JUNE

Michael Fane stayed on into June, and the fancy came to Pauline that he

knew of these meetings with Guy at night. It enraged her with jealousy

to think that he might have been taken into Guy's confidence so far, and

the prejudice against him grew more violent every day. She already had

enough regrets for having given way to Guy's persuasion, and the memory

of that last return at dawn to her cool, reproachful room haunted her

more bitterly when she thought of its no longer being a secret. The

knowledge that Guy was soon going to leave Plashers Mead was another

torment, for though in a way she was glad of his wanting to make the

determined effort, she could not help connecting the resolve with his

friend's visit, and in consequence of this her one desire was to upset

the plan. The sight of Richard and Margaret progressing equably towards

their marriage early in August also made her jealous, and she began

unreasonably to ascribe to her sister an attitude of superiority that

she allowed to gall her; and whenever Richard was praised by any of the

family she could never help feeling now that the praise covered or

implied a corresponding disparagement of Guy. With Monica she nearly

quarreled over religion, for though in her heart it occupied the old

Supreme place, her escapades at night, by the tacit leave they seemed to

give Guy to presume that religion no longer counted as her chief

resource, had led her for the first time to make herself appear

outwardly indifferent. In fact, she now dreaded going to church, because

she felt that if she once surrendered to the holy influence she would

suffer again all the remorse of the Winter, that now by desperate

deferment she was able for a little while to avoid. On top of all this

vexation of soul she was angry with Guy because he seemed unable to

realize that they were both walking on the edge of an abyss, and that

all this abandonment of themselves to the joy of the fugitive season was

a vain attempt to cheat fate. At such an hour she was naturally jealous

that a friend's private affairs should occupy so much of Guy's

attention, when he himself was walking blindly towards the doom of their

love that now sometimes in flashes of horrible clarity she beheld at

hand. Guy, however, persisted in trying to force Michael upon her; the

jealousy such attempts fostered made her more passionate when she was

alone with him, and this, as all the while she dreadfully foresaw,

heaped up the reckoning that her conscience would presently have to pay.

One afternoon she and Margaret and Monica went to tea at Plashers Mead,

when to her sharp annoyance she found herself next to Guy's friend. She

made up her mind at the beginning of the conversation that he was

criticizing her, and, feeling shy and awkward, she could only reply to

him in gasps and monosyllables and blushes. He seemed to her the coldest

person she had ever known; he seemed utterly without emotion or

sympathy; he must surely be the worst friend imaginable for Guy. He took

no interest in anything, apparently; and then suddenly he definitely

revealed himself as the cause of Guy's ambition to conquer London.

"I think Guy ought to go away from here," he was saying. "I told him

when he first took this house that he would be apt to dream away all his

time here. You must make him give it up, Miss Grey. He's such an

extraordinarily brilliant person that it would be terrible if he let

himself do nothing in the end. Of course, he's been lucky to meet you,

and that's kept him alive, but now he ought to go to London. He really

ought."

Pauline hated herself for the way in which she was gasping out her

monosyllabic agreement with all this; but she did not feel able to argue

with Michael Fane. He disconcerted her by his air of severe judgment,

and however hard she tried she could not contradict him. Then suddenly

in a rage with herself and with him, she began to talk nonsense at the

top of her voice, rattling on until her sisters looked up at her in

surprise, while Michael, evidently embarrassed, scarcely answered. At

last the uncomfortable visit came to an end, and as she walked back with

Guy, while the others went in front, she began to inveigh against the

friend more fiercely than ever.

"My dear, I can't think why you have him to stay with you. He hates your

being engaged to me...."

"Oh, nonsense!" Guy interrupted, rather crossly.

"He does, he does; and he hates your staying down here. He says Plashers

Mead is ruining you, and that you ought to go to London. Now, you see, I

know why you want to go there."

