Pauline and Guy with their formal engagement in sight were careful to
give no excuse for a postponement by abusing their privileges. The river
was now much overgrown with weeds, and in the last week of July rough
weather set in which kept them in the Rectory a good deal on the
occasions when they met. Guy, too, was harder at work than he had been
all the Summer. The fact of being presently engaged in the eyes of the
world was sufficiently exciting for Pauline to console her for the
shorter time spent with Guy. Moreover, she was so grateful to her family
for not opposing the publication of the engagement that she tried
particularly to impress them with the sameness of herself,
notwithstanding her being in love with Guy. It happened, therefore, that
the old manner of existence at the Rectory reasserted itself for a
while; the music in the evenings, the mornings in the garden,
everything, indeed, that could make the family suppose that she was set
securely in the heart of their united life.
"When you and Margaret marry," Monica announced, one afternoon when the
three sisters were in their nursery, "I really think I shall become a
nun."
"But we can't all leave Father and Mother!" Pauline exclaimed, shocked
at the deserted prospect.
"Now isn't that like people in love?" said Monica.
"Ah, but, anyway, I shall only be living at Plashers Mead," Pauline went
on. "So they won't be left entirely alone."
"And as I probably sha'n't ever make up my mind to be married," Margaret
added, "and as I've yet to meet the Mother Superior whom Monica could
stand for more than a week, it seems probable that everything at the
Rectory will go on pretty much the same."
"Margaret, you will marry. I can't think why you talk like that. If you
don't intend to marry Richard, you ought to tell him so now, and not
keep him any longer in uncertainty."
Pauline realized that Margaret did not like this direct attack, but it
was so rarely that Margaret made it possible even to allude to Richard
that she had to take the opportunity.
"I don't think I've interfered much with you and Guy," said Margaret.
"Is it necessary that you should settle my affairs?"
"Oh, don't speak so unkindly to me, Margaret. I'm not trying to
interfere. And, anyway, you do criticize Guy and me. Both you and Monica
criticize us."
"Only when you tell us we don't understand about love."
"Well, you don't."
"All of us don't want to be in love quite so obviously as you," said
Margaret. "And Monica agrees with me."
Monica nodded.
"Well, it's my character," said Pauline. "I always knew that when I did
fall in love I should fall dreadfully deep in love. I don't want to be
thinking all the while about my personal dignity. I adore Guy. Why
shouldn't I show it? Margaret loves Richard, but simply because she's so
self-conscious she can't bear to show it. You call me morbid, Margaret,
but I call you much more morbid than I."
Yet, though she resented them at the time, Margaret's and Monica's
continual demands for Pauline to be vigilant over her impulsiveness had
an effect; and during all the month before they were engaged she tried
when she was with Guy to acquire a little of the attitude her sisters
desired. Circumstances, by keeping them for a good deal of the time at
the Rectory, made this easy; and Guy, exalted by the notion of the
formal troth, never made it difficult.
Pauline tried to recapture more of the old interests of life at
Wychford, and she was particularly attentive to Miss Verney, going often
to see her in the little house at the top of the hill and sitting with
her in the oblong garden whenever the August sun showed itself.
"I'm sure I'm sorry it's going to be a protracted engagement," said Miss
Verney. "They are apt to place a great strain upon people. I'm sure when
I read in _The Times_ all about people's wills, though I always feel a
trifle vulgar and inquisitive when I do so, I often say to myself,
'Well, really, it seems a pity that some people should have so much more
money than is quite necessary.' Only yesterday evening I read of a
gentleman called Somethingheim who left five hundred and seven thousand
one hundred and six pounds fourteen shillings and some odd pence, and
really, I thought to myself how much nicer it would have looked without
the seven thousand one hundred and six pounds fourteen shillings and odd
pence. And really I had quite a fanciful time imagining that I received
a letter presenting it to me on account of some services my father
rendered at Sebastopol, which at the time were overlooked. Seven
thousand pounds I thought I would present to you and Mr. Guy Hazlewood,
if you would allow me; a hundred pounds to the church; six pounds I had
the idea of devoting to the garden; and the fourteen shillings and
sevenpence--I remember now it was sevenpence--I thought would make such
a pleasant surprise for my servant Mabel, who is really a most
good-hearted girl, tactful with the cats, and not too fond of young
men."
