Pauline in the happiness which had come to her lately had forgotten Miss
Verney; and when one morning she met that solitary spinster, whose pale
and watery eyes were uttering such reproach, she promised impulsively to
come to tea that very afternoon and bring with her a friend.
"You've certainly quite deserted me lately," said Miss Verney, in that
wavering falsetto of hers, through which the echoes maybe of a
once-admired soprano could still be distinctly heard.
"Oh, but I've been so busy, Miss Verney."
"Yes, I dare say. Well, I used to be busy once myself. Here's lovely
weather for the first of April. Quite a treat to be out of doors. Now,
don't make an April fool of your poor old Miss Verney by forgetting to
come this afternoon. Who's the friend you are anxious to bring?"
"Mr. Hazlewood. He's living at Plashers Mead, you know."
"Dear me, a gentleman? Then he won't enjoy coming to see me."
"But he will, Miss Verney, because he writes poetry, and you know you
told me once that you used to write poetry."
"Ah, well, dear me, that's a secret I should never have let out. Well,
good-by, my dear, and pray don't forget to come, for I shall be having
cakes, you know."
Miss Verney, whose unhappy love-affair in a dim past had been Pauline's
cherished secret since the afternoon of her seventeenth birthday, bowed
with much dignity; and Pauline, lest she should offend her again, had to
turn round several times to smile and wave farewells before Miss Verney
disappeared into the confectioner's shop.
When she got home Pauline asked her mother if she thought it mattered
taking Guy to tea with Miss Verney.
"Because, of course, she's sure to guess that we're engaged."
"But, my dear child, you're not really engaged, at least not publicly.
You must remember that."
"But I could tell Miss Verney as a great secret. And I know she won't
tell any one because once she told me a great secret about herself.
Besides, she's gone to buy cakes for tea, and if I don't take Guy she'll
be so dreadfully disappointed."
"Why can't you take Guy without saying anything about being engaged?"
asked Mrs. Grey.
"Oh, because Miss Verney is so frightfully sharp, especially in matters
of love. I think you don't like her much, Mother darling but really, you
know, she is sympathetic."
Mrs. Grey looked hopelessly round for advice, but as neither Margaret
nor Monica was in the room, she had to give way to Pauline's entreaty,
and the leave was granted.
When Guy arrived at the Rectory about three o'clock he seemed delighted
at the notion of going out to tea with Pauline, though he looked a
little doubtfully at the others, as if he wondered at the permission's
being accorded. However, they set out in an atmosphere of good-will, and
Pauline was happy to have him beside her walking up Wychford High
Street. Miss Verney's house was at the very top of the hill, which meant
that the eyes of the whole population had to be encountered before they
reached it. They could see Miss Verney watching for them as they walked
across the slip of grass that with white posts and a festoon of white
chains warded off general traffic. The moment they reached the gate her
head vanished from the window, and they had scarcely rung the bell when
the maid had opened the door; and they were scarcely inside the hall
when Miss Verney came grandly out of the drawing-room (which was not the
front room) to greet them.
"How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Miss Grey will have told you that I rarely
have visitors. And therefore this is a great pleasure."
Pauline threw sparkling blue glances at Guy for the Miss Grey, while
they followed her into the drawing-room full of cats and ornaments. The
cats all marched round Guy in a sort of solemn quadrille, so that what
with the embarrassment they caused to his legs and the difficulty that
the rest of him found with the ornaments, Pauline really had to lead him
safely to a chair.
"Have you been long in Wychford, Mr. Hazlewood?" inquired Miss Verney.
"I fear you'll find the valley very damp. We who live at the top of the
hill consider the air up here so much more bracing. But then, you see,
my father was a sailor."
So the conversation progressed, conversation that was cut as thinly and
nicely as the lozenges of bread and butter, fragments of which on
various parts of the rug the cats were eating with that apparent
difficulty cats always find in mastication.
