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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Guy and Pauline, by Compton Mackenzie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: Guy and Pauline
+
+Author: Compton Mackenzie
+
+Release Date: April 28, 2012 [EBook #39556]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GUY AND PAULINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
+
+THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT
+CARNIVAL
+SINISTER STREET: VOLUME ONE
+SINISTER STREET: VOLUME TWO
+
+KENSINGTON RHYMES
+
+_First published September_ 15, 1915
+
+
+
+
+GUY AND
+PAULINE
+
+_By COMPTON MACKENZIE_
+
+LONDON: MARTIN SECKER
+
+NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI MCMXV
+
+TO
+
+GENERAL
+SIR IAN HAMILTON
+G.C.B., D.S.O.
+
+AND THE GENERAL STAFF OF THE
+MEDITERRANEAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAP.
+
+I. AUTUMN
+                                   PAGE
+
+_September: October: November_        9
+
+II. WINTER
+_December: January: February_        63
+
+III. SPRING
+_March: April: May_                 109
+
+IV. SUMMER
+_June: July: August_                167
+
+V. ANOTHER AUTUMN
+_September: October: November_      219
+
+VI. ANOTHER WINTER
+_December: January: February_       271
+
+VII. ANOTHER SPRING
+_March: April: May_                 315
+
+VIII. ANOTHER SUMMER
+_June: July: August_                359
+
+IX. EPIGRAPH
+_Guy: Pauline_                      391
+
+
+
+
+AUTUMN
+
+
+
+
+_September_
+
+
+The slow train puffed away into the unadventurous country; and the bees
+buzzing round the wine-dark dahlias along the platform were once again
+audible. The last farewell that Guy Hazlewood flung over his shoulder to
+a parting friend was more casual than it would have been, had he not at
+the same moment been turning to ask the solitary porter how many cases
+of books awaited his disposition. They were very heavy, it seemed; and
+the porter, as he led the way toward the small and obscure purgatory
+through which every package for Shipcot must pass, declared he was
+surprized to hear these cases contained merely books. He would not go so
+far as to suggest that hitherto he had never faced the existence of
+books in such quantity, for the admission might have impugned official
+omniscience; yet there was in his attitude just as much incredulity
+mingled with disdain of useless learning as would preserve his dignity
+without jeopardizing the financial compliment his services were owed.
+
+"Ah, well," he decided, as if he were trying to smooth over Guy's
+embarrassment at the sight of these large packing-cases in the
+parcel-office. "You'll want something as'll keep you busy this
+winter--for you'll be the gentleman who've come to live down Wychford
+way?"
+
+Guy nodded.
+
+"And Wychford is mortal dead in winter. Time walks very lame there, as
+they say. And all these books, I suppose, were better to come along of
+the bus to-night?"
+
+Guy looked doubtful. It was seeming a pity to waste this afternoon
+without unpacking a single case.
+
+"The trap...." he began.
+
+But the porter interrupted him firmly: he did not think Mr. Godbold
+would relish the notion of one of these packing-cases in his new trap.
+
+"I could give you a hand...." Guy began again.
+
+The porter stiffened himself against the slight upon his strength.
+
+"It's not the heffort," he asserted. "Heffort is what I must look for
+every day of my life. It's Mr. Godbold's trap."
+
+The discussion was given another turn by the entrance of Mr. Godbold
+himself. He was not at all concerned for his trap, and indeed by an
+asseverated indifference to its welfare he conveyed the impression that,
+new though it were, it was so much firewood, if the gentleman wanted
+firewood. No, the trap did not matter, but what about Mr. Hazlewood's
+knees?
+
+"Ah, there you are," said the porter, and he and Mr. Godbold both stood
+dumb in the presence of the finally insuperable.
+
+"I suppose it must be the bus," said Guy. On such a sleepy afternoon he
+could argue no longer. The books must be unpacked to-morrow; and the
+word lulled like an opiate the faint irritation of his disappointment.
