Guy became much occupied with the best way of breaking to his father the
news of his engagement. He wished it were his marriage of which he had
to inform him; for there was about marriage such a beautiful finality of
spilled milk that the briefest letter would have settled everything. If
now he wrote to announce an engagement, he ran the risk of his father's
refusal to come and pay him that visit on which he was building such
hopes from the combined effect of Pauline and Plashers Mead in restoring
to the schoolmaster the bright mirror of his own youth. It would
scarcely be fair to the Greys to introduce him while he was still
ignorant of the relation in which he was supposed to stand to them, for
they could scarcely be expected to regard him as a man to be humored up
to such a point. After all, it was not as if he in his heart looked to
his father for practical help; in reality he knew already that the
engagement would meet with his opposition, notwithstanding Pauline ...
notwithstanding Plashers Mead. Perhaps it would be better to write and
tell him about it; if he came it would obviate an awkward explanation
and there could be no question of false pretenses; if he declined to
come, no doubt he would write such a letter as would justify his son in
holding him up to the Greys as naturally intractable. Indeed, if it were
not that he knew how sensitive Pauline was to the paternal benediction,
he would have made no attempt to present him at all.
His father kept him waiting over a week before he replied to the
announcement Guy had ultimately decided to send him; and when it came,
the letter did not promise the most favorable prospect.
FOX HALL, GALTON, HANTS,
_September 1st_.
DEAR GUY,--I have taken a few days to think over the extraordinary
news you have seen fit to communicate. I hope I am not so far
removed from sympathy with your aspirations as not to be able to
understand almost anything you might have to tell me about
yourself. But this I confess defeats my best intentions, setting
as it does a crown on all the rest of your acts of folly. I tried
to believe that your desire to write poetry was merely a passing
whim. I tried to think that your tenancy of this house was not the
behavior of a thoughtless and wilful young man. I was most
anxious, as I clearly showed (i) by my gift of L150, (ii) by my
offer of a post at Fox Hall, to put myself in accord with your
ambition; and now you write and tell me after a year's
unprofitable idling that you are engaged to be married! I admit as
a minute point in your favor you do not suggest that I should help
you to tie yourself for life to the fancy of a young man of just
twenty-three. Little did I think when I wrote to wish you many
happy returns of the 20th of August, although you had previously
disappointed me by your refusal to help me out of a nasty
difficulty, little did I think that my answer was going to be this
piece of reckless folly. May I ask what her parents are thinking
of, or are they so blinded by your charms as to be willing to
allow this daughter of theirs to wait until the income you make by
selling your poetry enables you to get married? I gathered from
your description of Mr. Grey that he was an extremely unpractical
man; and his attitude towards your engagement certainly bears me
out. I suppose I shall presently get a post-card to say that you
are married on your income of L150, which, by the way, in the
present state of affairs is very likely soon to be less. You
invite me to come and stay with you before term begins, in order
to meet the young lady to whom with extremely bad taste you
jocularly allude as my "future daughter-in-law." Well, I accept
your invitation, but I warn you that I shall give myself the
unpleasant task of explaining to your "future father-in-law," as
I suppose you would not blush to call him, what an utterly
unreliable fellow you are and how in every way you have
disappointed
Your affectionate father,
JOHN HAZLEWOOD.
I shall arrive at two-thirty on the fifth (next Thursday). I wish
I could say I was looking forward to seeing this insane house of
yours.
There was something in the taste of marmalade very appropriate to an
unpleasant letter, and Guy wondered how many of them he had read at
breakfast to the accompaniment of the bitter savor and the sound of
crackling toast. He also wondered what was the real reason of his
father's coming. Was it curiosity, or the prospect of lecturing a
certain number of people gathered together to hear his opinion? Was it
with the hope of dissuasion, or was it merely because he had settled to
come on the fifth of September, and could not bear to thwart that
finicking passion of his for knowing what he was going to do a month
beforehand?
