The wedding of Richard and Margaret dreamed of for so long strung
Pauline to a pitch of excitement that made her seem never more
positively herself. She was conscious, as she gazed in the mirror on
that Lammas morning, that the tired look at the back of her eyes had
gone and that in her muslin dress sown with rosebuds she appeared
exactly as she ought to have appeared in any prefiguration of herself in
bridesmaid's attire. Feeling as she did in a way the principal architect
of Richard's and Margaret's happiness, she was determined at whatever
cost of dejection afterwards to bring to the completion of her design
all the enthusiasm she had brought to its conception.
"Do you like me as a bridesmaid?" she asked Guy.
And he, with obviously eager welcome of the old Pauline, could not find
enough words to say how much he liked her.
"Richard, of course, is wearing a tail-coat," she murmured.
"I sha'n't," he whispered, "when we are married. I shall wear tweeds,
and you shall wear your white frieze coat ... the one in which I first
saw you. How little you've changed in these two years!"
"Have I? I think I've changed such a lot. Oh, Guy, such a tremendous
lot!"
He shook his head.
"My rose, if all roses could stay like you, what a world of roses it
would be."
The wedding happened as perfectly as Pauline had imagined it would.
Margaret looked most beautiful with her slim white satin gown and her
weight of dusky hair, while Richard marched about stiff and awkward, yet
so radiant that almost more than any one it was he who inspired the
ceremony with hymeneal triumph and carried it beyond the soilure of
unmeaning tears, he and Pauline, whose laughter was the expression of
the joyous air, since Margaret was too deeply occupied with herself to
cast a single questioning look.
In the evening, when the diminished family sat in the drawing-room
without going up-stairs to music, as a matter of course, Monica
announced abruptly that at the end of the month she was going to be a
novice in one of the large Anglican sisterhoods. It seemed as if she had
most deliberately taken advantage of the general reaction in order that
nobody might have the heart to combat her intention. Pauline and Mrs.
Grey gasped, but they had no arguments to bring forward against the
idea, and when Monica had outlined the plan in her most precise manner
they simply acquiesced in the decision as immutable.
That night, as Pauline lay awake with the excitement of the wedding
still throbbing in her brain, the future from every side began to assail
her fancy. It seemed to her since Margaret's marriage and Monica's
decision to be a nun that she must be more than ever convinced of her
absolute necessity to Guy's existence. Unless she were assured of this
she had no right to leave her father and mother. No doubt at least a
year would pass before she and Guy could be married, but, nevertheless,
her decision must be made at once. He had not seemed to depend upon her
so much when he was in London; his letters had no longer contained those
intimate touches that formerly assured her of the intertwining of their
lives. But it was not merely a question of letters, this attitude of
his that latterly was continually being more sharply defined. Somewhere
their love had diverged, and whereas formerly she had always been able
to comfort herself with the certainty that between them love was exactly
equal, now instead she could not help fancying that she loved him more
than he loved her. It would, of course, be useless to ask him the
question directly, for he would evade an answer by declaring it was
prompted by unreasonable jealousy. Yet was her jealousy so very
unreasonable, and if it were unreasonable was not that another reason
against their marriage?
Pauline tried to search in the past of their love for the occasion of
the divergence. It must be her own fault. It was she who had often
behaved foolishly and impetuously, who had always supposed that her
mother and sisters knew nothing about love, who had been to Guy all
through their engagement utterly useless. It was she who had stopped his
becoming a schoolmaster to help his father, it was she who had
discouraged him from accepting that post in Persia. As Pauline looked
back upon these two years she saw herself at every cross-road in Guy's
career standing to persuade him towards the wrong direction.
Then, too, recurred the dreadful problem of religion. It was she who had
not resisted his inclination to laugh at what she knew was true. It was
she who had most easily and most weakly surrendered, so that it was
natural for him to treat her faith as something more conventional than
real.
The worries surged round her like waves in the darkness, and the one
anchor of hope she still possessed was dragging ominously. Oh, if she
could but be sure that she was essential to his happiness, she would be
able to conquer everything else. The loneliness of her father and
mother, Guy's debts, the religious difficulties, the self-reproach for
those moonlit nights upon the river, the jealousy of his friends, the
fear of his poems' failure, his absence in London--all these could be
overcome if only she were sure of being vital to Guy's felicity.
A dull Summer wind sent a stir through the dry leaves of the creepers,
but the night grew hotter notwithstanding, and sleep utterly refused to
approach her room.
Next day, when Guy came round to the Rectory, Pauline was so eager to
hear the answer to her question that she would take no account of the
jaded spirit of such a day as this after a wedding, and its natural
influence on Guy's point of view.
All the afternoon, however, they helped the Rector with his bulbs, and
no opportunity of intimate conversation occurred until after tea when
they were sitting in the nursery. The wind, that last night had run with
slow tremors through the leaves, was now blowing gustily, and banks of
clouds were gathering--great clouds that made the vegetation seem all
the more dry and stale as they still deferred their drench of rain.
"Guy, I don't want to annoy you, but is it really necessary that your
poems should appear without your name?"
"Absolutely," he said, firmly.
"You don't think any of them are good?"
"Oh, some are all right, but I don't believe in them as I used to
believe in them."
"Sometimes, my dearest, you frighten me with the sudden way in which you
dispose of things.... They were important to you once, weren't they?"
"Of course. But they have outlived their date. I must do better."
She got up and went over to the window-seat, and when she spoke next she
was looking at the wicket in the high gray wall.
"Guy, could I outlive my date?"
"Oh, dearest Pauline, I do beg you not to start problems this afternoon!
Of course not."
"Are you sure? Are you sure that when you are in London you won't find
other girls more interesting than I am?"
"Even if temporarily I were interested in another girl, you may be quite
sure that she would always be second to you."
"But you might be interested?" Pauline asked, breathlessly.
"I must be free if I'm going to be an artist."
"Free?" she echoed, slowly.
The cuckoo in the passage struck seven, and Mrs. Grey came into the
nursery to invite Guy to stay to dinner. All through the meal Pauline
kept saying to herself, "free," "free," "free," and afterwards when her
mother suggested a trio in the music-room, because they could no longer
have quartets, and because soon they would not even have trios, Pauline
played upon her violin nothing but that word "free," "free," "free." In
the hall, when she kissed Guy good night, she had impulse to cling to
him and pour out all her woes; but, remembering how often lately he had
been the victim of her overwrought nerves, she let him go without an
effort. For a little while she held the door ajar so that a thin shaft
of lamplight showed his tall shape walking quickly away under the trees.
Why was he walking so quickly away from her? Oh, it was raining fast,
and she shut the door. Up-stairs in her room she wrote to him:
Guy, you must forgive me, but I cannot bear the strain of this
long engagement any more. I will go away with Miss Verney
somewhere to-morrow so that you needn't hurry away from Plashers
Mead before you intended. I meant to write you a long letter full
of everything, but there isn't any more to say.