+The porter's reiterated altruism was rewarded with a fee so absurdly in
+excess of anything he had done, that he began to speak of a possibility
+if after all the smallest case might not be squeezed ... but Mr. Godbold
+flicked the pony, and the trap rattled up the station road at a pace
+quite out of accord with the warmth of the afternoon. Presently he
+turned to his fare:
+
+"Mrs. Godbold said to me only this morning, she said, 'You ought to have
+had a luggage-flap behind and that I shall always say.' And she was
+right. Women is often right, what's more," the husband postulated.
+
+Guy nodded absently: he was thinking about the books.
+
+"Very often right," Mr. Godbold murmured.
+
+Still Guy paid no attention.
+
+"Very often," he repeated, but as Guy would neither contradict nor agree
+with him, Mr. Godbold relapsed into meditation upon the justice of his
+observation. The pony had settled down to his wonted pace and jogged on
+through the golden haze of fine September weather. Soon the village of
+Shipcot was left behind, and before them lay the long road winding
+upward over the wold to Wychford. Guy thought of the friend who had left
+him that afternoon and wished that Michael Fane were still with him to
+enjoy this illimitable sweep of country. He had been the very person to
+share in the excitement of arranging a new house. Guy could not remember
+that he had ever made a suggestion for which he had not been asked; nor
+could he call to mind a single occasion when his appreciation had
+failed. And now to-night, when for the first time he was going to sleep
+in his own house, his friend was gone. There had been no hint of
+departure during the six weeks of preparation they had spent together at
+the Stag Inn, and it was really perverse of Michael to rush back to
+London now. Guy jumped down from the trap, which was climbing the hill
+very slowly, and stretched his long legs. He was rather bored by his
+loneliness, but as soon as he had stated so much to himself, he was
+shocked at the disloyalty to his ambition. After all, he reassured
+himself, he was not going back to a dull inn-parlour: to-night he was
+going to sleep in an hermitage for the right to enjoy the seclusion of
+which he had been compelled to fight very hard. It was weak to imagine
+he was lonely already, and to fortify himself against this mood, he
+pulled out of his pocket his father's last letter and read it again
+while he walked up the hill behind the trap.
+
+     FOX HALL, GALTON, HANTS.
+
+     _September 10._
+
+     _Dear Guy,_
+
+     _I agree with some of what you say, but I disagree with a good deal
+     more, and I am entirely opposed to your method of procedure, which
+     is to put it very mildly rather casual. Your degree was not so good
+     as it ought to have been, but I did not reproach you, because in
+     the Consular Service you had chosen a career which did not call
+     specially for a first. At the same time you could, if you had
+     worked, have got a first quite easily. Your six months with the
+     Macedonian Relief people seems to have knocked all your consular
+     ambitions on the head rather too easily, I confess, to make me feel
+     very happy about your future. And now without consulting me you
+     take a house in the country for the purpose of writing poetry! You
+     imply in answer to my remonstrances that I am unable to appreciate
+     the 'necessity' for your step. That may be, but I cannot help
+     asking where you would be now if I at your age, instead of helping
+     my father with his school, had gone off to Oxfordshire to write
+     poetry. Perhaps I had ambitions to make a name for myself with the
+     pen. If I had, I quenched them in order to devote myself to what I
+     considered my duty. I do not reproach you for refusing to carry on
+     the school at Fox Hall. Your dear mother's last request was that I
+     should not urge you to be a schoolmaster, unless you were drawn to
+     the vocation. Her wishes I have respected, and I repeat that I am
+     not hurt at your refusal. At the same time I cannot encourage what
+     can only be described as this whim of yours to bury yourself in a
+     remote village where, having saddled yourself with the
+     responsibilities of a house, you announce your intention of living
+     by poetry! I am the last person to underestimate the value of
+     poetry, but as a livelihood it seems to me as little to be relied
+     upon as the weather. However, you are of age. You have £150 a year
+     of your own. You are with the exercise of the strictest economy
+     independent. And this brings me to the point of your last letter
+     in which you ask me to supplement your own income with an allowance
