A pleasant company of thoughts traveled with Guy and his bicycle on the
road to Oxford. In this easy progress the material hindrances to
marriage were not seeming very important, and as he thought of his love
for Pauline it spread before him, untroublous like the road down which
he was spinning before a light breeze. With so much to compensate for
their brief parting it was impossible to feel depressed; and as Guy drew
near the city he felt he was an undergraduate again; and when he greeted
Michael Fane in St. Giles he could positively hear his own Oxford drawl
again. It was really delightful to be sitting here in view of his old
college; and when after lunch he and Michael started for Wytham woods,
more and more Guy was in an Oxford dream and carrying off the fantastic
notion of the Parnassian academy with all the debonair confidence of his
second year. Yet Guy knew that the scheme was absurd, and when Michael
argued against it in his solemn way he found himself taking the other
side from a mere undergraduate pleasure in argument. Indeed, Michael
declared he had become a freshman since he went down, which made Guy
stop dead, ankle-deep in kingcups, and laugh aloud for his youth, with
hidden thoughts of Pauline to make him rejoice that he was young. He
laughed again at Michael's seriousness and flung his scheme to the broad
clouds, for on this generous day he and Pauline were enough, and neither
anybody else's opinion nor anybody else's help was worth a second
thought. The heartening warmth, however, did not last; and when towards
evening the sun faded in a blanch of watery clouds with a cold wind for
aftermath, Guy felt Michael might have been more sympathetic. Rather
silently they walked back from Godstow, with Pauline between them; so
that, after all, Guy thought, Michael was still an undergraduate,
whereas he had embarked upon life.
That night, however, when the curtains were drawn across Michael's bay
window that overhung the whispering and ancient thoroughfare; when the
fire burned high and the tobacco smoke clouded the glimmer of the books
on the walls; when his chair creaked with that old Oxford creaking--Guy
forgave Michael for any lack in his reception of the great plan. After
all, he was writing to Pauline while his host was reading the
Constitutional History of England at a table littered with heavy
volumes, on which he brooded like a melancholy spectator of ruins. He
must not be hard on Michael, who had not yet touched life, when for
himself the vision of Pauline was wreathing this old room with starry
blooms of wild rose. The letter was finished, and Guy went out to drop
it in the pillar-box. His old college brooded at him across the road;
to-morrow Pauline would get his letter; to-night there would be rain;
to-morrow Pauline would get his letter! The envelope, as it shuffled
down into the letter-box, seemed to say "yes."
When Guy was back in the funny St. Giles room, he decided there was
something rather finely ascetic about Michael seated there and reading
imperturbably in the lamplight. His courteously fatigued manner was
merely that of the idealist who had overreached himself; there was
nothing bilious about him, not even so much cynicism as had slightly
chilled Guy's own career at Oxford; rather did there emanate from
Michael a kind of medieval steadfastness comparable only to those stone
faces that look calmly down upon the transitory congregations of their
church. Michael had this solemn presence that demanded an upward look,
and once again an upward look, until without conversation the solemnity
became a little disquieting. Guy felt bound to interrupt with
light-hearted talk of his own that slow, still gaze across the
lampshine.
"Dash it, Michael! don't brood there like a Memento Mori. Put away Magna
Charta and talk to me. You used to talk."
"_You_ talk, Guy. You've been living alone all this time. You must have
a great deal to say."
So Guy flung theories of rhyme and meter to overwhelm Magna Charta; and,
next day, he and Michael walked all over Oxford in the rain, he himself
still talking. The day after there came with the sun a letter from
Pauline which he took away with him to read in the garden of St. John's,
leaving Michael to Magna Charta.
There was nobody on the lawn, and Guy sat down on a wooden seat in air
that was faintly perfumed by the precocious blooms of a lilac breaking
to this unusual warmth of April. Unopened the letter rested in his hand;
for his name written in this girlish charactery took on the romantic
look of a name in an old tale. A breathlessness was in the air, such as
had brooded upon Pauline's first kiss; and Guy sat marmoreal and rapt in
an ecstasy of anticipation that he would never have from any other
letter; so still he was that an alighting blackbird slipped over the
grass almost to his feet before it realized the mistake and shrilled
away on startled wings into the bushes behind. The trance of expectation
was spoiled, and Guy with a sigh broke the envelope.