Anyhow, whatever the reason, he was coming, and the next problem was to
furnish for him a bedroom. How much had he in the bank? Four pounds
sixteen shillings, and there was a blank counterfoil which Guy vaguely
thought represented a cheque for two pounds. Of course Pauline's ring
had lowered his balance rather prematurely this quarter; he ought to be
very economical during the next one, and, as ill-luck would have it,
next quarter would have to provide fuel. Two pounds sixteen shillings
was not much to spend on furnishing a bedroom, even if the puny balance
were not needed for the current expenses of the three weeks to
Michaelmas. Could he borrow some bedroom furniture from the Rectory? No
doubt Mrs. Grey would be amused and delighted to lend all he wanted, but
it seemed rather an ignominious way of celebrating his engagement. Could
he sleep on the chest in the hall? And as it wabbled to his touch he
decided that not only could he not sleep on it nor in it, but that it
would not even serve as a receptacle for his clothes.
"Miss Peasey," he said, when the housekeeper came in to see if he had
finished breakfast, "my father is coming to stay here on Thursday."
Miss Peasey smiled encouragingly with the strained look in her eyes that
always showed when she was hoping to find out from his next sentence
what he had told her. Guy shouted his information over again, when, of
course, Miss Peasey pretended she had heard him all the time.
"Well, that will make quite a little variety, I'm sure."
"Where will he sleep?" Guy asked.
Miss Peasey jumped and said that there, she'd never thought of that.
"Well, think about it now, Miss Peasey."
Miss Peasey thought hard, but unfruitfully.
"Could you borrow a bed in the town?" Guy shouted.
"Well, wouldn't it seem rather funny? Why don't you send in to Oxford
and buy a bed, Mr. Hazlewood?"
Her pathetic trust in the strength of his financial resources, which Guy
usually tried to encourage, was now rather irritating.
"It seems hardly worth while to buy a bed for two or three days," he
objected.
"Which reminds me," said Miss Peasey, "that you'll really have to give
that Bob another good thrashing, for he's eaten all the day's butter."
"Well, we can buy more butter in Wychford, but we can't get a bed," Guy
laughed.
"Oh, he didn't touch the bread," said Miss Peasey. "Trust him for that.
I never knew a large dog so dainty before."
Guy decided to postpone the subject of the bed and try Miss Peasey more
personally.
"Could you spare your chest of drawers?" he asked, at top voice.
Miss Peasey, however, did not answer, and from her complete indifference
to his question Guy knew that she did not like the idea of such a loan.
It looked as if he would be compelled to borrow the furniture from the
Rectory; and then he thought how, after all, it would be a doubly good
plan to do so, inasmuch as it would partially involve his father in the
obligations of a guest. Moreover, it could scarcely fail to be a slight
reproach to him that his son should have to borrow bedroom furniture
from the family of his betrothed.
Pauline was, of course, delighted at the idea of lending the furniture,
and she and Guy had the greatest fun together in amassing enough to
equip what would really be a very charming spare room. Deaf-and-dumb
Graves was called in; and Birdwood helped also, under protest at the
hindrance to his work, but at the same time reveling, if Birdwood could
be said to revel, in the diversion. Mrs. Grey presided over the
arrangement and fell so much in love with the new bedroom that she
pillaged the Rectory much more ruthlessly than Pauline, and in the end
they all decided that Guy's father would have the most attractive
bedroom in Wychford. Guy, with so much preparation on hand, had no time
to worry about the conduct of his father's visit, and after lunch on
Thursday he got into the trap beside Godbold and drove off equably
enough to meet the train at Shipcot.
Mr. Hazlewood was in appearance a dried-up likeness of his son, and Guy
often wondered if he would ever present to the world this desiccated
exterior. Yet, after all, it was not so much his father's features as
his cold eyes that gave this effect of a chilly force; he himself had
his mother's eyes, and, thinking of hers burning darkly from the glooms
of her sick-bed, Guy fancied that he would never wither to quite the
inanimate and discouraging personality on the platform in front of him.
"The train's quite punctual," said Mr. Hazlewood in rather an aggrieved
tone of voice, such as he might have adopted if he had been shown a
correct Latin exercise by a boy whom he was anxious to reprove.
"Yes, this train is usually pretty punctual," Guy answered, and for a
minute or two after a self-conscious hand-shake they talked about
trains, each, as it seemed, trying to throw upon the other the
responsibility of any conversation that might have promoted their ease.
Guy introduced his father to Godbold, who greeted him with a kind of
congratulatory respect and assumed towards Guy a manner that gave the
impression of sharing with Mr. Hazlewood in his paternity.