+     £150 a year from me. This inclination to depend upon your father is
+     not what I conceive to be the artist's spirit of independence. This
+     over-drawing upon your achievement fills me with dismay for the
+     future. However, since I do not wish you to begin hampered by debt
+     and as you assure me that you have spent all your own money on this
+     idiotic house, I will give you £150, to be paid in quarterly
+     instalments of £37 10s. as from the 21st of this month for one
+     year. Furthermore, at the end of next year if you find that poetry
+     is less profitable than even you expect, I will offer you a place
+     at Fox Hall, thereby securing for you the certainty of a life
+     moderately free from financial worries. After all, even a
+     schoolmaster has some spare time, and I daresay our greatest poets
+     did much of their best work in their_ spare _time. The idea of
+     writing poetry all day and every day appeals to me as enervating
+     and ostentatious._
+
+     _Your affectionate father,_
+
+     _John Hazlewood._
+
+Guy stood still when he had finished the letter, and execrated mutely
+the damnable dependence that compelled him to accept gratefully and
+humbly this gift of £150. Yet with no money of his own coming in till
+December, with actually a housekeeper on her way from Cardiff and his
+house already furnished, he must accept the offer. In a year's time he
+would have proved the reasonableness of his request; and he began to
+compose a scene between them, in which his father would almost on bended
+knees beg him to accept an allowance of £300 a year in consideration of
+the magnificent proof he had afforded to the world of being in the
+direct line of English poets.
+
+"And I mustn't forget to send him a sonnet on his birthday," said Guy to
+himself.
+
+This notion restored his dignity, and he hurried on to overtake the trap
+which was waiting on the brow of the hill.
+
+"You were saying something about women being right," he reminded Mr.
+Godbold, as he sat down again beside him. "Has it ever struck you that
+fathers are nearly always wrong?"
+
+"That wouldn't do for me at all," said Mr. Godbold, shaking his head.
+"You see I'm the father of nine, and if I wasn't always right, sir, I
+shouldn't be no better than a bull in a china-shop where I live. I've
+_got_ to be right, Mr. Hazlewood."
+
+"I suppose that's what the Pope felt," Guy murmured.
+
+"Now do you reckon this here Pope they speak of really exists in a
+manner of speaking?" Mr. Godbold asked, as the trap bowled along the
+level stretch of upland road. "You know there's some of these
+narrow-minded mortals at Wychford as will have it that Mr. Grey, our
+parson, is in with the Pope, and I said to one or two of them the other
+night while we was arguing in the post-office, I said, 'Have any of you
+wise men of Gotham ever seen this Pope as you're so knowing about?'"
+
+"And had they?" asked Guy encouragingly.
+
+"Not one of them," said Mr. Godbold. "And I thought to myself as I was
+walking up home, I thought now what if there wasn't no such thing as a
+Pope any more than there's women with fish-tails and all this rubbish
+you read of in books. If you ask my opinion of books, Mr. Hazlewood, I
+tell you that I think books is as bad for some people as wireworms is
+for carnations. They seem to regular eat into them."
+
+Guy laughed. Misgivings about the wisdom of his choice vanished, and he
+was being conscious of a very intimate pleasure in thus driving back to
+Wychford from the station. The country tossed for miles to right and
+left in great stretches of pasturage, and when Mr. Godbold pulled up for
+a moment to look at a trace, the air brilliantly dusted with autumnal
+gold seemed to endow him with the richness of its silence: along the
+sparse hedgerow chicory flowers burned with the pale intense blue of the
+September sky above, and Guy felt like them worshipful of the cloudless
+scene. The road ran along the upland for half-a-mile before it dipped
+suddenly down into the valley of the Greenrush from which the spire of
+Wychford church came delicately up into the air, like a coil of smoke
+ascending from the opalescent corona that hung over the small town
+clustered against the farther hillside. Down in that valley close to the
+church was Plashers Mead; and Guy watched eagerly for the first sight of
+his long low house. Already the sparkle of the more distant curves of
+the Greenrush was visible; but Plashers Mead was still hidden by the
+slope of the bank. Presently this broke away to a ragged hedge, and the
+house displayed itself as much an integral part of the landscape as an
+outcrop of stone.