"Really, Pauline, you're talking nonsense. I'm going to London because

I'm positive that your father and mother both think I ought to go. And

I'm positive myself that I ought to go. I've been wrong to stay here all

this time. I've done nothing to help forward our marriage. Look how

nervous and ... how nervous and overwrought you've become. It's all my

fault."

"How I hate that friend of yours!"

Guy looked up in astonishment at the fervor of her tone.

"And how he hates me," she went on.

"Oh, really, my dear child, you are ridiculous," Guy exclaimed,

petulantly. "Are you going to take up this attitude towards all my

friends? You're simply horridly jealous, that's the whole matter."

Pauline did not quarrel now, because she thought it might gratify

Michael Fane to see the discord he had created, but she treasured up

her anger and knew that, when later she and Guy were alone, she would

say whatever hard things now rested unsaid. Next morning Guy asked her

if she would be very cross to hear that he was going to town for a

night.

"With your friend?" she asked.

He nodded, and she turned away from him clouded blue eyes.

"It _is_ unfair of you to hate Michael," he pleaded. "I told him you

thought he was cold, and he said at once, 'Do tell her I'm not cold, and

say how lovely I think her.' He said you were very lovely and strange

... a fairy's child."

Still Pauline would not turn her head.

"I told him that you were indeed a fairy's child," Guy went on, "and I

told him how sometimes I felt I should go off my head with the

responsibility your happiness was to me. For indeed, Pauline, it is, it

is a responsibility."

She felt she must yield when Guy spoke like that, but then,

unfortunately, he began to talk about his friend again, and sullen

jealousy returned.

"Listen, Pauline, I'm going up to town because Michael wants me to see

this girl he is going to marry. He was rather pathetic about her. It

seems that ... well ... it's a sort of misalliance, and his people are

angry about it, and really I must be loyal and go up to town and help

him with ... well ... you see, really all his friends have been

unsympathetic about her."

"I expect they've every right to be," said Pauline.

"I do think you're unreasonable. I'm only going away for a night."

"Oh, go, go, go!" she cried, and, pulling herself free of his caress,

she left him by the margin of the stream disconsolate and perplexed.

Pauline, when Guy had gone to London with his friend, began to fret

herself with the fear that he would not come back, and she was very

remorseful at the thought that if he did not she would be responsible.

She half expected to get a letter next day to tell her of his

determination to remain in town for good, and when no letter came she

exaggerated still more all her fears and longed to send him a telegram

to ask if he had arrived safely, railing at herself for having let him

leave her without knowing where he was going to stay. By the following

afternoon all the jealousy of Michael had been swallowed up in a

passionate desire for Guy's return, and when about three o'clock she saw

him coming through the wicket in the high gray wall her heart beat fast

with relief. She said not a word about Guy's journey, nor did she even

ask if his friend had come back with him. She cared for nothing but to

show by her tenderness how penitent she was for that yesterday which had

torn such a rent in the perfection of their love. Guy was visibly much

relieved to find that her jealous fit had passed away, and when she

asked for an account of his journey he gave it to her most eagerly.

"Yesterday was rather tragic," he said. "We went to see this Lily Haden

to whom Michael had engaged himself, and ... well ... it's impossible to

explain to you what happened, but it was all very horrible and rather

like a scene in a French play. Anyhow, Michael is cured of that fancy,

and now he talks of going out of England and even of becoming a monk.

These extraordinary religious fads that succeed violent emotion of an

utterly different kind! Personally I don't think the monkish phase will

survive the disillusionment that's just as much bound to happen in

religion as it was bound to happen over that girl."

"What was she like?" Pauline asked, resolving to appear interested in

Michael.

"I never saw her," said Guy. "The tragedy took place 'off' in the

Aristotelian manner."

"Oh, Guy, don't use such long words."

"Dear little thing, I wish you wouldn't ask any more about this girl.