"How sweet of you, Miss Verney, to think of such a nice present," said
Pauline, who as she watched the old maid's grave air of patronage began
almost to believe that the money had been given to her.
"No, indeed, don't thank me at all, for I cannot imagine anything that
would give me such true pleasure. Let me see. Seven thousand pounds at
four per cent., which I think is as much as you could expect to get
safely. That's seventy times four--two hundred and eighty pounds a
year."
"And Guy has some money--one hundred and fifty pounds, or one hundred
and fifteen pounds, or it may be only fifty pounds."
"Let us call it a hundred pounds," said Miss Verney. "For it would be
more prudent not to exaggerate. Three hundred and eighty pounds a year.
And I've no doubt the Rector on his side would be able to manage twenty
pounds. Four hundred pounds a year. Surely a very nice little sum on
which to marry. Oh, certainly quite a pleasant little sum."
"Only the gentleman hasn't given you the seven thousand pounds," said
Pauline.
"No, exactly, he has not. That's just where it is," Miss Verney agreed.
"But even if he hasn't," said Pauline, springing up and kissing her,
"that doesn't prevent your being my dear Miss Verney; and so, thank you
seven times for every pound you were going to give me."
"My dear child, it would be, as I believe I remarked, a pleasure. I have
the greatest dread of long engagements. My own, you know, lasted five
years; and at the end of the time a misunderstanding arose with my
father, who, being a sailor, had a hasty temper. This very
misunderstanding arose over money. I'm sure the person who invented
money was a great curse to the world, and deserved to be pecked at by
that uncomfortable eagle much more than that poor fellow Prometheus, of
whom I was reading in a mythology book that was given to me as a prize
for spelling, and which I came across last night in an old trunk. My
father declared that William.... His name; I believe I've never told you
his name; his name was William Bankes, spelled with an E. Now, my own
being Daisy after the ship which my father commanded at the moment when
my poor mother ... when, in fact, I was born--my own name being Daisy, I
was always a little doubtful as to whether people would laugh at the
conjunction with Bankes, but being spelled with an E, I dare say it
wouldn't have been uncomfortably remarked upon. My father said that
William had deceived him about some money. Well, whatever it was,
William broke off our engagement; and though all his presents were
returned to him and all his letters, the miniature fell out of my hand
when I was wrapping it up. I think I must have been a little upset at
the moment, for I am not usually careless with any kind of ornament. And
when I picked it up it was so cracked that I could scarcely bring myself
to return it, feeling in a way ashamed of my carelessness and also
wishing to keep something of William's by me. I have often blamed myself
for doing this, and no doubt if the incident had occurred now when I am
older, I should have acted more properly. However, at the time I was
only twenty-four; so possibly there was a little excuse for what I did."
Miss Verney stopped and stared out of her window; all about the room the
cats were purring in the sunbeams; Pauline had a dozen plans racing
through her mind for finding William and bringing him back like Peter in
Mrs. Gaskell's book. She was just half-way up the hill with fluttering
heart, longing to see Miss Verney's joy at the return of her William ...
when tea tinkled in and the dream vanished.
When Pauline told Guy about Miss Verney's seven thousand pounds he was
rather annoyed, and said he was sorry that he and she were already an
object of charity in Wychford.
"Oh, Guy," she protested, "you mustn't take poor Miss Verney too
seriously; but it was so sweet of her to want to set us up with an
income."
"Besides I _have_ got a hundred and fifty," said Guy.
"Oh, Guy dear, don't look so cross. Please don't be cross and dreadfully
in earnest about anything so stupid as money."
"I feel everybody will be pitying you for becoming engaged to a
penniless pretender like me," he sighed.
"Don't be so stupid, Guy. If they pity anybody, they'll pity you for
having a wife so utterly vague about practical things as I am. But I
won't be, Guy, when we're married."
"Oh, my own, I wish we were married now. God! I wish, I wish we were!"
He had clasped her to him, and she drew away. Guy begged her pardon for
swearing; but really she had drawn away because his eyes were so bright
and wild that she was momentarily afraid of him.