+
+"Tasty little place," commented Mr. Godbold, while the trap jolted
+cautiously down the last twist of the hilly road. "But I reckon old
+Burrows was glad to let it. You're young though, and I daresay you won't
+mind being flooded out in winter. Two years ago Burrows's son's wife's
+nephew was floating paper boats in the front hall. But you're young, and
+I daresay you'll enjoy it."
+
+The pony swept round the corner and pulled up with a jerk at the wooden
+gateway in the grey wall overhung by lime-trees that concealed from the
+high road the moist fields and garden of Plashers Mead.
+
+"I'm sleeping here to-night, you know, for the first time," said Guy. He
+had tried all the way back not to make this announcement, but the sight
+of his own gateway destroyed his reserve.
+
+"Well, you'll have a fine night, that's one good job," Mr. Godbold
+predicted.
+
+"And the moon only just past the full," said Guy.
+
+"That's right," Mr. Godbold agreed; and the tenant passed through the
+gateway into the garden where every path had its own melody of running
+water. He examined with proprietary solicitude the espaliers of
+apple-trees and admired for the twentieth time the pledge they offered
+by their fantastic forms of his garden's antiquity. He pinched several
+pippins that seemed ripe, but they were still hard; and he could find
+nothing over which to exert his lordship, until he saw by the edge of
+the path a piece of groundsel. Having solemnly exterminated the weed,
+Guy felt that the garden must henceforth recognize him as master, and he
+walked on through a mass of dropsical cabbages and early kale until he
+came face to face with the house, the sudden view of which like this
+never failed to give him a peculiar pleasure. The tangled garden, long
+and narrow, was bounded on the right, as one entered, by the Greenrush,
+over which hung a thicket of yews that completely shut out the first
+straggling houses of Wychford. On the left the massed espaliers ended
+abruptly in a large water-meadow reaching to the foot of the hill along
+which the high road climbed in a slow diagonal. By the corner of the
+house the garden had narrowed to the apex of a thin triangle, so that
+the windows looked out over the water-meadow and, beyond, up the wide
+valley of the Greenrush to where the mighty western sky rested on
+rounded hills. At this apex the Greenrush flung a tributary stream to
+wash the back of the house and one side of the orchard, whence it wound
+in extravagant curves towards the easterly valley. The main branch,
+dammed up to form a deep and sluggish mill-stream, flowed straight on,
+dividing Guy's domain from the churchyard. At the end of the orchard on
+this side was a lock-gate through which a certain amount of water
+continuously escaped from the mill-stream, enough indeed to make the
+orchard an island, as it trickled in diamonded shallows to reinforce the
+idle tributary. Somewhere in the farther depths of the eastern valley
+all vagrant waters were united, and somewhere still more remote they
+came to a confluence with their father the Thames.
+
+Guy sat upon the parapet of the well under the shade of a sycamore tree
+and regarded with admiration and satisfaction the exterior of his house.
+He looked at the semi-circular porch of stone over the front-door and
+venerated the supporting cherubs who with puffed-out cheeks had blown
+defiance at wind and rain since the days of Elizabeth. He counted the
+nine windows, five above and four below, populating with the shapes of
+many friends the rooms they lightened. He looked at the steep roof of
+grey stone-tiles rich with the warm golden green of mossy patterns. He
+looked at the four pear-trees against the walls of the house barren now
+for many years. He looked at himself in silhouette against the silver
+sky of the well-water; and then he went indoors.