"I sadly spoil my pets," said Miss Verney. "For really, you see, they
are my best friends, as I always say to people who look surprised at my
indulgence of them.... Would you mind telling Bellerophon he's left a
piece of butter just by your foot, that you might otherwise tread into
the carpet. You'll forgive my fussiness, but then, you see, my father
was a sailor."
Pauline was longing to know what Miss Verney thought of Guy, and
presently when tea was over she suggested that he should be shown the
garden, the green oblong of which looked so inviting from the low
windows.
"Dear me, the garden," said Miss Verney. "Rather early in the year,
don't you think, for the garden? My shoes. For though my father was a
sailor, I do not, alas! inherit his constitution. I really think,
Pauline, we must wait for the garden. But perhaps Mr. Hazlewood would
care...."
"Guy, you must see the garden," Pauline declared.
So Guy rose and, having listened to Miss Verney's instructions about the
key in the garden door, went out, followed by several cats. A moment
later they saw him, still with two cats in attendance, bending with an
appearance of profound interest over the narrow flower-beds that fringed
the grass.
"I declare that Pegasus and dear Bellerophon have taken quite a fancy to
him. Most remarkable and gratifying," said Miss Verney, watching from
the window through which the western sun flaming upon her thin hair
kindled a few golden strands from the ashes that seemed before entirely
to have quenched them.
"Miss Verney, can you keep a secret?" asked Pauline, breathlessly.
"My dear, you forget my father was a sailor," replied Miss Verney,
supporting with each arm a martial elbow.
"He and I are engaged," Pauline whispered through a blush.
"Pauline, you amaze me!" the old maid exclaimed. "My dear child, I hope
you'll let me wish you happiness." She came to Pauline and kissed with
cold lips her cheek. "You have always been so kind and considerate to
me. Yes, I am sure, without irreverence I can say you have been to me as
welcome as the sun. I pray that you will always be happy. Ah, the dear
fellow!" exclaimed Miss Verney, looking with the utmost affection to
where Guy was now completing the circuit of her borders. "The dear
fellow, how droll he must have thought it when I referred to you as Miss
Grey. Though to this flinging about of christian names without regard
for the sacredness of real intimacy, which is so common nowadays, I
shall never submit."
Miss Verney tapped upon the window to summon Guy within again. When he
was back in the drawing-room she fluttered towards him and took his
hand.
"My dear Mr. Hazlewood (for, my father having been a sailor, I must
always be rather blunter than most people), I have to congratulate you.
This dear child! My greatest friend in Wychford, and indeed, really, so
scattered now are all the people I have known, I might almost say, my
greatest friend anywhere! You are a most enviable young man. But the
secret is safe with me. No one shall know."
"I had to tell Miss Verney," Pauline explained.
"I'm delighted for Miss Verney to know," said Guy. "I only wish the time
were come when everybody could know."
Miss Verney was in a state of the greatest excitement, and made so many
references to her nautical paternity that Pauline half expected her to
hitch up her skirt and dance a triumphant hornpipe in the middle of the
cats' slow waltzing.
"This dear child," Miss Verney went on, clasping rapturous hands. "I
have known her since she was twelve. The dearest little thing! I really
wish you had known her; you would have fallen in love with her then, I
do declare." And Miss Verney laughed in a high treble at her joke.
"Lately I have been rather worried because I had an idea I was being
deserted. But now I understand the reason. Oh, the secret is perfectly
safe. In me you have a true sympathizer. Pauline will tell you that with
the people she loves, there is no one so sympathetic as I am." Suddenly
Miss Verney stopped and looked very suspicious. "You're not making an
April fool of me?" she asked.
"Miss Verney!" Pauline gasped. "How could you think I would joke about
love?"
The old maid's forehead cleared.