August kept wet and stormy; but on the nineteenth, the day before Guy's
birthday and the vigil of their betrothal, the sun came out with the
fierceness of late Summer. Pauline went with Margaret and Monica for a
walk in the corn-fields, because she and Guy, although it was one of
their trysting-days, had each resolved to keep it strictly empty of the
other's company, so that after a kind of fast they should meet on the
great day itself with a deeper welcome. Pauline made a wreath of poppies
for Margaret, and for Monica a wreath of cornflowers; but her sisters
could find no flower that became Pauline on this vigil, nor did she
mind, for to-morrow was beckoning to her across the wheat, and she
gladly went ungarlanded.
"I wonder why I feel as if this were our last walk together," said
Margaret.
"Oh, Margaret, how can you say a horrid thing like that?" Pauline
exclaimed; and to-morrow drooped before her in the dusty path.
"No, darling, it's not horrid. But, oh, you don't know how much I mind
that in a way the Rectory as it always has been will no longer be the
Rectory."
Pauline vowed she would go home, not caring on whose wheat she trampled,
if Margaret talked any more like that.
"I can't think why you want to make me sad," she protested. "What
difference, after all, will this announcement of our engagement bring? I
shall wear a ring, that's all!"
"But everybody will know you belong to Guy," said Margaret, "instead of
to all of us."
"Oh, my dears, my dears," Pauline vowed, "I shall always belong to you
as well! Don't make me feel unhappy."
"You don't really feel unhappy," said Monica in her wise way, "because
every morning I can hear you singing to yourself long before you ought
to be awake."
Then her sisters kissed her, and through the golden corn-fields they
walked silently home.
When Pauline was in bed that night her mother lingered after Margaret
and Monica had left her room.
"Are you glad, darling, you are going to give Guy such a charming
birthday present to-morrow?" she asked.
"It's your present," said Pauline, "because I couldn't possibly give
myself unless you wanted me to. You know that, don't you, Mother? You do
know that, don't you?"
"I want you to be my happy Pauline," her mother whispered. "And I think
that with Guy you will be my happy Pauline."
"Oh, Mother, I shall, I shall! I love him so. Mother, what about Father?
He simply won't say anything to me. To-day I helped him with
transplanting, and I've been helping a lot lately ... with the daffodil
bulbs when we came back from Ladingford, and all sorts of things. But he
simply won't say a word."
"Francis is always like that," her mother replied. "Even when he first
was in love with me. Really, he never proposed ... we somehow got
married. I think the best thing will be for you and Guy to go up to his
room after lunch to-morrow, before he goes out in the garden; then you
can show him your ring."
"Oh, Mother, tell me what ring it is that Guy has found for me."
"It's charming ... charming ... charming," said her mother,
enthusiastically.
"Oh, I won't ask, but I'm longing to see it. Mother, what do you think
it will be? Oh, but you know, so I mustn't ask you to guess. Oh, I do
hope Margaret and Monica will like it."
"It's charming ... charming ... and now go to sleep."
Her mother kissed her good night, and when she was gone Pauline took
from under her pillow the crystal ring.
"However nice the new one is," she said, "I shall always love you best,
you secret ring."
Then she got out of bed and took from her desk the manuscript book bound
with a Siennese end-paper of shepherds and shepherdesses and rosy
bowers, that was to be her birthday present to him.
"What poetry will he write in you about me, you funny empty book?" she
asked, and inscribed it--
For Guy with all of his Pauline's love.
The book was left open for the roaming letters to dry themselves without
a smudge, because there was never any blotting-paper in this desk that
was littered with childish things. Then Pauline went to the window; but
a gusty wind of late Summer was rustling the leaves and she could not
stay dreaming on the night as in May she had dreamed. There was
something faintly disquieting about this hollow wind which was like an
envoy threatening the trees with the furious Winter to come, and Pauline
shivered.
"Summer will soon be gone," she whispered, "but nowadays it doesn't
matter, because all days will be happy."
On this thought she fell asleep, and woke to a sunny morning, though the
sky was a turbid blue across which swollen clouds were steadily moving.
She lay watchful, wondering if this quiet time of six o'clock would hold
the best of Guy's birthday and if by eight o'clock the sky would not be
quite gray. It was a pity she and Guy had not arranged to meet early, so
that before the day was spoiled they should have possessed themselves of
its prime. Pauline could no longer stay in bed with this sunlight, the
lucid shadows of which, caught from the wistaria leaves, were flickering
all about the room. She must go to the window and salute his birthday.