WYCHFORD RECTORY, OXON,
_Wednesday_.
I am writing to you at my desk. I began this morning but it was
time to go out when I began. Now it's after tea. Margaret came in
just now and said I looked all crinkled up like a shell: it's
because I simply don't know how to write to you. I have read your
letter over and over again. I never thought there could be such a
wonderful letter in the world. But I feel very sorry for poor
Richard who can't write letters as exquisite as yours. I really
feel miserable about him. And this letter to you makes me feel
miserable because I can't write letters even as well as Richard.
Mother was glad you thought of going to Oxford because she says we
are a great responsibility to her. Isn't she sweet? She really is,
you know. So I talked to Father myself very seriously. I explained
to him that I was quite old enough to know my own mind, and he
listened to all the things I told him about you. He said he
supposed it was innevitable, which looks very funny somehow. Are
you laughing at my spelling? And then he said it was nothing to do
with him. So of course I rushed off to Mother and told her and
when you come back we are to be allowed to go out twice a week and
in three more months we can be engaged properly. Are you happy?
Only, dear Guy, Mother doesn't want you to come back till my
birthday. She thinks the idea of you and me will be better when
Father has got an Iris lorti or some name like that. He has never
had a flower of it before and he's so excited about it's coming
out just when my birthday is. Every day he goes down and pinches
the stalk of it. He says it's the loveliest flower in the world
and grows on Mount Lebanon. So if it comes out on my birthday, you
and I can certainly be engaged in August. Guy, I do hate my
handwriting.
Your loving
PAULINE.
It was a letter of gloriously good news, thought Guy, though he was a
little disappointed not to have had the thrill of Pauline's endearment.
Then, on the blank outside page, he saw scrawled in writing that went
tumbling head over heels down the paper: _My darling Guy, I love you and
underneath I have kissed the letter for you._
The sentence died out in faint ink that seemed to show forth the whisper
in which it had been written. For Guy the tumble-down letters were
written in fire; and with the treasure in his heart of that small
sentence, read a hundred times, he did not know how he should endure ten
long days without Pauline, and in this old college garden, on this
sedate and academic lawn, he cried out that he adored her as if indeed
she were beside him in this laylocked air. At the sound of his voice the
birds close at hand were all silent; they might have stopped to listen.
Then a green finch called, "Sweet! sweet!" whose gentle and persistent
proclamation was presently echoed by all the other birds twittering
together again in the confused raptures of their Spring.
The days with Michael at St. Giles went by slowly enough, and their
fairness was a wasted boon. Guy wrote many long letters to Pauline and
received from her another letter in which she began with "_My dearest_,"
as he had begged her. Yet when he read the herald vocative, he wished he
had not tried to alter that old abrupt opening, for never again would
she write in the faint ink of shyness such a sentence as had tumbled
down the back of her first letter.
Michael seemed to divine that he was in love, and Guy wondered why he
could not tell him about it. Once or twice he nearly brought himself to
the point, but the thought of describing Pauline kept him mute; Michael
must see her first. The canoe would be ready at the end of the week, and
Guy announced he should paddle it up to Wychford, traveling from the
Isis to the upper Thames, and from the upper Thames turning aside at
Oldbridge to follow the romantic course of the Greenrush even to his own
windows.
"Rather fun," said Michael, "if the weather stays all right."
"By Jove!" Guy exclaimed, "I believe it was at Oldbridge Inn that I
first met you."
"On May Day three years ago," Michael agreed.
And, thought Guy, with a compassionate feeling for mere friendship, what
a much more wonderful May Day should be this when Pauline was twenty.