"Of course you wouldn't, my dear, but really this morning I have been so
pestered by some of the boys ringing the bell and saying my chimney is
on fire that ... ah, but I am ashamed of myself. You must forgive me,
Pauline. And is it not the thing to drink the health of lovers? There is
a bottle of sherry, I feel sure. I brought several bottles that were
left from my father's cellar, when I first came to Wychford, eight years
ago, and they have not all been drunk yet."
She rang the bell, and when the maid came in said:
"Mabel, if you take my keys and open the store-cupboard, you will find
some bottles of wine on the top shelf. Pray open one, and, having
carefully decanted it, bring it as carefully in with three glasses on
the silver tray."
Mabel naturally looked very much astonished at this order, and while she
was gone Miss Verney thought one after another of all the reasons that
Mabel could possibly ascribe to her request for wine.
"But she will never guess the real one," said Miss Verney.
The wine was brought in and poured out. Miss Verney coughed a great deal
over her glass, and two small pink spots appeared on her cheeks.
"I am sure," she said, "that when my dear father brought this wine back
from Portugal he would have been happy to know that some of it would be
drunk to the health of two young people in love. For he was, if I may
say so without impropriety, a great lady's man."
Pauline and Guy drank Miss Verney's health in turn, and thanked her for
the good omens she had wished for their love.
"My dear Pauline," said Miss Verney, "do you think? I wonder if I dare?
You know what I mean? Do you think I could show it to Mr. Hazlewood?"
"Do you mean the miniature?" whispered Pauline.
Miss Verney nodded.
"Oh, do, Miss Verney, do! Guy would so appreciate it," Pauline declared.
The old maid went to her bureau and from a small locked drawer took out
a leather case which she handed to Guy.
"The spring is broken. It opens very easily," she said in a gentle
voice.
Pauline forgot her shyness of Guy and leaned over his shoulder while he
looked at the picture of a young man rosy with that too blooming youth
which miniatures always portray.
"We were engaged to be married," said Miss Verney. "But circumstances
alter cases; and we were never married."
Pauline looked down at Guy with tears in her eyes and felt miserable to
be so happy when poor Miss Verney had been so sad.
"Thank you very much for showing me that," said Guy.
Soon it was time to say good-by to Miss Verney and, having made many
promises to come quickly again, they left her and went down the steep
High Street, where in many of the windows of the houses there were
hyacinths and on the old walls plum-trees in bloom.
"Pauline," said Guy, "let's go for a walk to-morrow morning and see if
the gorse is in bloom on Wychford down. There are so many things I want
to tell you."
"Do you think Mother will let us?"
"If we can go to tea with Miss Verney," said Guy, "we shall be able to
go for a walk. And I never see you alone in the Rectory."
"I'll ask Mother," said Pauline.
"You want to come?"
"Of course. Of course."
"You see," said Guy, "it's one of the places where I nearly told you I
loved you. And it wouldn't be fair not to tell you there, as soon as I
can."
In the Rectory everybody was anxious to know how Guy liked Pauline's
Miss Verney.
"Margaret, you are really unkind to laugh at her," protested Pauline.
"Guy understands, if you don't, how frightfully sympathetic she is. She
is one of the people who really understands about being in love."
Margaret laughed.
"Don't I?" she said.
"No, indeed, Margaret, sometimes I don't think you do," said Pauline.
"Nor I?" asked Monica.
"You don't at all!" Pauline protested.
"Well, if it means being like Miss Verney, I hope I never shall," said
Monica.
"Now, children, children," interrupted Mrs. Grey. "You must not be cross
with one another."
"Well, Mother, Margaret and Monica are not to laugh at Miss Verney,"
Pauline insisted. "And to-morrow Guy and I want as a great exception to
go for a walk to Wychford down. May we?"
"Well, as a great exception, yes," said Mrs. Grey; and Guy, with
apparently an access of grateful industry, said he must go home and
work.
Pauline wondered what Guy would have to tell her to-morrow, and she fell
asleep that night hoping she would not be shy to-morrow; for, since Guy
was still no more to Pauline than the personification of a vague and
happy love just as Miss Verney's miniature was the personification of
one that was not happy, she always was a little alarmed when the
personification became real.