+
+The big stone-paved hall was very cool, and the sound of the stream at
+the back came babbling through lattices open to the light of a green
+world. Guy could not make up his mind whether the inside of the house
+smelt very dry or very damp, for there clung about it that odour
+peculiar to rustic age, which may be found equally in dry old barns and
+in damp potting-sheds. He wished he could furnish the hall worthily. At
+present it contained only a high-back chair, an alleged contemporary of
+Cromwell, which was doddering beside the hooded fireplace; a
+warming-pan; and an oak-chest which remained a chest only so long as
+nobody either sat upon it or lifted the lid. There was also a
+grandfather-clock which had suffered an abrupt resurrection of four
+minutes' duration when it was recently lifted out of the furniture-van,
+but had now relapsed into the silence of years. Leading out of the hall
+was a small empty room which had been dedicated to the possession of his
+friend Michael Fane: together they had planned to paper it with gold and
+paint the ceiling black. Michael, however, had still another year at
+Oxford, and the room with an obelisk of lining-paper standing upright on
+the bare floor was now a little desolate. On the other side of the hall
+was the dining-room which Guy, by taxing his resources, had managed to
+furnish very successfully. It was a square room painted emerald-green
+above the white wainscot. Two inset cupboards were filled with glass and
+china: there were four Chippendale chairs and an oval Sheraton table,
+curtains of purple silk, some old English watercolours and two
+candlesticks of Sheffield plate. Beyond the dining-room was the kitchen,
+the corridor to which was endowed with a swinging baize-door considered
+by the landlord to be the finest feature of the house. The problem of
+equipping the kitchen had seemed insoluble until Guy heard of a sale in
+the neighbourhood. He had bicycled over to this and bought the contents
+of the large kitchen at auction. The result was that the dresser
+encroached upon the table, that the table had one leg in the fender and
+that a row of graduated dish-covers, the largest of which would have
+sheltered two turkeys, occupied whatever space was left. All that
+remained of Guy's own money had been invested in his kitchen, and he
+accounted for the large size of everything by the fact of the auction's
+having been held in the open air, where everything had looked so much
+smaller. Now, as he contemplated dubiously the result, he wondered what
+Miss Peasey would say to it. She and the books would arrive together at
+half-past nine to-night. He hoped his unknown housekeeper would not be
+irritated by these dish-covers, and as a precautionary measure he
+unhooked the largest, carried it upstairs and deposited it on the floor
+of an unfurnished bedroom. The staircase ran steep and straight up from
+the hall into a long corridor with more casements opening on the orchard
+behind. The bedroom at one end was dedicated to the hope of Michael
+Fane's occupation and was always referred to in letters as his: '_By the
+way I put the largest dish-cover in your bedroom_.' The next two
+bedrooms were also empty and belonged in spirit to the friends with whom
+Guy had lived during his last year at Oxford. The fourth was his own,
+very simply and sparsely furnished in comparison with the bedroom up in
+the roof which was intended for Miss Peasey. The preparation of that for
+an elderly unmarried woman had involved a certain voluptuousness of rep
+and fumed oak and heavily decorated china, the fruit of the second-best
+bedroom in the house of the dish-covers. As Guy went up the crooked
+stairs and knocked his head on three successive beams, he hoped Miss
+Peasey would not be as disproportionately large as the kitchen dresser.
+Her handwriting had been spidery enough, and he pictured her hopefully
+as small and wizened. Miss Peasey's bower with the big dormer window
+surveying the tree-tops of the orchard was certainly a success, and Guy
+saw that Michael had with happy intuition of female aspiration hung on
+the wall opposite her bed a large steel-engraving of Doré's Martyrs,
+which had been included with two hammocks and a fishing-rod in one of
+the odd lots lightly bid for at the auction. There did not seem anything
+else she could want; so, having killed a bluebottle with a tartan
+pincushion, he came downstairs.