There was now her birthday present to buy, and Guy set out on the quest
of it with as much exaltation as Percival may have sought the Holy
Grail. He wished it were a ring he could buy for her; and indeed
ultimately he could not resist a crystal set on a thin gold circlet that
she, his rose of girls, would wear like a dewdrop. This ring, however,
could not be his formal gift, but it would have to be offered when they
were alone, and it must be worn nowhere but in the secret country they
haunted with their love. The ring, uncostly as it was, took nearly all
Guy's spare money, and he decided to buy a book for her, because in
Oxford bookshops he still had accounts running. The April afternoon wore
away while in his own particular bookshop kept by Mr. Brough, an ancient
man with a white beard, he took down from the shelves volume after
volume. At last he found a small copy of Blake's Lyrics bound in faded
apple-green calf and tooled in a golden design of birds, berries, and
daisies. This must be for Pauline, he decided, since some one must have
known the pattern of that nursery wall-paper and, loving it, have wished
it to be recorded more endurably. What more exquisite coincidence could
assure him that this book was meant for Pauline? Yet he was half jealous
of the unknown designer who had thought of something of which himself
might have thought. Oh yes, this must be for Pauline; and as Guy rescued
it from the dust and darkness of the old shop he ascribed to the green
volume an emotion of relief, and was half aware of promising to it a new
and dearer owner who with cherishing would atone for whatever misfortune
had brought it to these gloomy shelves.
Next morning, when Guy was ready to start, Michael presented him with a
glazier's diamond pencil.
"When you fall in love, Guy, this will serve to scribble sonnets to your
lady on the lattices of Plashers Mead. I shall probably come there
myself when term's over."
"I wish you'd come and live there with me," said Guy in a last effort to
persuade Michael. "You see, if you shared the house it wouldn't cost so
much."
"Perhaps I will," said Michael. "Who knows? I wonder what your Rectory
people would think of me?"
"Oh, Pauline would like you. Pauline's the youngest, you know," added
Guy. "And I'm pretty certain you'd like Monica."
Michael laughed.
"Really, Guy, I must tell them in Balliol that since you went down
you've become an idle matchmaker. Good-by."
"Good-by. You're sure you won't mind the fag of forwarding my bicycle?
I'll send you a post-card from Oldbridge."
Guy, although there was still more than a week before he would see
Pauline, felt, as he hurried towards the boat-builder's moorings, that
he would see her within an hour, such airy freedom did the realization
of being on his way give to his limbs.
The journey to Wychford seemed effortless, for whatever the arduousness
of a course steadily up-stream, it was nullified by the knowledge that
every time the paddle was dipped into the water it brought him by his
own action nearer to Pauline. A railway journey would have given him
none of this endless anticipation, traveling through what at this time
of the year, before the season of boating, was a delicious solitude. Guy
could sing all the way if he wished, for there was nothing but
buttercups and daisies, lambs and meadows and greening willows, to
overlook his progress. He glided beneath ancient bridges and rested at
ancient inns, nearer every night to Pauline. Scarcely had such days a
perceptible flight, and were not May Morning marked in flame on his
mind's calendar, he could have forgotten time in this slow, undated
diminution.
"O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
Oh, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know."
This was the song Guy flung before his prow to the vision of Pauline
leading him.
"What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure."
This was the song that Guy felt Shakespeare might have written to suit
his journey now, as he paddled higher and higher up the stream that
flowed towards Shakespeare's own country.
The banks of the Greenrush were narrower than the banks of the Thames;
and all the way they were becoming narrower, and all the way the stream
was running more swiftly against him. It was Sunday evening when he
reached Plashers Mead; and so massively welded was the sago on his
Sheraton table that Guy wondered if Miss Peasey, to be ready for his
arrival, had not cooked it a week ago. But what did sago matter when in
his place there was laid a note from Pauline?
MY DEAREST,--I've had all your letters and I've been very
frightened you'd be drowned. To-morrow you've got to come to
breakfast because I always have breakfast in the garden on my
birthday unless it pours. I'm going to church at eight. I love you
a thousand times more and I _will_ tell you so to-morrow and give
you twenty kisses.
Your own
PAULINE.
Do you like "your own" better than "your loving"?
Guy went to bed very early and resolved to wake at dawn that he might
have the hours of the morning for thoughts of Pauline on her birthday.
It was after dawn when Guy woke, for he had fallen asleep very tired
after his week on the river; still it was scarcely six when he came
down into the orchard, and the birds were singing as Guy thought he had
never heard them sing before. The apple-trees were already frilled with
a foam of blossom; and on quivering boughs linnets with breasts
rose-burnt by the winds of March throbbed out their carol. Chaffinches
with flashing prelude of silver wings flourished a burst of song that
broke as with too intolerable a triumph, then sought another tree and
poured forth the triumphant song again. Thrushes, blackbirds, and
warblers quired deep-throated melodies against the multitudinous trebles
of those undistinguished myriads that with choric paean saluted May; and
on sudden diminuendoes could be heard the rustling canzonets of the
goldfinches, rising and falling with reedy cadences.