Wychford down seemed to rest on billowy clouds next morning, so light
was Pauline's heart, so light was the earth on which she walked; and
when Guy kissed her the larks in their blue world were not far away, so
near did she soar upon his kiss to the rays of their glittering plumes.
"Every time I see you," said Guy, "the world seems to offer itself to
us more completely. I never kissed you before under the sky like this."
She wished he would not say the actual word, for it made her realize
herself in his arms and brought back in a flood all her shyness.
"I think it's dry enough to sit on this stone," said Guy.
So they sat on one of the outcrops of Wychford freestone that all around
were thrusting themselves up from the grass like old gray animals.
"Now tell me more about Miss Verney," he went on. "Why was her
love-affair unhappy?"
"Oh, she never told me much," said Pauline.
"You and I haven't very long," said Guy. "Love travels by so fast. You
and I mustn't have secrets."
"I haven't any secrets," said Pauline. "I had one about Richard, but you
know about him. And that was Margaret's secret, really. Why do you say
that, Guy?"
"I was thinking of myself," he answered. "I was thinking how little you
know about me--really not much more than you know of Miss Verney's
miniature."
"Guy, how strange," she said. "Last night I thought that."
Then he began to talk in halting sentences, turned away from her all the
time and digging his stick deep down in the turf, while Bob looked in
with anxious curiosity for what these excavations would produce.
"Pauline, I so adore you that it clouds everything to realize that
before I loved you I should have had love-affairs with other girls. Of
course they meant nothing, but now they make me miserable. Shall I tell
you about them or shall I.... Can I blot them for ever out of my mind?"
"Oh, don't tell me about them, don't tell me about them," Pauline
murmured in a low, hurried voice. She felt that if Guy said another word
she would run from him in a wild terror that would never let her rest,
that would urge her out over the down's edge in desperate descent.
"I don't want to tell you about them," said Guy. "But they've stood so
at the back of my thoughts whenever I have been with you; and yesterday
at Miss Verney's, I had a sense of guilt as if I were responsible in
some way for her unhappiness. I had to tell you, Pauline."
She sat silent under the song of the larks that in streams of melodious
light poured through their wings.
"Why do you say nothing?" he asked.
"Oh, don't let's talk about it any more. Promise me never to talk about
it. Oh, Guy, why 'of course'? Why 'of course'?"
"Of course?" he repeated.
"'Of course they meant nothing.' That seems so dreadful to me. Perhaps
you won't understand."
"Dear Pauline, isn't that 'of course' the reason they torment me?" he
said. "It isn't kind of you to assume anything else."
She forgave him in that instant; and before she knew what she had done
had put her hand impulsively on his. To the Pauline who made that
gesture he was no more the unapproachable lover, but some one whom she
had wounded involuntarily.
"My heart of hearts, my adored Pauline."
With a sigh she faded to him; with a sigh the dog sat down by his
master's neglected stick; with a sigh the April wind stole through the
thickets of gorse and out over the down. And always more and more
dauntlessly the larks flung before them their fountainous notes to
pierce those blue spaces that burned between the clouds. No more was
said of the past that morning, and with April come they were happy
sitting up there, although, as Guy said, such weather could hardly be
expected to last. And since this walk was a great exception to the rule
of their life, they were back at the Rectory very punctually, so that
by propitiating everybody with good behavior they might soon demand
another exception.
That night there recurred to Pauline, when she was in her room, a sudden
memory of what Guy had said to her about girls with whom he had had
love-affairs; and with the stark forms of shadows they made a procession
across her walls in the candle-light. She wished now she had let Guy
tell her more, so that she could give distinguishing lineaments of
humanity to each of these maddening figures. What were they like and
why, taken unaware, was she set on fire with rage to know them? For a
long while Pauline tossed sleeplessly on that bed to which usually
morning came so soon; and even when the candle was put out she seemed to
feel these forms of Guy's confession all about her. To-morrow she must
see him again; she could no longer bear to think of him alone. These
shapes that from his past vaguely jeered at her were to him endowed,
each, with what memories? Oh, she could cry out with exasperation even
in this silent house where she had lived so long unvexed!
