one's existence on so lovely and inviolate a thing as this."
He indicated the untrodden field in front of them.
"But look behind you," said Margaret. "Don't you think our footprints
look very interesting?"
"Interesting, perhaps," Guy admitted. "Yet footprints in snow never seem
to be going anywhere."
"Now I know quite well what you're doing," Margaret protested. "You're
making that poor little wabbly track of ours try to bear all sorts of
mysterious and symbolic intensities of meaning. Just because you're
feeling annoyed with a sonnet, footprints in the snow mustn't lead
anywhere. Why, Guy, if I told you what sentimental import my 'cello
sometimes gives to a simple walk before lunch.... I mean, of course,
when I've been playing badly."
She sighed, and Guy wondered if the violoncello had been used with as
little reference as a sonnet to the real cause of the mood.
"Why did you sigh just now?" he asked after another minute or two of
silent progress.
"I wonder whether I'll tell you. No, I don't think I will. And yet...."
"And yet perhaps, after all, you will," said Guy, eagerly. "And if you
do, I'll tell you something in turn."
"That's no bribe," said Margaret, laughing. "You foolish creature, don't
you think I know what you'll tell me?"
Guy shook his head.
"I don't think you do. You may suspect. But for that matter, so may I.
Isn't what you might have told me something that might most suitably be
told on the way to Fairfield?"
"You've been talking about me to Pauline," said Margaret, angrily.
"Never," he declared. "But you don't suppose you can have all these
mysterious allusions to Richard without my guessing that his father is
Vicar of Fairfield. Dear Margaret, forgive me for guessing and tell me
what you were going to tell."
"Have you heard I was engaged to Richard Ford?" she asked.
"I heard he was in love with you."
"Oh, he is, he is," she murmured, and Guy, thinking of Richard in India,
wondered if he ever dreamed of Margaret walking like this in a snowy
England. The clock in Fairfield church struck eleven with an icy tinkle
that on the muted air sounded very thinly. "But the problem for me,"
Margaret went on, "is whether I'm in love with him, or if Richard is
merely the nicest person who has been in love with me so far."
"Well, if you'd asked me that three months ago," Guy said, "I would have
answered decidedly that you weren't in love with him if you had one
doubt. But now ... well, you know really now I'm rather in the state of
mind that wants everybody to be in love. And why do you think you're not
in love with him?"
"I haven't really explained well," said Margaret. "What I'm sure of is
that I'm not as much in love with him as I want to be in love."
"You're living opposite a looking-glass," said Guy. "That's what is the
matter."
They had reached the stile leading over into the highroad, and Margaret
gazed back wistfully at the footprints in the snow, before they crossed
it and went on their way.
"Yes," she said. "I am conceited. But my conceit is really cowardice. I
long for admiration, and when I am admired I despise it. I lie in bed
thinking how well I play the 'cello, and when I have the instrument by
me I don't believe I can play even moderately well. I am really fond of
him, but the moment I think that anybody else is thinking about my being
fond of him I almost hate his name. I can't bear the idea of going to
live in India, and I detest bridges--you know he builds bridges--and yet
I couldn't possibly write to him and say that he must think no more
about me. I'm really a mixture of Monica and Pauline, and so I'm not as
happy as either of them."
"Yes, I suppose Pauline is very happy," said Guy in a depressed voice.
"What am I to do?" Margaret asked.
"I'm sure you're much more in love than you think," he declared,
quickly, for he had the ghost of a temptation to tell her she was
foolish to think any more of a love so uncertain as hers. There was
enough jealousy of his standing at the Rectory to give him the impulse
to rob Richard of his foothold, but the meanness destroyed itself on
this virginal morning almost before Guy realized it had tried to exist.
"Yes, I'm sure you're really in love," he repeated. "I think I can
understand what you feel."
"Do you?" said Margaret, shaking her head a little sadly. "I'm afraid
it's only a very willing sympathy on your part, for I'm sure I don't
understand myself. That's why I'm conceited, perhaps. I'm trying to
build up a Margaret Grey for other people to look at, which I admire
like any pretty thing one makes oneself, and perhaps why I can't fall
really in love is because I'm afraid of some one's understanding me and
showing me to myself."
"You'd have to be very clever to disappoint that person," said Guy. "And
why shouldn't Richard Ford be the one?"
"Oh, he'll never discover me," said Margaret. "That's what's so dull."
"Aren't you a little unreasonable?" Guy asked.
"Of course I am. Now don't let's talk about me any more; I'm really not
worth discussing--only just because my family is so exquisite and
because I adore them, I never talk about Richard to them. Here's the old
woman's cottage. I sha'n't be more than a few minutes."
