FEBRUARY

Pauline had been looking forward to the entrance of February with joyful

remembrance of what last February had brought her; and that the

anniversary of Guy's declaration of his love should be heralded by such

a discomfiture of their plans was a shock. The renewal of his

uncertainty about the fate of the poems destroyed the progress of a love

that seemed to have come back to its old calm course, and brought back

with all the added sharpness of absence the heartache and the

apprehension. Pauline sat in the nursery window-seat and pondered

dolefully the obstacles to happiness from which her mind, however hard

it tried, could not escape. Most insistently of these obstacles Guy's

debts haunted her, harassing and material responsibilities that in great

uncouth battalions swept endlessly past. Even in the middle of the night

she would wake gasping in an effort to escape from being stifled by

their vastness pressing down upon her brain. The small presents Guy had

given her burned through the darkness to reproach her: even the two

rings goaded her for the extravagance they represented. It was useless

for Guy to explain that his debts were a trifle, because the statement

of a sum so large as L200 appalled her as much as if he had said L2,000.

She longed for a confidante whose sympathy she could exact for the

incubus that possessed her lover; and fancying a disloyalty to him if

she discussed his money affairs with her family, she could think of no

one but Miss Verney to whom the burdensome secret might be intrusted.

"William had the same difficulty," sighed the old maid. "Really it seems

as if money _is_ the root of all evil. Two hundred pounds, you say? Oh,

dear, how uncomfortable he must feel, poor young man!"

"If only I could make some money, dear Miss Verney. But how could I?"

"I used to ask myself that very question," said the old maid. "I used to

ask myself just that very identical question. But there was never any

satisfactory answer."

"It seems so dreadful that he should have sold nearly all his books and

still have debts," moaned Pauline. "It seems so cruel. Ought I to give

him up?"

"Give him up?" repeated Miss Verney, her cheeks becoming dead white at

the question. "Oh, my dear, I don't think it could be right for you to

give him up on account of debts. Patience seems to me the only remedy

for your troubles, patience and constancy."

"No, you've misunderstood me," cried Pauline. "I'm afraid that I hamper

him, that I spoil his work. If I gave him up he would go away from

Wychford and be free. Besides, perhaps then his father would pay his

debts. Miss Verney, Mr. Hazlewood didn't like me, and I think Guy has

quarreled with him over me. Oh, I'm the most miserable girl in England,

and such a little time ago I was the happiest."

"Money," said Miss Verney, slowly and seeming to address her cats rather

than Pauline. "The root of all evil! Yes, yes, it is. It's the root of

all evil."

Pauline was a little heartened by Miss Verney's readiness to consider so

seriously the monster that oppressed her thoughts; yet it was

disquieting to regard the old maid, whose life had been ruined by money,

and who all alone with cats stayed here in this small house at the top

of Wychford town, the very image of unhappy love. It was disquieting to

hear her reflections on the calamity of gold uttered like this to cats,

and in a sudden dread of the future Pauline beheld herself talking in

the same way a long time hence. She shivered and bade Miss Verney

farewell; and now to all the other woes that stood behind her in the

shadows was added the vision of herself mumbling to cats in February

dusks of the dim years ahead.

The idea of herself as the figure of an unhappy tale of love grew

continuously more definite, and once she spoke of her dread to Guy, who

was very angry.

"How can you encourage such morbid notions?" he protested. "You really

must cultivate the power to resist them. People go mad by indulging

their depression as you're doing."

"Perhaps I shall go mad," she whispered.

"Oh, for God's sake don't talk like that!" he ejaculated in angry alarm;

and Pauline, realizing how she had frightened him, was sorry and went to

the other extreme of high spirits.

"I thought we had agreed to wait ten years or twenty years, if

necessary," said Guy. "And now after one year you are finding the strain

too much. Why won't you have confidence in me? It's unfortunate about

Worrall, I admit. But there are plenty of other publishers."

He mentioned names one after another, but to Pauline they were the names

of stone idols that stared unresponsively at her lover's poems.

"If we had only done what Mother wanted and not seen so much of each

other," she lamented.