"What is happening to me? What is happening to me?" asked Pauline, as
the darkness drew nearer to her. "Why doesn't Margaret come?"
She jumped out of bed and ran trembling to her sister's room.
"Pauline, what is it?" asked Margaret, starting up.
"I'm frightened, Margaret. I'm frightened. My room seemed full of
people."
"You goose. What people?"
"Oh, Margaret, I do love you."
She kissed her sister passionately; and Margaret, who was usually so
lazy, got out of bed and came back with her to her room, where she read
aloud _Alice in Wonderland_, sitting by the bed with her dark hair
fallen about her slim shoulders.
In the morning the impression of the night's alarm remained sharply
enough with Pauline to make her anxious to see Guy, without waiting for
the ordained interval to which they should submit; and all that day,
when he did not come, for the first time she felt definitely the
clamorous and persistent desire for his company, the absence of which
the old perfection of her home "was no longer able to counteract. For
the first time in her life the Rectory had a sort of emptiness; and
there was not a room on this tediously beautiful day, nor any nook in
the garden, which could calm her with the familiar assurance of home.
When the time for music came round, that night, it seemed to Pauline not
at all worth while to play quartets in celebration of a day that had
been so barren of events.
"Don't you want to play?" they asked her in surprise.
"Why should we play?" she countered. "But I'll listen to you, if you
like."
Of course she was persuaded into taking her part, and never had she been
so often out of tune and never had her strings snapped so continuously.
Always until to-night the performance of music had brought to her the
peaceful irresponsibilities of being herself in a pattern; now this
sense of design was irritating her with an arduous repression, until at
last she put down her violin and refused to play any more. Pauline felt
that the others knew the cause of her ill-temper, but none of them said
anything about Guy, and, with her for audience in one of the Caroline
chairs, they played trios instead.
Next day when Guy did come it was wet; and Pauline wished Margaret would
leave them together, so that they could talk; but Margaret stayed all
the afternoon in the nursery, and Pauline made up her mind that somehow
she must go for another walk with Guy.
She found her mother alone in the drawing-room before dinner.
"Mother, don't you think Guy and I might go for a walk to-morrow?"
"Oh, Pauline, you went for a walk together only the day before
yesterday. And you really must remember you're not engaged. The Wychford
people will gossip so, and that will make your father angry."
"Well, why can't we be engaged openly?"
"No, not yet. Now, please don't ask me. Pauline, I beg you will say no
more about it."
"Then I can go to-morrow," said Pauline. "Oh, Mother, you are so sweet
to me."
Mrs. Grey looked rather perplexed and as if she were vainly trying to
determine what she had said to make Pauline suppose that leave for walks
had been given. However, she evidently supposed it had; and when next
Guy came to the Rectory Pauline whispered to him they could go for a
walk if they did not have to go through Wychford. She could not
understand herself when she found it so difficult to tell Guy this
delightful news, for it was she who had managed it; and yet here she was
blushing in the revelation.
The fact that Wychford was out of bounds really made their walk more
magical, for Pauline and Guy went past the lily-pond and the lawn in
front of the house and slipped through the little wicket in the high
gray wall, as it were in the very eye of the nursery window. They
dallied for a while in the paddock, peering for fritillary buds; then
they crossed the rickety bridge to the water-meadows, a territory not
spied upon, silver-rosed with lady-smocks. To-day they would visit the
peninsula where under the moon they first had met.