"Hope you're going to pay us a good long visit," said Godbold,
hospitably, flicking the pony.
Mr. Hazlewood, who, squashed as he was between Guy and fat Godbold,
looked more sapless than ever, said he proposed to stay until the day
after to-morrow.
"Then you won't see us play Shipcot on Saturday, the last match of the
season?" said Godbold in disappointed benevolence.
"No, I sha'n't, I'm afraid. You see, my son is not so busy as I am."
"Ah, but he's been very busy lately. Isn't that right, Mr. Hazlewood?"
Godbold chuckled, with a wink across at Guy. "Well, we've all been
expecting it for some time past and he has our good wishes. That he has.
As sweetly pretty a young lady as you'll see in a month of Sundays."
His father shrank perceptibly from a dominical pre-vision so foreign to
his nature, and Guy changed the conversation by pointing out features in
the landscape.
"Extraordinarily inspiring sort of country," he affirmed.
"So I should imagine," said his father. "Though precisely what that
epithet implies I don't quite know."
Guy was determined not to be put out of humor, and, surrendering the
epithet at once, he substituted "bracing."
"So is Hampshire," his father snapped.
"I hope Wilkinson's successor has turned out well," Guy ventured in the
hope that such a direct challenge would force a discharge of grievances.
Surprisingly, however, his father talked without covert reproaches of
the successor's virtues, of the field-club he had started, of his
popularity with the boys, and of the luck which had brought him along at
such short notice. At any rate, thought Guy, he could not be blamed for
having caused any inconvenience to the school by his refusal to take up
office at Fox Hall. The constraint of the long drive came to an end with
the first view of Plashers Mead, at which his father gazed with the sort
of mixture of resentment, interest, and alarm he might have displayed at
the approach of a novel insect.
"It looks as if it would be very damp," was his only comment.
Here Godbold, who had perhaps for some time been conscious that all was
not perfectly well between his passengers, interposed with a defense of
Plashers Mead.
"Lot of people seeing it from here think it's damp. But it isn't. In
fact, it's the driest house in Wychford. And do you know for why, sir?
Because it's so near running water. Running water keeps off the damp.
Doctor Brydone told me that. 'Running water,' he says to me, 'keeps off
the damp.' Those were his words."
Mr. Hazlewood eyed Godbold distastefully--that is, so far as without
turning his head he could eye him at all. Then the trap pulled up by the
gate of Plashers Mead, Guy took his father's bag, and they passed in
together. The noise of wheels died away, and here in the sound of the
swift Greenrush Guy felt that hostility must surely be renounced at the
balm of this September afternoon shedding serene sunlight. He began to
display his possessions with the confidence their beauty always gave
him.
"Pretty good old apple-trees, eh? Ribston pippins nearly all of them.
The blossom was rather spoiled by that wet May, but there's not such a
bad crop considering. I like this salmon-colored phlox. General
something or other beginning with an H it's called. Mr. Grey gave me a
good deal. The garden, of course, was full of vegetables when I had it
first. I must send you some clumps of this phlox to Galton. Of course, I
got rid of the vegetables."
"Yes, of course," agreed Mr. Hazlewood, dryly.
"Doesn't the house look jolly from here? It's pretty old, you know.
About 1590, I believe. It's a wonderful place, isn't it? Hullo! there's
my housekeeper. Miss Peasey, here's my father. She's very deaf, so
you'll have to shout."
Mr. Hazlewood, who never shouted even at the naughtiest boy in his
school, shuddered faintly at his son's invitation and bowed to Miss
Peasey with a formality of disapproval that seemed to include her in the
condemnation of all he beheld.
"Quite a resemblance, I'm sure," Miss Peasey archly declared. "Tea will
be ready at four o'clock, and Mr. Hazlewood senior's room is all in
order for him." Then she disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.
"A little empty, I'm afraid," said Guy, as his father looked round the
hall.
"Is that water I hear?"
"Yes, the river washes the back of the house."
"And this place isn't damp?"
"Not a bit," Guy declared, positively.
"Well, it smells of bronchitis and double pneumonia."
Guy showed his father the dining-room.
"I've got it rather jolly, I think," he ventured.