Guy's disposal of her vain fears was without effect, for his eloquence

could not contend with these deepening regrets; and as fast as he threw

down the material obstacles to their happiness Pauline saw them

maddeningly rise again in the path before them, visible shapes of ill

omen, grotesquely irrepressible. Guy used to asseverate that when Spring

was really come she would lose all these morbid fancies, and with his

perpetual ascription to wintry gloom of all the presentiments of woe

that flocked round their intercourse, Pauline did begin to fancy that

when the trees were green he and she would rejoice as of old in their

love. The knowledge that Spring could not linger always was the only

consoling certainty she now possessed, and from the window-seat she

greeted with a passionate welcome each dusky azure minute that on these

lengthening eves was robbed from night. The blackbirds sang to her now

more personally, these somber-suited heralds who had never before seemed

to proclaim so audaciously masterful Spring; and when the young moon

cowered among the ragged clouds of a rainy golden sky and the last bird

slipped like a shadow into the rhododendrons, such airs and whispers of

April would steal through the open window. Every day, too, there were

flowery tokens of hope and in sheltered corners of the garden the

primroses came out one by one, an imperceptible assemblage like the

birth of stars in the luminous green west. This gray-eyed virginal month

had now such memories of the last progress it made through her life that

Pauline could not help imputing to the season a sentimental

participation in her life; there was a poignancy in the reopening of

those blue Greek anemones which Guy, a year ago, had likened to her

eyes, a poignancy that might have been present if the flowers had been

consciously reminding her of vanished delights. Yet it was unreasonable

to encourage such an emotion; or did she indeed, as sometimes was

half-whispered to her inmost soul, regret the slightest bit everything

since that day of the anemones?

It was one evening toward the end of the months that Monica joined her

and walked up and down the edge of the lawn where in the grass a drift

of purple crocuses had lately been flaming for her solitary adoration.

"In a way," said Pauline, "they are my favorite flowers of all. I don't

think there is any thrill quite like the first crocus bud. It seems to

me that as far as I can look back, oh, Monica, ever so far, that always

the moment I've seen my crocuses budding Winter seems to fly away."

"I remember your looking for them when you were tiny," Monica agreed.

"I can see you now kneeling down, and the mud on your knees, and your

eyes screwed up when you told me about your discovery."

They talked for a while of childish days, each capping the other's

evocation of those hours that now in retrospect appeared like the gay

pictures of an old book long ago lost, and found again on an idle

afternoon. They talked, too, of Margaret and whether she would marry

Richard; and presently, without the obvious transition that would have

made her silent, Pauline found that they were discussing Guy and

herself.

"I notice he doesn't come to church now so much as he did," said Monica.

Pauline was startled by an abrupt statement of something which among all

the other worries she had never defined to herself, but which, now that

Monica revealed its shape, she knew had occupied a dark corner at the

back of her mind more threatening than any of the rest. Of course she

began at once to make excuses for Guy, but her sister, who brought to

religion the same scrupulous temperament she gave to her music, would

not admit their validity.

"Don't you ever ask him why he hasn't been?" she persisted.

"Oh, of course not. Why, I couldn't, Monica! I should never feel.... Oh

no, Monica, it would really be impossible for me to talk to Guy about

his faith."

"His faith seems rather to have frozen lately," said Monica.

"He's been upset and disappointed."

"All the more reason for going to church," Monica urged.

"Yes, for you, darling, or for me; but Guy may be different."

"There's no room for moods in one's religious duties. The artistic

temperament is not provided for."

That serene and nunlike conviction of tone made Pauline feel a little

rebellious, and yet in its corroboration of her own uneasiness she could

not laugh it aside.

"Well, even if there's no excuse for him and even supposing it made me

dreadfully anxious," she affirmed, "I still wouldn't say a word to him."

"Does he know you go to Confession?"

Pauline blushed. Monica was like a Roman Catholic in the matter-of-fact

way in which she alluded to something that for Pauline pierced such

sanctities as could scarcely even be mentioned by herself to her own

soul.

"Monica, you don't really think that I ought to speak of that," she

stammered. Not even to her sister could she bring herself to utter the

sacramental word.

"I certainly think you should," said Monica. "When you and Guy are

married it would be terrible if your duties were to be the cause of a

disagreement. Why, he might even persuade you to give up going to

Confession."

"Darling Monica," said Pauline, nervously, "I'd rather you didn't talk

about this any more. You see, you're so much better than I, and you've

thought so much more deeply than I have about religion. I don't think I

shall ever be able to make my faith so narrow a ... so strict a rule as

yours is. No, please, Monica, don't let us talk about this subject any

more."

"I only mentioned it because I'm afraid that with your beautiful nature

you will be too merciful to that Guy of yours."

"Oh, and I'd really rather you didn't say my nature was beautiful,"

Pauline protested. "Truthfully, Monica darling, it's a very ugly nature

indeed, and I'm afraid it's getting uglier every day."