+
+Guy had left his own room to the last, partly because he regretted so
+much the delay in the arrival of those books and partly because, however
+inadequately equipped was the rest of the house, this room was always
+the final justification of his tenancy. It was a larger room than any of
+the others, for the corridor did not cut off its share of the back. It
+possessed, in addition to the usual window looking out over the western
+side of the valley, a very large bay which hung right over the stream,
+with a view of the orchard, of the church-steeple, of the water-meadows
+beyond and of the wold rolling across the horizon. This morning Michael
+and he had pushed the furniture into place, had set in order the great
+wicker chairs and nailed against the wall the frames of green canvas.
+The floor was covered with a sweet-smelling mat of Abingdon rushes; and
+the curtains of his old rooms in Balliol were hung in place, dim green
+curtains sown with golden fleurs-de-lys. The ivory image of an emaciated
+saint standing on the mantelshelf between candlesticks of old wrought
+iron was probably a Spanish Virgin, but Guy preferred to say she was
+Saint Rose of Lima because '_O Rose of Lima_' seemed a wonderful
+apostrophe to begin a poem. Nothing indeed remained for the room's
+perfection but to fill the new bookshelves on either side of the
+fireplace. Why had he not hired a cart in Shipcot? They would have been
+here by now, and he would actually have been able to begin work
+to-night, setting thus a noble period to these last six weeks of
+preparation.
+
+Guy dragged a chair into the bay window and, balancing his long legs on
+the sill, he made numerous calculations in which Miss Peasey's wages,
+the weekly bills for food, and the number of times he would have to go
+up to London were set against £150 a year. When he woke up, the
+lime-trees that bordered the high road had flung their shadows half-way
+across the meadow, and the air was a fume of golden gnats against the
+dipping sun. Within ten minutes the sun vanished, and the mists began to
+rise. Guy, feeling rather chilly and ashamed of himself for falling
+asleep, rose hurriedly and went up into the town. He interviewed the
+driver of the omnibus and told him to look out for his books, and as an
+afterthought he mentioned the arrival of Miss Peasey. He wished now he
+had written and told his housekeeper to spend the night in Oxford; and
+he hoped she would not be prejudiced against Plashers Mead by a
+five-mile drive in a cold omnibus after her tiring journey from Cardiff.
+He dawdled about the steep village street for a while, gossiping with
+tradesmen at their doors and watching the warmth fade out of the grey
+houses in the falling dusk. Then he went to eat his last meal in the
+Stag Inn.
+
+After supper Guy returned to Plashers Mead, wandering round the house,
+dropping a great deal of candle-grease everywhere and working himself up
+into a state of anxiety over Miss Peasey's advent. It would be terrible
+if she demanded her fare back to Wales the moment she arrived; and to
+propitiate her he put the best lamp in the kitchen, whence (as with such
+illumination it looked more than ever protuberant) he took another
+dish-cover up to Michael's bedroom. Since it was still but a few minutes
+after eight and the omnibus would not come for another hour and a half,
+he lit all the wax candles in his own room and wondered what to do. The
+tall shadows wavering in the draught were seeming cold and uncomfortable
+without a fire, so he restlessly threw back the curtains of the bay
+window to watch the rising of the moon. At that instant her rim appeared
+above the black hills, and presently a great moon of dislustred gold
+swam along the edge of the earth. Although she appeared to shed no
+light, the valley responded to her presence, and Guy was lured from his
+room to walk for a while in the dews.