Pauline, as they walked over the meads, no longer had the desire to ask
Guy more about his tale of old loves. His presence beside her had rested
her fears; and she made up her mind that the disquiet of the other
evening had been mere fatigue after the excitement of the day. This
secluded world from which they were now approaching the even greater
seclusion of their peninsula gave itself all to her and Guy.
"How often have I been here without you!" said Guy. "How often have I
wished you were beside me, and now you are beside me."
They were standing in a wreath of snowy blackthorn that almost veiled
even the narrow entrance to this demesne they held in fief of April.
"What did you think about me that night we met?" Guy asked.
And for perhaps the hundredth time she whispered how she had liked him
very much.
"Why don't you ask me what I thought about you?"
"What did you?" she whispered again.
"I went to sleep thinking of you," he said. "I did not know your name. I
loved you then, I think. Pauline, when next September comes we'll pick
mushrooms together--shall we? And I shall never gather any mushrooms,
because I shall always be gathering your hands. And the September
afterwards. Pauline! Shall we be married? Pauline Hazlewood! Say that."
She shook her head.
"Whisper it."
But she could not, and yet in her heart the foolish names were singing
together.
"How can I leave you?" Guy demanded.
"Leave me?" she echoed.
"I ought. I ought. You see, if I don't I shall never persuade my father
that we must be married next year. I must go to London and show that I'm
in earnest."
"But when will you go?" said Pauline in deep dismay.
"Is your voice sad?" he asked. "Pauline, don't you want me to go?"
"Of course I don't," she replied, turning up to his a face so miserable
that he held her to him and vowed he would not go.
"My dearest, I only thought it was my duty, but if you will believe in
me, then let me stay in Wychford. After all, you are young. I am young.
Why, you won't be twenty till May Morning. And I sha'n't be
twenty-three till next August. Even if we wait three years to be
married, we shall be always together, and it won't seem so long."
So with her arm in his Pauline walked on through the lady-smocks,
thinking that never had any one a lover so wonderful as this long-legged
lover beside her.
Holy Week was at hand, and in the variety of functions that Monica
insisted her father should hold and her family attend Pauline saw little
of Guy, although he came very often to church, sitting as stiff and
awkward, she thought, as a brass knight on a tomb. However, it pleased
her greatly Guy should come to church, since it pleased her family. Yet
that was least of all the true reason, and Pauline used to send the
angels that came to visit her down through the church to visit Guy; her
simple faith glowed with richer illumination when she thought of him in
church, and while her mother and Monica tried to pull the Wychford choir
through the notation of Solesmes, and while Margaret knelt apart in
carved abstraction, Pauline prayed that Guy would all his life wish to
keep Holy Week with her like this.
Pauline hurried through a shower to church on Easter Morning, and shook
mingled tears and raindrops from herself when she saw that Guy was come
to Communion. So then that angel had traveled from her bedside last
night to hover over Guy and bid him wake early next morning, because it
was Easter Day. With never so holy a calm had she knelt in the jeweled
shadows of that chancel or retired from the altar to find her pew
imparadised. When the people came out of church the sun was shining, and
on the trees and on the tombstones a multitude of birds were singing.
Never had Pauline felt the spirit of Eastertide uplift her with such a
joy, joy for her lover beside her, joy for Summer close at hand, joy for
all the joy that Easter could bring to the soul.
There were Easter eggs at breakfast dyed yellow, blue, and purple. There
were new white trumpet daffodils for the Rector to gaze at. There was
satisfaction for Monica in having defeated for ever Anglican chants, and
for Margaret a letter from Richard, though, to be sure, she did not seem
so glad of this as Pauline would have wished. There was all that happy
scene and a new quartet for her mother; and for Guy and herself there
was a long walk this afternoon to wherever they wanted to go.
At the beginning of the week Monica and Margaret went away on a visit,
to which they set out with the usual lamentations now redoubled because
they suddenly realized it was universal holiday time. With her two
eldest daughters away from the Rectory, Mrs. Grey was no match for
Pauline; so she and Guy had a week of freedom, wandering over the
country where they willed.