"Yes, my candlesticks and chairs, that your mother lent you for your
rooms at Balliol, look very well," his father agreed.
Guy led the way to the spare bedroom.
"No wonder you spent all your money," Mr. Hazlewood commented, surveying
the four-post bed and the Jacobean furniture. "How on earth did you
manage to afford all this luxury?"
"Oh, I picked it up somehow," said Guy, lightly. He had decided, on
second thought, not to reveal the secret of the Rectory's loan.
When his father had rid himself of the dust from his journey, Guy
introduced him proudly to his own room.
"Well, this is certainly quite a pleasant place," Mr. Hazlewood
admitted. "If not too draughty with those two windows."
"You must scratch a motto on the pane with the diamond pencil," Guy
suggested.
"My motto is hard work."
"Well, write that. Or at any rate put your initials and the date."
His father took up the pencil with that expression of superiority which
Guy most hated, and scratched his name rather awkwardly on the glass.
"I hope people won't suppose that is my ordinary hand," he said, grimly
regarding the "John Hazlewood" of his inscription. During tea Guy
wondered when he ought to introduce the subject of Pauline. Beyond
Godbold's unfortunate allusion on the drive, nothing had been said by
either of them; and Plashers Mead had not as yet effected that
enchantment of his father's senses which would seem to proclaim the
moment as propitious. How remote they were from one another, sitting
here at tea! Really his father had not accorded him any salutation more
cordial than the coldly absent-minded "good dog" he had just given to
Bob. Yet there must be points of contact in their characters. There must
be in himself something of his father. He could not so ridiculously
resemble him and yet have absolutely nothing mentally in common. Perhaps
his father did himself an injustice by his manner, for after all he had
presented him with that L150. If he could only probe by some remark a
generous impulse, Guy felt that in himself the affection of wonted
intercourse over many years would respond immediately with a warmth of
love. His father had cared greatly for his mother; and could not the
love they had both known supply them with the point of sympathetic
contact that would enable them to understand the ulterior intention of
their two diverging lives?
"It was awfully good of you, Father, to come down and stay here," said
Guy. "I've really been looking forward to showing you the house. I think
perhaps you understand now how much I've wanted to be here."
Guy waited anxiously.
"I've never thought you haven't wanted to be here," his father replied.
"But between what we want and what we own there is a wide gap."
Oh, why was a use to be made of these out-of-date weapons? Why could not
one or two of his prejudices be surrendered, so that there were a chance
of meeting him half-way?
"But sometimes," said Guy, desperately, "inclination and duty coincide."
"Very rarely, I'm afraid, in this world."
"Do they in the next, then?" asked Guy, a little harshly, hating the
conventionality of the answer that seemed to crystallize the
intellectual dishonesty of a dominie's existence. He knew that the next
world was merely an arid postulate which served for a few theorems and
problems of education, and that duty and desire must only be kept apart
on account of the hierarchical formulas of his craft. He must eternally
appear as half inhuman as all the rest of the Pharisees: priests,
lawyers, and schoolmasters, they were all alike in relying for their
livelihood upon a capacity for depreciating human nature.
"I was merely using a figure of speech," said his father.
Exactly, thought Guy, and how was he ever to justify his love for
Pauline to a man whose opinions could never be expressed except in
figures of speech? He made up his mind to postpone the visit to the
Rectory until to-morrow. Evidently it was not going to be made even
moderately easy to broach the subject of Pauline.
"I expect you'd like to have a look at some of my work," he suggested.
"Very much," said Mr. Hazlewood; and in a moment with his dry assent he
had reduced all his son's achievement to the level of a fifth-form
composition. Guy took the manuscripts out of his desk, and, disengaging
from the heap any poems that might be ascribed to the influence of
Pauline, he presented the rest to his father. Mr. Hazlewood settled
himself as comfortably as he could ever seem to be comfortable and
solemnly began to read without comment. Guy would have liked to get up
and leave him alone, for though he assured himself that the opinion,
whether favorable or unfavorable, did not matter, his suspense was sharp
and the inexpression of his father's demeanor, that assumption of
tutorial impartiality, kept him puzzling and unable to do anything but
watch the critic's face and toy mechanically with the hair of Bob's
sentimental head upon his knee.