+
+Out in the orchard a heavy mist wrapped him in wet folds of silver; yet
+overhead there was clear starlight, and he could watch the slow
+burnishing of the moon's face in her voyage up the sky. It was a queer
+country in which he found himself, where all the tree-tops seemed to be
+floating away from invisible trunks, and where for a while no sound was
+audible but his own footsteps making a music almost of violins in the
+saturated grass. The moon wrought upon the vapours a shifting damascene;
+and far behind, as it seemed, a rufous stain showed where the candles in
+his room were still alight. Gradually a variety of sounds began to play
+upon the silence. He could hear the dry squeak of a bat and cows
+munching in the meadows on the other side of the stream. The stream
+itself babbled and was still, babbled and was still; while along the
+bank voles were taking the water with splashes that went up and down a
+scale like the deep notes of a dulcimer. Far off, an owl hooted, an
+otter barked; and then as he crossed the middle of the orchard he was
+hearing nothing but apples fall with solemn thud, until the noise of the
+lock-gate swallowed all lighter sounds. Here the mist had temporarily
+dissolved, and in the moonlight he could see water gushing forth like an
+arch of lace and the long bramble-sprays combing the shallows below.
+Soon the orchard was left behind, and he was in the mist of a wide
+meadow, where all was silent again except for the faint sobbing of the
+grass to his footsteps. He walked straight into the moon's face,
+stumbling from time to time over molehills with an eery fragrance of
+fresh-turned soil, and wishing he could ever say in verse a little of
+the magic this autumnal night was shedding upon his fancy.
+
+"By gad, if I can't write here, I ought to be shot," he declared.
+
+The church-clock struck the half-hour as appositely as if his own father
+had said something about the need for hurrying up and showing what he
+could do.
+
+"Ah, but I'm not going to be hurried," said Guy aloud. And since the
+clock could not answer him again, it was as good as having the best of
+an argument.
+
+Guy walked on, and after a while could hear once more the purling of the
+stream. He thought there was something strangely human about this river
+in the way it wandered so careless of direction. When he had left these
+banks, they had been going away from him: now here they were coming back
+like himself toward the moon, so that presently he was able without
+changing his course to walk under their border of willows. The mist had
+drifted away from the stream, leaving the spires of loosestrife plainly
+visible and more dimly on the other side the forms of huge cattle at
+pasture. There was, too, a smell of meadowsweet softening with a summer
+languor the sharp September night. The willows gave way to overhanging
+thickets of hawthorn, as the river suddenly swept round to make a noose
+that was completed but a few yards ahead of where he was standing. He
+could not see on account of the bushes the size of the peninsula so
+formed, and when suddenly he heard from the depths a sound of laughter,
+so full was his brain of moonshine that if he had come face to face with
+a legendary queen of fairies, he would hardly have been surprized. It
+was with the deliberate encouragement of a vision surpassing all the
+fantasies of moon and mist that Guy stopped; and indeed, on a sensuous
+impulse to pamper his imagination with an unsolved mystery he had almost
+turned round to go back. Curiosity, however, was too strong; for, as he
+paused irresolute, the fairy mirth tinkling again from the recesses of
+that bewitched enclosure died away upon the murmur of a conversation,
+and he could not leave any longer inviolate that screen of hawthorns.
+
+In the apogee of the river's noose two girls, clearly seen against the
+silver glooms beyond, were bending over a basket. Their heads were close
+together, and it was not until Guy was almost on top of them that he
+realized how impertinent his intrusion might seem. He drew back
+blushing, just as one of the girls became aware of his presence and
+jumped up with an 'oh' that floated away from her as lightly as a moth
+upon the moonshine. Her sister (Guy decided at once they were sisters)
+jumped up also and luckily for him, since it offered the opportunity of
+a natural apology, overturned the basket. For a moment the three of them
+gazed at one another over the mushrooms that were tumbled upon the grass
+to be an elfin city of the East, so white and cold were their cupolas
+under the moon.
+
+"Can't I help to pick them up?" Guy asked, wondering to himself why on
+this night of nights that was the real beginning of Plashers Mead he
+should be blessed by this fortunate encounter. The two girls were
+wearing big white coats of some rough tweed or frieze on which the mist
+lay like gossamer; and, as neither of them had a hat, Guy could see that
+one was very dark and the other fair.