Wychford down saw them, and the water-meadows of the western valley. The
road to Fairfield knew their footsteps, and they even went to tea with
Mr. and Mrs. Ford, who talked of Richard out in India and bemoaned the
inferiority of their garden to the Rector's. They wandered by treeless
roads that led to the hills, and to the grassy solitudes that seemed
made to be walked over hand in hand. Once they went as far as the forest
of Wych, a wild woodland that lay remote from any village and where
along the glades myriads of primroses stared at them. Yet, though that
day had seemed to Pauline almost more delicately fair than any of their
days, it ended dismally with April in black misfeature, and before they
reached home they were wet through.
By ill luck her mother met her just as she was hurrying up to her room.
"Pauline," she said, with a good deal of agitation, "I must forbid these
walks with Guy every day. Wet to the skin! Oh dear, how careless of him
to take you so far! You must be reasonable and unselfish. It's so
difficult for me. Father asked where you were this afternoon, and I had
to pretend to be deaf. He notices more than you think. Now really Guy
must not come for a week, and there must be no more walks."
Guy, however, came the next afternoon, and not only was he reproved by
Mrs. Grey for yesterday's disaster, but actually he and Pauline were
allowed only a quarter of an hour together in the garden.
"I'll go into Oxford for a week," said Guy, with inspiration. "And then
we sha'n't be tempted to see each other this week, and if we don't see
each other this week, perhaps next week we shall be able to go out
again. Besides, I want to make arrangements about bringing the canoe
down. My friend Fane has wired to me to go and stay with him. He's up
for the Easter vac, working. Shall I go?"
Pauline wanted to say no, but she was, even after all these walks, still
too shy to bid him stay.
"Perhaps you'd better go," she agreed. "But, Guy, come back for my
birthday."
"As if I should stay away for that! Pauline, will you write to me? At
least in letters you won't be shy to say you love me."
"Oh no, Guy, no. My writing is so horrid."
"But you must write. Pauline, if you want to know why I'm really going
away, it's simply to have a letter from you."
"You must write to me first then," she whispered.
In truth Pauline felt terrified to think how she would ever begin a
letter to Guy. He would cease to love her any more after she had written
to him. He would hate her stupid letters.
"I shall be glad to see Michael again," said Guy. "But I suppose I must
not say anything about you. No, I won't talk about you. Oxford will be
wonderfully quiet without undergraduates, and I shall have letters from
you."
Mrs. Grey came out into the garden.
"Now, Guy, I think you ought to go. Because really the Rector is
getting worried about you and Pauline."
"I'm going into Oxford, Mrs. Grey."
"Well, that is a charming idea--charming, yes."
"But I'll be back for Pauline's birthday."
"Charming--charming," Mrs. Grey still declared. "The Rector will have
forgotten all about it by then."
So Guy left Pauline for a week, and perhaps for more than a week.
Margaret and Monica came home next day, and really, she thought, it was
upsetting all the old ways of her life when she found herself not very
much interested in what they had been doing. Miss Verney with her
ecstatic praise of Guy was better company; but next morning her first
love-letter arrived, and she could not resist peeping into it at
breakfast.
99 ST. GILES, OXFORD,
_April 18th_.
MY ADORED PAULINE,--It's really all I can do to stay in Oxford.
Even Fane seems dull, and though his rooms are jolly, I long for
you.
Have I told you what you are to me? Have I once been able to tell
you....
Ah, there were pages crammed full and full of words that she must read
alone. She could not read them here with her mother and sisters looking
at her over the table. She must read them high in her white fastness at
the top of the house. There all the morning she sat, and when she had
read of his love once, she read of it again and then again, and once
again. How foolish her answering letter would be; how disappointed Guy
would be; but since she had promised, she must write to him; and,
sitting at her desk that was full of childish things, she curled herself
over the note-paper.