She is something quite outside your imagination; though I could make of

her behavior such a splendid lesson for you, when you think you have

behaved dreadfully in escaping from your room for an hour or two of

moonlight. Poor Michael! he's as scrupulous as you are, and it's rather

ironical that you and he shouldn't get on. Puritans, both of you! Now

there's another friend of mine, Maurice Avery, whom you'd probably like

very much, and yet he isn't worth Michael's little finger."

"Did you see him yesterday?"

"Yes, we went round to his studio in Grosvenor Road. Oh, my dear, such a

glorious room, looking out over the river right into the face of the

young moon coming up over Lambeth. A jolly old Georgian house. And at

the back another long, low window looking out over a sea of roofs to the

sunset behind the new Roman cathedral. There were lots of people there,

and a man was playing that Brahms sonata your mother likes so much.

Pauline, you and I simply must go and live in Chelsea or Westminster,

and we can come back to Plashers Mead after the most amazing adventures.

You would be such a rose on a London window-sill, or would you then be a

tuft of London Pride, all blushes and bravery?"

"Bravery! Why I'm frightened to death by the idea of going to live in

London! Oh, Guy, I'm frightened of anything that will break into our

life here."

"But, dearest, we can't stay at Wychford for ever doing nothing. Read

'The Statue and the Bust' if you want to understand the dread that lies

cold on my heart sometimes. Think how already nearly twenty months have

gone by since we met, and still we are in the same position. We know

each other better, and we are more in love than ever, but you have all

sorts of worries at the back of your mind, and I have all sorts of

ambitions not yet fulfilled. Michael has at last managed to make a

complete ass of himself, but what have I done?"

"Your poems ... your poems," she murmured, despairingly. "Are your

poems really no use? Oh, Guy, that seems such a cruel thing to believe."

Guy talked airily of what much more wonderful things he was going to

write, and when he asked Pauline to meet him this very midnight on the

river she had to consent, because in the thought that he appeared to be

drifting out of reach of her love she felt half distraught and would

have sacrificed anything to keep him by her.

The June evening seemed of a sad, uniform green, for the blossom of the

trees was departed and the borders were not yet marching in Midsummer

array. There was always a sadness about these evenings of early June, a

sadness, and sometimes a threat when the wind blew loudly among the

young foliage. Those gusty eves were almost preferable to this

protracted and luminous melancholy in which the sinking crescent of the

moon hung scarcely more bright than ivory. The pensive beauty was too

much for Pauline, who wished that she could shut out the obstinate day

and read by candle-light such a book as _Alice in Wonderland_ until it

was time to go to bed. Her white fastness, rose-bloomed by sunset as she

dressed for dinner, reproached her intention of abandoning its shelter

to-night, and she determined that this should really be the last

escapade. There was no harm in what she had done, of course, as Guy

assured her, and yet there was harm in behaving so traitorously towards

that narrow white bed, towards pious, wide-eyed Saint Ursula and Tobit's

companionable angel.

The languor of the evening was heavy upon all the family; Monica was the

only one who had the energy to go to her instrument. She played Chopin,

and the austerity of her method made the ballads and the nocturnes more

dangerously sweet. Gradually the melodies lulled most of Pauline's fears

and charmed her to look forward eagerly to the velvet midnight when she

with Guy beside her would float deep into such caressing glooms. After

Monica had played them all into drowsiness, Pauline had to wait until

the last sound had died away in the house and the illumination of the

last window had faded from the bodeful night that was stroking her

window with invitation to come forth.

Twelve o'clock clanged from the belfry, and Pauline opened her bedroom

door to listen. She had put on her white frieze coat, for although the

night was warm, the wearing of such outdoor garb gave a queer kind of

propriety to the whole business, and at the far end of the long corridor

she saw herself in the dim candle-light mirrored like a ghost in the

Venetian glass. From the heart of the house the cuckoo calling midnight

a minute or two late made her draw back in alarm, and not merely in

alarm, but also rather sentimentally, as if by her action she were going

to offend that innocent bird of childhood. She wondered why to-night she

felt so sensitive beforehand, since usually the regret had followed her

action; but promising herself that to-night should indeed be the last

time she would ever take this risk, she crept on tip-toe down the

stairs.