At last the manuscripts were finished, and Guy sat back for the verdict.
"Oh yes, I like some very much," said Mr. Hazlewood. "But I can't help
thinking that all of them could have been written as well in recreation
after the arduousness of a decent profession. However, you've burned
your boats as far as Fox Hall is concerned, and I shall certainly be the
first to congratulate you if you bring your ambition to a successful
issue."
"You mean monetarily?" Guy asked.
His father did not answer.
"You wouldn't count as a successful issue recognition from the people
who care for poetry?" Guy went on.
"I'm not particularly impressed by contemporary taste," said Mr.
Hazlewood. "We seem to me to be living in a time when all the great men
have gone, and the new generation does not appear likely to fill very
adequately the gap they have left."
"I wonder if there has ever been a time when people have not said just
what you're saying? Do you seriously think you'd recognize a great man
if you saw him?"
"I hope I should," said his father, looking perfectly convinced that he
would.
"Well, I don't believe you would," said Guy. "How do you know I'm not a
great man?"
His father laughed dryly.
"I don't know, my dear Guy, of course, and nothing would gratify me more
than to find out that you were. But, at least, you'll allow me to
observe that _great_ men are generally remarkable for their modesty."
"Yes, after they've been accorded the homage of the world," Guy argued.
"They can afford to be modest then. I fancy that most of them were
self-confident in their youth. I hope they were, poor devils. It must
have been miserable for most of them, if they weren't."
"However," said Mr. Hazlewood, "all these theories of juvenile grandeur,
interesting though they may be, do not take us far along the road of
practical politics. I'm to understand, am I, that you are quite
determined to remain here?"
"For another year, at any rate," Guy said. "That is, until I have a
volume of poems ready."
"And your engagement?" asked his father.
Guy smiled to himself. It was a minor triumph, but it was definitely a
triumph to have made his father be the first to mention the subject that
had stood at the back of their minds ever since they met on the Shipcot
platform.
"Look here, before we discuss that I want you to see Pauline. I think
you'll understand my point of view more clearly after you've seen her.
Now wouldn't you like to take a stroll round Wychford? The
architecture...."
Guy and his father wandered about until dusk, and in the evening after
dinner they played piquet.
"I suppose you wouldn't enjoy a walk in the moonlight?" Guy suggested,
after the third hand.
"I have my health to think about. Term begins in a fortnight, you know,"
said Mr. Hazlewood.
Guy had pulled back the curtains and was watching the full moon. This,
though ten days short of the actual anniversary, was the lunary festival
of the night when he first saw Pauline. Might it be accepted as a
propitious omen? Who could say? They talked of dull subjects until it
was time to go to bed.
Guy had sent a note to Mrs. Grey, suggesting that he should bring his
father to tea next day; and so about four o'clock they set out to the
Rectory, the lover in great trepidation of spirit. His father was
seeming much more than ever parched and inhuman, and Guy foresaw that
his effect upon Pauline would be disastrous. Nor did he feel that the
strain upon his own nerves was going to be the best thing for the
situation. On the way to the Rectory they met young Brydone, and Guy
very nearly invited him to accompany them, in a desperate impulse to
evoke a crowd in which he could lose this disturbing consciousness of
his father's presence. However, he managed to avoid such a subversion of
his attitude; and in a few minutes they were in the hall of the Rectory,
where Mrs. Grey, as nervously agitated as she could be, was welcoming
them. Luckily Margaret had arrived on the scene before Pauline, and Guy
managed to place his father next to her, while he took up the task of
trying to compose Mrs. Grey. At last Pauline came in, and Guy seemed to
be only aware of a tremendous increase in the noise of the conversation.
He realized that it was due to himself's talking nonsense at the top of
his voice and that Pauline was vainly trying to get on with his father.
Monica had gone to look for the Rector, and Mrs. Grey was displaying the
kind of treasures she would produce at a mothers' meeting--treasures to
which his father paid but the most scant attention. The whole room
seemed to revolve round his father, who for Guy had become the only
person in focus, as he stood there parched and inhuman, and perhaps
himself a little shy of what he was evidently supposing to be a very mad
family. Guy, so miserable was he feeling at his father's coldness of
manner towards the Greys, wished passionately that his mother were
alive, because he knew how much she would have appreciated them. Monica
had now come back with information that the Rector was undiscoverable,
so Mrs. Grey volunteered to show Mr. Hazlewood the garden.