Her sister's cloistral smile flickered upon the scene like the wan

February sunlight.

"I do hope Guy really appreciates you," was what she said.

"See how the sparrows have pulled the crocuses into ribbons," Pauline

exclaimed. And so that Monica could not talk to her any more, she hailed

her father, who was wandering along towards the house on the other side

of the lawn. When he sauntered across to them she pointed out the

destructiveness of the sparrows.

"Ah, well, my dear," he chuckled, "most florists are worse."

"Perhaps _I'm_ a florist," Monica whispered, "and Guy may be only a

mischievous sparrow."

Pauline smiled at Monica and took her arm gratefully and affectionately.

"We shall have all the daffs gone before we know where we are," said the

Rector. "Maximus is out under the oaks. And King Alfred is just going to

turn down his buds."

"Dear King Alfred," said Pauline. "How glad I shall be to say good

morning to him again!"

Yes, all the daffodils would soon be here and then gone; and beyond this

austere afternoon already she could fancy a smell of March winds.

After Monica's question it was no longer possible for Pauline when she

was alone to avoid facing the problem of Guy's attitude towards

religion. The repression of her anxiety on this point had only increased

the force of it when it was set free like this to compete with, and, in

fact, overshadow all other cares. Looking back to her earliest thoughts

of the world as it would one day affect herself, she remembered how, if

she had ever imagined some one in love with her, she had always created

a figure whose faith would be an eternal and joyful contemplation. She

had never invented for herself a marriage with some one merely

good-looking or rich or endowed with any of the romantic attributes that

young girls were supposed to award their ideals, as her cousins would

say, of men. When Guy entered her life, the only gift he brought her for

which she was at all prepared was the conviction of his faith. This

indeed was his spiritual and mental reality for her; the rest of him

was a figment, a dream that might pass suddenly away. The visit of his

father had given her a more clearly defined assurance of his existence

on earth, but his faith had been the heart of the immortal substance of

her love for Guy. The endlessness of their union was always present in

her thoughts, the ultimate consolation of whatever delays they might be

called upon to endure. Very often, even at the beginning of the

engagement, Guy had frightened her sometimes by his indifference to

immortality--sometimes by his harping upon the swift flight of youth,

sometimes by his manifest indulgence of her creed. All these doubts,

however, of his sympathy were allayed by his apparently deliberate

pleasure in worship. She was angry with herself then for her mistrust of

him, and her contentment had been perfect when in church he knelt beside

her on that birthday of his, that day of their avowed betrothal, and on

all those other occasions when he had given an outward proof of his

faith. Now as she looked back on his absence from church lately, she

could not but wonder whether all his attendance had not been a kind of

fair-weather spoiling of her that could not withstand the least stress

of worldly circumstance. She began to torment herself over every light

remark that might have been a sneer and to look forward dreadfully to

Guy's abrupt declaration of a profound disbelief in everything she held

most sacred. His cleverness, as he hated her to call it, intervened and

seemed to wrench them asunder; and the more she pondered his behavior,

the more she became convinced that all the time Guy's religion had

merely been Guy's kindness. This discovery was not to make her love him

less; but it did throw upon her the responsibility of the knowledge that

he had nothing within himself to fortify his soul, should mishap destroy

his worldly confidence.