In the glimmering starshine Pauline could see Guy standing by the wicket

in the high gray wall, a remote and spectral form against the blackness

all around him, where the invisible trees gathered and hoarded the

gloom. She sighed with relief to find that the arms with which so gently

he enfolded her were indeed warm with life. Her passage over the lawn

had been one long increasing fear that the shape, so indeterminate and

motionless, that awaited her approach, might not be Guy in life, but a

wan image of what he had been, a demon lover, a shadow from the cave of

death.

"Guy, my darling, my darling, it is you! Oh, I was so frightened that

when I came close you wouldn't really be there."

She leaned half sobbing upon his shoulder.

"Pauline, don't talk so loud. I only did not come across the lawn to

meet you for fear of attracting attention."

"Let me go back now," she begged, "now that I've seen you."

But Guy soon persuaded her to come with him through the wicket and out

over the paddock where the grass whispered in their track, until at the

sight of the canoe's outline she lost her fears and did not care how

recklessly she explored the deeps of the night.

In silence they traveled up-stream under the vaulted willows; under the

giant sycamore whose great roots came writhing out of the darkness above

the sheen of the water; under Wychford bridge whose cold breath dripped

down in icy beads upon the thick swirl beneath; and then out through

starshine across the mill-pool. Pauline held her breath while around

their course was a sound of water sucking at the vegetation, gurgling

and lapping and chuckling against the invisible banks.

"The Abbey stream?" murmured Guy.

She scarcely breathed her consent, and the canoe tore the growing sedge

like satin as it bumped against the slope of the bank. Pauline felt that

she was protesting with her real self against the part she was playing

in this dream; but the dream became too potent, and she had to help Guy

to push the canoe up through the grass and down again into the quiet

water beyond. It was much blacker here on account of the overhanging

beeches, but continually Pauline strained through the darkness for a

sight of the deserted house, the windows of which seemed to follow with

blank and bony gaze their progress.

"Guy, let's hurry, for I can see the Abbey in the starlight," she

exclaimed.

"You have better eyes than mine if you can," he laughed. "My sweet, your

face from where I'm sitting is as filmy as a rose at dusk. And even if

you can see the Abbey, what does it matter? Do you think it's going to

run down the hill and swim after us?"

Pauline tried to laugh, but even that grotesque picture of his evoked a

new terror, and, huddled among the cushions, she sat with beating

heart, shuddering when the leaves of the great beech-trees fondled her

hair. She looked back to her own white fastness and began to wonder if

she had left the candle burning there; it seemed to her that she had,

and that perhaps presently, perhaps even now, somebody was coming to see

why it was burning. And still Guy took her farther up the stream. How

empty her room would look, and what a chill would fall upon the sister

or mother that peeped in.

"Oh, take me back!" she cried.

But still the canoe cleft the darkness and now, emerging from the

cavernous trees, they glided once again into starshine infinitely

outspread, through which with the dim glister of a snake the stream

coiled and uncoiled itself.

Guy grasped at the reeds and drew the canoe close against the bank,

making it fast with two paddles plunged into the mud. Then he gathered

her to him so that her head rested upon his shoulder and her lips could

meet his. Thus enfolded for a long while she lay content. The candle in

her room burned itself out and nothing could disturb her absence, no one

could suppose that she was here on this starlit river. Scarcely, indeed,

was she here except as in the midway of deepest sleep, resting between a

dream and a dream. She might have stayed unvexed for ever if Guy had not

begun to talk, for although at first his voice came softly and

pleasantly out of the night and lulled her like a tune heard faintly in

some far-off corner of the mind, minute by minute his accents became

more real; suddenly, as her drowsed arm slid over the edge of the canoe

into the water, she woke and began herself to talk and, as she talked,

to shrink again from the vision of her whole life whether past or

present or to come.