Guy launched his canoe, which crushed the dewy young grass in its track
and laded the morning with one more fragrance. He paddled down the
mill-stream and, landing presently in the Rectory paddock, now in full
blow with white and purple irises, he went through the wicket into the
garden. When he reached the lily-pond the birds on the lawn flew away
and left it green and empty. He stood entranced, for the hush of the
morning lay on the house, and in the wistaria Pauline's window dreamed,
wide open. Deep in the shrubberies the birds still twittered
incessantly. Why was he not one of these birds, that he might light upon
her sill? Upon Guy's senses stole the imagination of a new fragrance,
that was being shed upon the day by that wide-open window; a fragrance
that might be of flowers growing by the walks of her dreams. And surely
in those flowery dreams he was beside her, since he had lost all sense
of being still on earth. A bee flew out from Pauline's room, an enviable
bee which had been booming with indefinite motion for how long round and
round the white tulips on her sill. Presently another bee flew in; and
Guy's fancy, catching hold of its wings, hovered above Pauline where she
lay sleeping. So sharp was the emotion he had of entering with the bee,
that he was aware of brushing back her light-brown hair to lean down and
kiss her forehead; and when the belfry clock clanged he was startled to
find himself back upon this green and empty lawn. He must not stay here
in front of her window, because if she woke and came in her white
nightgown to greet the day she would be shy to see him standing here.
Reluctantly Guy turned away and would have gone out again by the wicket
in the wall if he had not come face to face with Birdwood.
"I think I'm a bit early," he said in some embarrassment.
"Yes, I think you are a bit early, sir," the gardener agreed.
"Breakfast won't be till about half past eight?" Guy suggested.
"And it's just gone the half of six," said Birdwood.
"Would you like to see my canoe?" Guy asked.
Birdwood looked round the lawn, seeming to imply that, such was Guy's
liberty of behavior, he half expected to see it floating on the
lily-pond.
"Where is it, then?" he asked.
Guy took him through the paddock to where the canoe lay on the
mill-stream.
"Handy little weapon," Birdwood commented.
"Well, I'll see you later, I expect," said Guy, embarking again. "I'm
coming to breakfast at the Rectory."
"Yes, sir," the gardener answered, cheerfully. "In about another hour
and a half I shall be looking for the eggs."
Guy waved his hand and shot out into midstream, where he drifted idly.
Should he go to church this morning? Pauline must have wanted him to
come, or she would not have told him in her note that she was going.
They had never discussed the question of religion. Tacitly he had let it
be supposed he believed in her simple creed, and he knew his appearance
of faith had given pleasure to the family as well as to Pauline
herself. Was he being very honest with her or with them? Certainly when
he knelt at the back of the church and saw Pauline as he had seen her on
Easter Day, it was not hard to believe in divinity. But he did not carry
away Pauline's faith to cheer his own secret hours. The thought of
herself was always with him, but her faith remained as a kind of vision
upon which he was privileged to gaze on those occasions when, as it
were, she made of it a public confession. Had he really any right to
intrude upon such sanctities as hers would be to-day? No doubt every
birthday morning she went to church, and the strangeness of his presence
seemed almost an unhallowing of such rites. Even to attend her birthday
breakfast began to appear unjustifiable, as he thought of all the
birthday breakfasts that for so many years had passed by without him and
without any idea of there ever being any necessity for him. No doubt
this morning he, miserable and unworthy skeptic, would be dowered with
the half of her prayers, and in that consciousness could he bear to
accept them, kneeling at the back of the church, unless he believed
utterly they were sanctified by something more than her own maidenhood?
Yet if he did not go to church Pauline would be disappointed, because
she would surely expect him. She would be like the blessed damozel
leaning out from the gold bar of Heaven and weeping because he did not
come. There was no gain from honesty, if she were made miserable by it.