Suddenly she recalled something Guy had once said of how he pictured her
always moving round her room in the morning like a small white cloud.
Blushful at the intimacy of the thought, she looked at herself in the
glass.
"You're his! You're his!" she whispered to her image. "Are you a white
goose, as Margaret said you were? Or are you the least bit like a
cloud?"
Guy came and knelt by her in church that morning, and she took his
action as the sign he offered to the world of holding her now openly. In
the great church they were kneeling; rose-fired both of them by the
crimson gowns of the high saints along the clerestory; and then Guy
slipped upon her finger the new ring he had bought for their engagement,
a pink topaz set in the old fashion, which burned there like the heart
of the rosy fire in which they knelt suffused.
Breakfast was to be in the garden, as all Rectory birthdays were except
Monica's, which fell in January; and since the day had ripened to a kind
of sweet sultriness as of a pear that has hung too long upon a wall, it
was grateful to sit in the shade of the weeping-willow by the side of
the lily-pond. To each floating cup, tawny or damasked, white or deepest
cramoisy, the Rector called their attention. Nymphaeas they were to him,
fountain divinities that one after the other he flattered with courteous
praise. When Guy had been given all his presents Pauline saw her father
put a hand in his coat and pull out a small book.
"Father has remembered Guy's birthday!" she cried, clapping her hands.
"Now I do call that wonderful. Francis, you're wonderful. You're really
wonderful!"
"Pauline, Pauline, don't get too excited," her mother begged. "And
please don't call your father Francis in the garden."
"Propertius," Guy murmured, shyly opening the book; but when he was
going to say something about that Roman lover to the Rector, the Rector
had vanished.
After breakfast Pauline and Guy walked in the inner wall-garden, that
was now brilliant with ten thousand deep-throated gladioli.
"Pauline," said Guy, "this morning I learned Milton's sonnet on his
twenty-third birthday, and I feel rather worried. Listen:
"How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late Spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
"Well, now, if Milton felt like that," he sighed, "what about me?
Pauline, tell me again that you believe in me."
"Of course I believe in you," she vowed.
"And I am right to stay here?" he asked, eagerly.
"Oh, Guy, of course, of course."
"You see, I shall be writing to my father to-night to tell him of our
engagement, and I don't want to feel you have the least doubt of me. You
haven't, have you? Never? Never? There must never have been the
slightest doubt, or I shall doubt."
"Dearest Guy," she said, "if you changed anything for me, our love
wouldn't be the best thing for you, and I only want my love to be my
love, if it is the love you want, Guy. I'm not clever, you know. I'm
really stupid, but I can love. Oh, I can love you more than any one, I
think. I know, I know I can. Guy, I do adore you. But if I felt you were
thinking you ought to go away on account of me, I would have to give you
up."
"You couldn't give me up," he proclaimed, holding her straight before
him with looks that were hungry for one word or one gesture that could
help him to tell her what he wanted to say.
"Does my love worry you?" she whispered, faint with all the
responsibility she felt for the future of this lover of hers.
"Pauline, my love for you is my life."
But quickly they glided away from passion to discuss projects of simple
happiness; and walking together a long while under the trees beyond the
wall-garden, they were surprised to hear the gong sound for lunch before
they had finished the decoration of Plashers Mead as it should be for
their wedding-tide. Back in the sunlight, they were dazzled by the
savage color of the gladioli in the hot August noon, and found them
rather gaudy after the fronded half-light where nothing had disturbed
the outspread vision of a future triumphantly attainable.
After lunch her mother called Pauline aside and told her that now was
the moment to impress the Rector with the fact of her engagement. The
tradition was that her father went up to his library for half an hour
every day in order to rest after lunch before he sallied out into the
garden or the parish. As usual, his rest was consisting of standing on a
chair and dragging down old numbers of _The Botanical Magazine_ or heavy
volumes of _The Garden_ in order to search out a fact in connection with
some plant. When Pauline and Guy presented themselves the Rector gave
them a cordial invitation to enter, and Pauline fancied that he was
being quite exceptionally kindly in his tone towards Guy.