For a long time Pauline lay awake in the darkness, fretting herself on

account of Guy's resourcelessness of spirit, and to her imagination

concentrated on this regard of him every hour seemed to make his

solitude more terrible. Of her own religion she did not think, and

Monica's anxiety about their agreement after marriage was without the

least hint of danger. The possibility of any one's, even Guy's,

influencing her own faith was inconceivable; nor was she at all occupied

with her own disappointment at not finding Guy constant to her belief in

him. Pauline's one grief was for him, that now when things were going

badly he should be without spiritual hope. Suddenly her warm bed seemed

to her wrong and luxurious in comparison with the chill darkness she

imagined about Guy's soul at this moment. Impulsively she threw back the

sheets and knelt down beside the bed to pray for his peace. So vividly

was she conscious of the need for prayer that she was carried to

undreamed-of heights of supplication, to strange summits whereon it

seemed that if she could not pray she would never know how to pray

again. Ordinarily her devotions had been but a beautiful and simple end

or beginning of the day; they were associated with the early warmth of

the sunlight or with the gentle flutters of roosting birds; they were

the comforting and tangible pledges of a childhood not yet utterly

departed. Now the fires and ecstasies of a more searching faith had

seized Pauline. No longer did there pass before her eyes a procession of

gay-habited saints, glad celestial creatures that smiled down upon her

from a paradise not much farther away than the Rectory garden; no longer

did she find herself surrounded by the well-loved figures who when death

took her to them would hold out their arms in actual welcome and whom

she would recognize one by one. To-night these visions were

uncapturable, and beyond the darkness they had forsaken stretched a

terrifying void and beyond the void was nothing but light that seemed to

have the power of thinking, "I am Truth!" A speck in that void she saw

Guy spinning away from her, and it seemed that unless she prayed he

would be spun irremediably out of her consciousness. It seemed that the

fierceness of her prayer was like the fierceness of a flame that was

granted the power to sustain him, for when sometimes the tongues of fire

languished Guy would sink so far that only by summoning fresh force from

the light beyond could she bring him back. Gradually, however, her power

was waning, and with whatever desperate force she prayed he could never

be brought back to the point from which he had last slipped. He was

spinning away into a horror of blackness....

"O Holy Ghost, save him!" she cried. Then Pauline fainted, and wondered

to find herself lying upon the cold floor when she woke as from a dream.

Yet it was not like the gasping rescue of oneself from a nightmare, for

she lay awake a long while afterwards in peace, and she slept as if upon

a victory and very early in the morning went to church.

The days when the thrushes sang matins were come, and all the way she

heard freshets of holy song pouring down through the air. She and her

family always knelt apart from one another, and this morning Pauline

chose a place hidden from the others, a place where she could lean her

cheek against a pillar and be soothed by the cool touch of the stone

like the assurance of unfathomable and maternal love. Now to her calm

spirit returned the vision of those happy heavenly creatures, the

bright-suited and intimate companions of her childhood. They welcomed

her this morning and thronged about her downcast eyes with many angels,

too, that like Tobit's angel, walked by her side. Only her father's

mellow voice spoke from the chancel of earth, and even he in his violet

chasuble took his place among the saints, and when she went up to the

altar Heaven was once again very near to her.

In the morning coolness it was almost impossible to believe that last

night she had fainted, and she began to believe the whole experience had

been a dream's agony. However, whether it were or not, she had made up

her mind to ask Guy a direct question this afternoon. If, as she feared,

he was feeling hostile to religion, she would accept the warning of the

night and give all her determination to prayer for his faith to return.

When they were together, it was for a long time impossible to begin the

subject, and it was not until Guy asked what was making her so

abstracted that Pauline could ask why he never came to church any more.

In the pause before he answered she suffered anew the torment of that

struggle in the darkness.

"Does it worry you when I don't come?" he asked.

"Well, yes, it does rather."

"Then, of course, I will come," said Guy, at once.

Now this was exactly the reason for which least of all she wanted him to

come, and a trace of her mortification may have been visible, because he

asked immediately if that did not please her.

"Guy, don't you want to come to church? You used to come happily, didn't

you?"

"I think I came chiefly to be near you," he said.

"That does make me so unhappy. I'd almost rather you came out of

politeness to Father."

"Well, that was another reason," Guy admitted.

"And you never came because you wanted to?" she asked, miserably.

"Of course I wanted to."

"But because you believed?"

"In what?"

"Oh, Guy, don't be so cruel. Don't you believe in anything?"

"I believe in you," he said. "Pauline, I believe in you so passionately

that when I am with you I believe in what you believe."

"Then you haven't any faith?"

"I want to have it," said Guy. "If God won't condescend to give it to me

..." he broke off with a shrug.

"But religion is either true or it isn't true, and if it isn't true why

do you encourage me in lies?" she demanded, with desperate entreaty.

"I'm ready to believe," he said.

"How can you expect to have faith if your reason for it is merely to sit

next me in church?" she asked, bitterly.

"Now, I think it's you who are being cruel," said Guy.

"I don't care. I don't care if I am cruel. You'll break my heart."

"Good God!" Guy exclaimed. "Haven't I enough to torment me without

religion appearing upon the scene? If you want me to hate it.... No,

Pauline, I'm sorry ... you mustn't think that I don't long to have your

faith. If I only could.... Oh, Pauline, Pauline!"

She yielded to his consolation, and when he told her of the poems sent

back almost by return of post from the second publisher she must open

wide her compassionate arms. Nevertheless, he had somehow maltreated

their love; and Pauline was aware of a wild effort to prepare for

sorrow, whether near at hand or still far off she did not know, but she

seemed to hear it like a wind rising at sunset.