"She'll tell you all the flowers wrong," Pauline warned him.
Mr. Hazlewood bowed.
"I'm afraid I know nothing about flowers."
"Guy has learned a lot from Father," said Pauline. "Haven't you, Guy?"
She was making the bravest effort, but it was hopeless, utterly
hopeless, Guy thought.
How the promenade round these gardens that were haunted with his and her
delights was banishing them one by one! How endless it was, and how
complete was the failure to incorporate his father in a life which his
advent had so detestably disturbed! Guy acknowledged that the meeting
between him and Pauline had served no purpose, and as he looked forward
to the final battle between their wills this evening, he set his teeth
with rage to defeat his father, at the moment caring not at all if he
never saw him again.
Guy knew, as they were walking back to Plashers Mead, how little worth
while it was to ask what his father had thought of the Greys; but,
nevertheless, he could not resist the direct inquiry.
"They seem a very happy-go-lucky family," was the reply. "I thought it
extremely strange that Mr. Grey did not take the trouble to be at home
for my visit. I should have thought that in regard to his daughter's
future I might be considered sufficiently.... However, it's all of a
piece."
Guy hated the mock-modest lacuna in the characterization, and he thought
of the many schoolmasters he had known whose consciousness of external
opinion never allowed them to claim a virtue for themselves, although
their least action always contained an implication of merit.
Guy made some excuse for the Rector's absence and rather moodily walked
on beside his father. The battle should be to-night; and after dinner he
came directly to the point.
"I hope you like Pauline?"
"My dear Guy, your impulsiveness extends too far. How can I, after a few
minutes' conversation, pronounce an opinion?"
"But she's not a pathological case," cried Guy in exasperation.
"Precisely," retorted his father. "And therefore I pay her the
compliment of not rushing into headstrong approval or disapproval.
Certainly she seemed to me superficially a very charming girl, but I
should be inclined to think somewhat excitable."
"Of course she was shy."
"Naturally. These sudden immersions in new relationships do not make for
ease. I was myself a little embarrassed. But, after all, the question is
not whether I like--er--Pauline, but whether I am justified on her
account as well as on yours in giving my countenance to this ridiculous
engagement. Please don't interrupt me. My time is short, and I must, as
your father, fulfil my obligations to you by saying what I have to say."
Even in his speech he was epistolary, and while he spoke Guy was all the
time, as it were, tearing him into small pieces and dropping him
deliberately into the waste-paper basket.
"Had I been given an opportunity," his father went on, "of speaking
privately with Mr. Grey, I should have let him plainly understand how
much I deplored your unjustifiable embarkation upon this engagement. You
have, frankly, no right to engage yourself to a girl when you are
without the means to bring the pledge to fruition. You possess, it is
true, an income of L150 a year--too little to make you really
independent, too much to compel you to relinquish your own mad scheme of
livelihood.
"I have had the privilege of reading your verse," he continued,
protesting against an interruption with upraised hand. "Well, I am glad
enough to say that it seems to me promising; but what is promising
verse? A few seedlings in a flower-pot that even if they come to
perfection will serve no purpose but of decoration. It is folly or mere
wanton self-deception for you to pretend that you can live by poetry.
Why, even if you were an American you couldn't live by poetry. Now
please let me finish. My common sense no doubt strikes you as brutal,
but if, when it is your turn to speak, you can produce the shadow of a
probability that you will ever earn your own living, I shall be only too
willing to be convinced. I am not so much enamoured of my schoolmaster's
life as to wish to bind you down to that; but between being a
schoolmaster and being what the world would call an idle young poseur
lies a big gulf. Why did not you stick to your Macedonian idea? Surely
that was romantic enough to please even you. No, the whole manner of
your present life spells self-indulgence, and I warn you it will
inevitably bring in its train the results of self-indulgence. My dear
Guy, _do_ something. Don't stay here talking of what you are going to
do. Say good-by for the present to Pauline and do something. If she is
fond of you she will be prouder of you when she sees that you are
determined to fight to win her. My boy, I speak to you very seriously,
and I warn you that this is the last protest I shall make. You are
behaving wrongly; her parents are behaving wrongly. If you must write,
get some regular work. Why not try for the staff of some reputable paper
like _The Spectator_?"