In this malicious darkness she wanted to hear more about that girl who

had betrayed Michael Fane; she wanted to know things that before she had

not even known were hidden. She pressed Guy with questions, and when he

would not answer them she began to feel jealous even of unrevealed sin.

This girl was the link between all those girls at whose existence in his

own past Guy had once hinted. Michael Fane appeared like the tempter and

Guy like his easy prey. Distortions of the most ordinary, the most

trifling incidents piled themselves upon her imagination; and that visit

to London assumed a ghastly and impenetrable mysteriousness.

Guy vainly tried to laugh away her fancies; faster and still faster the

evil cohorts swept up against her, almost as tangible as bats flapping

into her face.

"Don't talk so loud," said Guy, crossly. "Do remember where we are."

Then she reproached him with having brought her here. She felt that he

deserved to pay the penalty, and defiantly she was talking louder and

louder until Guy, with feverish strokes, urged the canoe down-stream

towards home.

"For God's sake, keep quiet!" he begged. "What has happened to you?"

That he should be frightened by her violence made her more angry. She

threw at him the wildest accusations, how that through him she had

ceased to believe in God, to care for her family, for her honor, for

him, for life itself.

"Pauline, will you keep quiet? Are you mad to behave like this?"

He drove the canoe into a thorn-bush, so that it should not upset, and

he seized her wrist so roughly that she thought she screamed. There was

something splendid in that scream being able to disquiet the night, and

in an elation of woe she screamed again.

"Do you know what you're doing?" he demanded.

She found herself asking Guy if she were screaming, and when she knew

that at last she could hurt him, she screamed more loudly.

"You used to laugh at me when I said I might go mad," she cried. "Now do

you like it? Do you like it?"

"Pauline, I beg you to keep quiet. Pauline, think of your people. Will

you promise to keep quiet if I take you out of this thorn-bush?"

He began to laugh not very mirthfully, and that he could laugh

infuriated her so much that she was silent with rage, while Guy

disentangled the canoe from the thorn-bush and more swiftly than before

urged it towards home.

When they reached the grassy bank that divided the Abbey stream from the

mill-pool, she would not get out of the canoe to walk to the other side.

"I cannot cross that pool," she said. "Guy, don't ask me to. I've been

afraid of it always. If we cross it to-night, I shall drown myself."

He tried to argue with her. He pleaded with her, he railed at her, and

finally he laughed at her, until she got out and watched him launch the

canoe on the farther side and beckon through the tremulous sheen to her.

Wildly she ran down the steep bank and flung herself into the water.

"Where am I? Guy, where am I?"

"Well, at present you're lying on the grass, but where you've been or

where I've been this last five minutes.... Pauline, are you yourself

again?"

"Guy, my dearest, my dearest, I don't know why...." She burst into

tears. "My dearest, how wet you are," she sobbed, stroking his drenched

sleeve.

"Well, naturally," he said, with a short laugh. "Look here, it was all

my fault for bringing you out, so don't get into a state of mind about

yourself, but you can't go back in the canoe. My nerves are still too

shaky. I can lift you over the wall behind the mill, and we must go back

to the Rectory across the street. Come, my Pauline, you're wet, you

know. Oh, my own, my sweet, if I could only uncount the hours."

Pauline would never have reached home but for Guy's determination. It

was he who guided her past the dark entries, past the crafty windows of

Rectory Lane, past the menacing belfry, past the trees of the Rectory

drive. By the front door he asked her if she dared go up-stairs alone.

"I will wait on the lawn until I see your candle alight," he promised.

She kissed him tragically and crept in. Her room was undisturbed, but in

the looking-glass she saw a dripping ghost, and when she held her candle

to the window another ghost vanished slowly into the high gray wall. A

cock crowed in the distance, and through the leaves of the wistaria

there ran a flutter of waking sparrows.