"Well, and what can I do for you two?" he asked, as he lit his long clay
pipe and sat upright in his old leather arm-chair to regard them.
"Father," said Pauline, coming straight to the heart of her subject,
"have you seen my engagement ring?"
She offered him the pink topaz to admire, and he bowed his head,
conveying that faint mockery with which he treated anything that was not
a flower.
"Very fine. Very fine, my dear."
"Well, aren't you going to congratulate me?" Pauline asked.
"On what?"
"Oh, Father, you are naughty. On Guy, of course."
"Bless my heart," said the Rector. "And on what am I to congratulate
him?"
"On me, of course," said Pauline.
"Now I wonder if I can honestly do that?" said the Rector, very
seriously.
"Father, you do realize, don't you, because you are being so naughty,
but you do realize that from to-day we are really engaged?"
"Only from to-day?" the Rector asked, a twinkle in his eye.
"Well, of course," Pauline explained, "we've been in love for very
nearly a year."
"And when have you decided to get married?"
Pauline looked at Guy.
"We thought in about two years, sir," said Guy. "That is, of course, as
soon as I've published my first book. Perhaps in a year, really."
"Just when you find it convenient, in fact," said the Rector, still
twinkling.
"Well, Father," Pauline interrupted, "have we got your permission?
Because that's what we've come up to ask."
"You surprise me," said the Rector, starting back with an exaggerated
look of astonishment such as one might use with children.
"Father, if you won't be serious about it, I shall be very much hurt."
"I am very serious indeed about it," said the Rector. "And supposing I
said I wouldn't hear of any such thing as an engagement between you two
young creatures, what would you say then?"
"Oh, I should never forgive you," Pauline declared. "Besides, we're not
young. Guy is twenty-three."
"Now I thought he was at least fifty," said the Rector.
"Father, we shall have to go away if you won't be serious. Mother told
us to explain to you, and I think it's really unkind of you to laugh at
us."
The Rector rose and knocked his pipe out.
"I must finish off the perennials. Well, well, Pauline, my dear, you're
twenty-one...."
Pauline would have liked to let him go on thinking she was of age, but
she could not on this solemn occasion, and so she told him that she was
still only twenty.
"Ah, that makes a difference," said the Rector, pretending to look very
fierce. And when Pauline's face fell he added, with a chuckle, "of one
year. Well, well, I fancy you've both arranged everything. What is there
left for me to say? You mustn't forget to show Guy those Nerines. God
bless you, pretty babies. Be happy."
Then the Rector walked quickly away and left them together in his dusty
library where the botanical folios and quartos displaying tropic blooms
sprawled open about the floor, where along the mantelpiece the rhizomes
of _Oncocyclus irises_ were being dried; and where seeds were strewn
plenteously on his desk, rattling among the papers whenever the wind
blew.
"Guy, we are really engaged."
"Pauline, Pauline!"
In the dusty room among the ghosts of dead seasons and the moldering
store amassed by the suns of other years, they stood locked, heart to
heart.
Before Guy went home that night, when they were lingering in the hall,
he told Pauline that the next thing to be done was to write to his own
father.
"Guy, do you think he'll like me?"
"Why, how could he help it? But he may grumble at the idea of my being
engaged."
"When do you think he'll write?"
"I expect he'll come down here to see me. In the Spring he wrote and
said he would."
"Guy, I'm sure he's going to make it difficult for you."
Guy shook his head.
"I know how to manage him," he proclaimed, confidently.
Then he opened the door; along the drive the wind moaned, getting up for
a gusty Bartlemy-tide.
Pauline stood in the lighted doorway, letting the light shine upon him
until he was lost in the shadows of the tall trees, sending, as he
vanished, one more kiss down the wind to her.
"Are you happy to-night?" asked her mother, bending over Pauline when
she was in bed.
"Oh, Mother darling, I'm so happy that I can't tell you how happy I am."
In the candle-light her new ring sparkled; and when her mother was gone
she put beside it the crystal ring, and it seemed to sparkle still more.
Pauline was in such a mood of tenderness to everything that she petted
even her pillow with a kind of affection, and she had the contentment of
knowing she was going to meet sleep as if it were a great benignant
figure that was bending to hear her tale of happy love.