It were better a thousand times he should kneel humbly at the back of
the church and pray for the faith that was hers. And why could he not
believe as she believed? If her faith were true, he suffered from
injustice by having no grace accorded to him. Or did there indeed lie
between him and her the impassable golden bar of Heaven? A cloud swept
across the morning sun, and Guy shivered. Then the church-bell began to
clang and, urging his canoe towards the churchyard, he jumped ashore and
knelt at the back of the church.
Guy had been aware during the service of the saintly pageant along the
windows of the clerestory slowly dimming, and he was not surprised, when
he came out, to see that clouds were dusking the first brilliance of the
day. Mrs. Grey, Monica, and Margaret had prayed each in a different part
of the church; but now in the porch they fluttered about Pauline with an
intimate and happy awareness of her birthday, almost seeming to wrap her
in it, so that she in flushed responsiveness wore all her twenty years
like a bunch of roses. Guy was sensitive to the faint reluctance with
which her mother and sisters resigned her to him on this birthday
morning; but yet to follow them back from church with Pauline beside him
in a trepidation of blushes and sparkles was too dear a joy for him in
turn to resign. Half-way to the house Pauline remembered that her father
had been left alone. This was too wide a breach in her birthday's
accustomed ceremony, and, much dismayed, she begged Guy to go back with
her. At that moment the rest of the family had disappeared round a curve
in the walk, and Guy caught Pauline to him, complaining she had not
kissed him since he was home.
"Oh, but Father!" she said, breathlessly, tugging. "He'll be so hurt if
we've gone on without him."
Guy felt a stab of jealousy that even a father should intrude upon his
birthday kiss for her.
"Oh, very well," he said, half coldly. "If to see me again after a
fortnight means so little...."
"Guy," said Pauline, "you're not cross with me? And Father was so sweet
about you. He said, 'Is Guy coming to breakfast?' Guy, you mustn't mind
if I think a lot about everybody to-day. You see, this is my first
birthday when there has been you."
"Oh, don't remind me of the years before we met," said Guy. "I hate them
all. No, I don't," he exclaimed in swift penitence. "I love them all.
Hurry, darling girl, or we shall miss him."
Pauline's eyes were troubled by a question, behind which lurked a
fleeting alarm.
"Kiss me," she murmured. "I was horrid."
A kind of austerity informed their kiss of reconciliation, an austerity
that suited the sky of impending rain under which they were standing in
the light of the last wan sunbeam. Then they hurried to the churchyard,
where in the porch the Rector was looking vaguely round for company he
expected.
"Lucky my friend _Lorteti_ came out yesterday. This rain will ruin him.
You must take Guy to see that iris, my dear. Fancy! twenty-one to-day!
Dear me! dear me! Most remarkable!"
Pauline danced with delight behind the Rector's back.
"He thinks I'm twenty-one," she whispered. "Oh, Guy, isn't he sweet? And
he called you Guy. Oh, Francis," she cried, "do let me kiss you!"
There was a short debate on the probability of the rain's coming before
breakfast was done, but it was decided, thanks to Birdwood's optimism,
to accept the risk of interruption by sitting down outside. The table
was on the lawn, Pauline's presents lying in a heap at the head. As one
by one she opened the packets, everybody stood round her, not merely her
mother and father and sisters and Guy, but also Birdwood and elderly
Janet and Mrs. Unger the cook and Polly who helped Mrs. Unger.
"Oh, I'm so excited!" said Pauline. "Oh, I do hope it won't rain! Oh,
thank you, Mrs. Unger! What a beautiful frame!"
"I hope yaw'll find some one to put in it, miss," said Mrs. Unger with a
glance of stately admiration towards her present and a triumphant side
look at Janet, who after many years' superintendence of Pauline's white
fastness had brought her bunches of lavender and woodruff tied up with
ribbons. All the presents were now undone, among them Guy's green
volume, a paste buckle from Margaret, a piece of old embroidery from
Monica, and from Richard in India a pair of carved bellows, at the
prodigal ingenuity of whose pattern Margaret looked a little peevish.
When all the other presents had been examined, Birdwood stepped forward
and with the air of a conjuror produced from under his coat a pot of
rose-colored sweet-peas that exactly matched the frail hue of Pauline's
cheeks.