Guy felt honored by Margaret's confidence, but his heart was so full of
Pauline that he transferred all the substance of what she had been
saying to suit his own case. Would Pauline never know if she were in
love? Would he be doomed to the position of Richard? Or worse, would
Pauline fly from his love in terror of anything so disturbing to the
perfection of her life at present? On the whole he was inclined to think
that this was exactly what she would do; and he felt he would never have
the courage to startle her with the question. When he thought of the
girls to whom in the past of long vacations he had made protestations of
devotion that were light as the thistle-down in the summery meadows
where they were uttered, it was incredible that the asking of Pauline
should speed his heart like this. With other girls he had always
imagined them slightly in love with him, but for Pauline to be in love
with him seemed hopeless, though he qualified his humility by assuring
himself that she could be in love with nobody. Did Margaret really have
a suspicion that he was in love with Pauline? If she had, why had she
not drawn his confidence before she gave her own? She came out from the
cottage as he propounded this, and he told her, when their faces were
set towards Wychford and a chilly wind that was rising, how he had been
thinking about her confidence all the while she was in the cottage.
Moreover, he was under the impression this was the truth.
"But don't think about me any more," she commanded.
"Never?"
"Not until I speak first. Isn't it cold? You must have been frozen
waiting for me."
They hurried along, talking mostly, though how the topic arose Guy never
knew, about whether _Alice in Wonderland_ were better than _Alice
Through the Looking-glass_ or not. The quotations that went to sustain
the argument were so many that they arrived back very quickly, it
seemed, at the stile leading into the snowy field.
"Will you go home the same way?" Guy suggested. "Look, nobody has
spoiled our tracks. They're jollier than ever, and do you see those
rooks farther down the field? It will snow again this afternoon and our
footprints will vanish."
By the time they reached the Abbey wood Guy had made up his mind that as
they walked up through the shrubbery, unless people were listening
there, he would tell Margaret how deeply he was in love with Pauline.
The resolution taken, his throat seemed to close up with nervousness,
and, vaulting over the fence, he tripped and fell in a snow-drift.
"Why this violent activity all of a sudden?" Margaret asked.
He laughed gloomily and vowed it was the exhilarating weather. Up the
broad walk they went slowly, and every yard was bringing them dreadfully
nearer to Wychford High Street and the profanation of this snowy
silence. Abruptly a robin began to sing from a bough almost overhead;
and Guy, realizing half-unconsciously that unless he told Margaret now,
his words would die upon that robin's rathe melody, said:
"Margaret, you'll probably be angry, but I must tell you that I'm in
love with your sister."
He drove his stick deep into the snow to give his eyes the excuse of
looking down.
"With Pauline?" she said, softly.
He congratulated himself upon the cunning with which he had at least
thrown something on Margaret of the responsibility, as he almost called
it. Had she said Monica it would have killed his hope at once.
"Of course I know it must sound ridiculous, but...."
"Is she in love with me?" asked Margaret, with tender mockery. "Well, I
think she may be. Perhaps I'm almost sure she is."
"Margaret," said Guy, seizing her hand. "I hope you'll be the happiest
person in the world always. You know, don't you, that I'm dying for you
to be happy?"
There may have been tears in her eyes as she responded with faintest
pressure of her hand to his affection.
"And you won't forget all about me and take no more interest in what
will seem my maddening indecision, when you and Pauline are happy?"
"My dear, as if I could!" he exclaimed.
"Lovers can forget very easily," said Margaret. "You see I've thought
such a lot about being in love that I've got every one else's conduct
clearly mapped out in my mind."
Guy stopped dead; and, as he stopped, the robin now far behind them
ceased his song, and even the flute of the wind sounding on distant
hollows and horizons cracked in the frost so that the stillness was
sharp as ice itself.
"Margaret, what makes you think Pauline cares for me? How dare I be so
fortunate?"
"Because you know you are fortunate," said Margaret, nor could falling
snow have touched his arm more lightly than she. "Why do you suppose I
told you about Richard if it was not because I thought you appreciated
Pauline?"
"Ah, how I shall always love the snow," Guy exclaimed, grinding the
slippery ball upon his heel to powder.
"But now I've got a disappointment for you," said Margaret. "Pauline and
Monica are going into Oxford to-day for a week."
"You won't tell anybody what I've told you?" he begged.
"Of course not. Secrets are much too fascinating not to be kept as long
as possible."
He opened the wicket, and presently they parted in the High Street.
"I shall come in this afternoon," he called after her. "Unless you're
bored with me."
She invited him with her muff, and seemed to float out of sight.
Suddenly Guy remembered that sometime this morning (it seemed as long
ago as when Wychford Abbey was alive) Bob had been with him. He was glad
of an excuse to go back and look for the dog in those now consecrated
arbors. There the robin still sang his rather pensive tune; and there
from a high ash-bough a missel-thrush, wearing full ermine of the
Spring, saluted the vestal day.