"Good heavens!" Guy ejaculated.
"Well, there may be other reputable papers, though I confess _The
Spectator_ is my favorite."
"Yes, I know. It probably would be."
"It's this terrible inaction," his father went on. "I don't know how you
can tolerate the ignominious position in which you find yourself. To me
it would be unendurable."
Mr. Hazlewood sighed with the satisfaction of unburdening himself, and
waited for his son to reply, who with a tremendous effort not to spoil
the force of his argument by losing his temper began calmly enough:
"I have never contended that I should earn my living by poetry. What I
have hoped is that when my first book appears it would be sufficiently
remarkable to restore your confidence in me."
"In other words," his father interrupted, "to tempt me to support
you--or rather, as it now turns out, to help you to get married."
"Well, why not?" said Guy. "I'm your only son. You can spare the money.
Why shouldn't you help me? I'm not asking you to do anything before I've
justified myself. I'm only asking you to wait a year. If my book is a
failure, it will be I who pay the penalty, not you. My confidence will
be severely damaged, whereas in your case only your conceit will be
faintly ruffled."
"Were I really a conceited man I should resent your last remark," said
his father. "But let it pass, and finish what you were going to say."
Guy got up and went to the window, seeking to find from the moonlight a
coolness that would keep his temper in hand.
"Would you have preferred that I did not ask Pauline to marry, that I
made love to her without any intention of marriage?"
"Not at all," his father replied. "I imagine that you still possess some
self-restraint, that when you began to feel attracted to her you could
have wrestled with yourself against what in the circumstances was a
purely selfish emotion."
"But why, why? What really good reason can you bring forward against my
behavior, except reasons based on a cowardly fear of not being
prosperous? You have always impressed on me so deeply the identity of
your youthful ambitions with mine that I don't suppose I'm assuming too
much when I ask what you would have done if you had met Mother when you
were not in a position to marry her immediately? Would you have said
nothing?"
"I hope I should have had sufficient restraint not to want to marry
anybody until I was able to offer material support as well as a higher
devotion."
"But if ... oh, love is not a matter of the will."
"Excuse me," his father contradicted, obstinately. "Everything is a
matter of will. That is precisely the point I am trying to make."
Guy marched over to the fireplace and, balancing himself on the fender,
proclaimed the attainment of a dead-lock.
"You and I, my dear Father, differ in fundamentals. Supposing I admit
for a moment that I may be wrong, aren't you just as wrong in not trying
to see my point of view? Supposing, for instance, Tennyson had paid
attention to criticism--I don't mean of his work, but of his manner of
life--what would have happened?"
"I can't afford to run the risk of being considered the fond parent by
announcing you to the world as a second Tennyson. Thirty-five years of a
schoolmaster's life have at least taught me that parents as parents have
a natural propensity towards the worst excesses of human folly."
"Then in other words," Guy responded, "I'm to mess up my life to
preserve your dignity. That's what it amounts to. I tell you I believe
in myself. I'm convinced that beside will, there is destiny."
Mr. Hazlewood sniffed.
"Destiny is the weak man's canonization of his own vices.
"Well, then I _will_ succeed," retorted Guy. "Moreover, I will succeed
in my own way. It seems a pity that we should argue acrimoniously. I
shall say no more. I accept the responsibility. For what you've done for
me I'm very much obliged. Would you care for a hand at piquet?"
"Oh, certainly," said his father.
Guy hugged himself with another minor triumph. At least it was he who
had determined when the discussion should be closed.
The next day, as Guy stood on the Shipcot platform and watched the slow
train puffing away into the unadventurous country, he had a brief
sentiment of regret for the failure of his father's visit, and made up
his mind to write to him a letter to-morrow, which would sweeten a
little of the bitterness between them. The bees buzzing round the
wine-dark dahlias along the platform were once again audible; and close
at hand was the hum of a reaper-and-binder. But as he drove back to
Wychford his father passed from his mind, and mostly Guy thought of
walking with Pauline under the pale and ardent blue of this September
sky that was reflected in the chicory flowers along the sparse and dusty
hedgerow.