Breakfast was eaten, with everybody's eyes watching the now completely
gray sky. How many such birthday breakfasts had been eaten on this cool
lawn by these people, who in their simplicity were akin to the birds in
their shrubberies and the flowers in their borders; and Guy thought of
an old photograph taken by an uncle of Pauline's tenth birthday
breakfast, when the table was heaped high with dolls and toys and
Pauline in the middle of them, while Monica and Margaret, with legs as
thin as thrushes', stood shy and graceful in the background. He sighed
to himself with amazement at the fortune which like a genie had whisked
him into this dear assemblage.
Breakfast was over just as the rain began to fall with the tinkling
whisper that forebodes determination. There was not a leaf in the garden
that was not ringing like an elfin bell to these silver drops; but,
alas! the unrelenting windless rain gave no hope to Guy and Pauline of
that long walk together they had expected all a fortnight. There was
nothing to do but sit in the nursery and wonder if it would ever stop.
"I used to love rain when it kept me here," said Guy. "Now it has become
our enemy."
Worse was to come, for it rained every day faster and faster, and there
were no journeys for Guy's new canoe. He and Pauline scarcely had ten
minutes to themselves, since when they were kept in the house all the
family treated them with that old proprietary manner. The unending rain
began to fret them more sharply because Spring's greenery was in such
weather of the vividest hue and was reproaching them perpetually for
the waste of this lovely month of May.
The river was rising. Already Guy's garden was sheened with standing
moisture, and the apple-blossoms lay ruined. People vowed there had
never been such rain in May, and still it rained. The river was running
swiftly, level with the top of its banks, and many of the meadows were
become glassy firmaments. Very beautiful was this green and silver
landscape, but, oh, the rain was endless. Guy grew much depressed and
Miss Peasey got rheumatism in her ankles. Then in the middle of the
month, when Guy was feeling desperate and when even Pauline seemed sad
for the hours that were being robbed from them, it cleared up.
Guy had been to tea, and after tea he and Pauline had sat watching the
weather. Margaret had stayed with them all the afternoon, but had left
them alone now, when it was half past six and nearly time for Guy to go.
The clouds, which all day had spread their pearly despair over the
world, suddenly melted in a wild transplendency of gold.
"Oh, do let's go for a walk before dinner," said Guy. "Don't let's tell
anybody, but let's escape."
"Where shall we go?"
"Anywhere. Anywhere. Out in the meadows by the edge of the water. Let's
get sopping wet. Dearest, do come. We're never free. We're never alone."
So Pauline got ready; and they slipped away from the house, hoping that
nobody would call them back, and hurrying through the wicket into the
paddock where the irises hung all sodden. They walked along the banks of
a river twice as wide as it should be, and found they could not cross
the bridge. But it did not matter, for the field where they were walking
was not flooded, and they went on towards the mill. Here they crossed
the river and, hurrying always as if they were pursued, such was their
sense of a sudden freedom that could not last, they made a circuit of
the wettest meadows and came to the hill on the other side. Everywhere
above them the clouds were breaking, and all the west was a fiery mist
of rose and gold.
The meadow they had found was crimsoned over with ragged-robins that in
this strange light glowered angrily like rubies. Pauline bent down and
gathered bunches of them until her arms were full. Her skirt was wet,
but still she plucked the crimson flowers; and Guy was gathering them
too, knee-deep in soaking grass. What fever was in the sunset to-night?
"Pauline," he cried, flinging high his bunch of ragged-robins to scatter
upon the incarnadined air, "I have never loved you as I love you now."
Guy caught her to him; and into that kiss the fiery sky entered, so that
Pauline let fall her ragged-robins and they lay limp in the grass and
were trodden under foot.
"Pauline, I have a ring for you," he whispered. "Will you wear it when
we are alone?"
She took the thin circlet set with a crystal and put it on her finger.
Then with passionate arms she held him to her heart; the caress burned
his lips like a flaming torch; the crystal flashed with hectic gleams, a
basilisk, a perilous orient gem.
"We must go home," she whispered. "Oh, Guy, I feel frightened of this
evening."
"Pauline, my burning rose," he whispered.
And all the way back into the crimson sunset they talked still in
whispers, and of those rain-drenched ragged-robins there was not one
they carried home.
La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!
La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!
La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!
The words did not cool Guy's pillow that night, but they led him by
strange ways into a fevered sleep.