+
+"We wondered who you were," said the dark one.
+
+"I live at Plashers Mead," said Guy.
+
+"I know, I've seen you often," she answered.
+
+"And Father says every day 'My dears, I really must call upon that young
+man.'"
+
+It was the fair one who spoke, and Guy recognized that it was her
+laughter he had first heard.
+
+"My other sister is somewhere close by," said the dark one.
+
+Guy was kneeling down to gather up the mushrooms, and he looked round to
+see another white figure coming toward them.
+
+"Oh, Margaret, do let's introduce him to Monica. It will be such fun,"
+cried the fair sister.
+
+Guy saw that Margaret was shaking her head, but nevertheless when the
+third sister came near enough she did introduce him. Monica was more
+like Margaret, but much fairer than the first fair sister; and with her
+reserve and her pale gold hair she seemed, as she greeted him, to be
+indeed a wraith of the moon.
+
+"Shall I carry the mushrooms back for you?" Guy offered.
+
+"Oh, no thanks," said Monica quickly. "The Rectory is quite out of your
+way."
+
+He felt the implication of an eldest sister's disapproval, and not
+wishing to spoil the omens of romance, he left the three sisters by the
+banks of the Greenrush and was soon on his way home through the webs of
+mist.
+
+How extraordinary that he and Michael should have spent six weeks at
+Wychford without realizing that the Rector had three such daughters.
+Godbold had gossiped about him only this afternoon, reporting that he
+was held by some of his parishioners to be in with the Pope: they might
+more justly suspect him of being in with Titania. Monica, Margaret ...
+he had not heard the name of the third. Monica had seemed a little
+frigid, but Margaret and ... really when the omnibus arrived he must
+find out the name of the Rector's third daughter, of that one so
+obviously the youngest with her light brown hair and her laugh of which
+even now, as he paused, he fancied he could still hear the melodious
+echo. Monica, Margaret and ... Rose perhaps, for there had been
+something of a dewy eglantine about her. Surely that was indeed the echo
+of their voices; but, as upon distance the wayward sound eluded him, the
+belfry-clock with whirr and buzz and groan made preparation to strike
+the hour. Nine strokes boomed, leaving behind them a stillness absolute.
+The poet thought of time before him, of the three sisters by the river,
+of fame to come, and of his own fortune in finding Plashers Mead. Four
+months ago he had been in Macedonia, full of proconsular romance, and
+now he was in England with a much keener sense of every moment's
+potentiality than he had ever known in the dreams of oriental dominion.
+This sublunary adventure indicated how great a richness of pastoral life
+lay behind the slumber of a forgotten town; and it was seeming more than
+ever a pity Michael had not waited until to-night, so that he also might
+have met Monica and Margaret and that smallest innominate sister with
+the light brown hair. Guy could not help arranging with himself for his
+friend to fall in love with one of them; and since he at once allotted
+Monica to Michael, he knew that he himself preferred one of the others.
+But which? Oh, it was ridiculous to ask such questions after seeing
+three girls for three minutes of moonlight. Perhaps it really had been
+sorcery and in the morning, when he met them in Wychford High Street,
+they would appear dull and ordinary. They could not be so beautiful as
+he thought they were, he decided, since if they were he must have heard
+of their beauty. Nevertheless it was in a mood of almost elated
+self-congratulation that Guy found himself hurrying through the orchard
+toward the candlelight of his room.
+
+The arrival of Miss Peasey, now that it was upon him, banished
+everything else; and instead of dreaming deliciously of that encounter
+in the water-meadows, he stood meditating on the failure of the kitchen.
+As he regarded the enormous dresser; the table trampling upon the
+fender; the seven dish-covers mocking his poor crockery, Guy had little
+hope that Miss Peasey would stay a week: and then suddenly, worse than
+any failure of equipment, he remembered that she might be hungry. He
+looked at his watch. A quarter-past nine. Of course she would be hungry.
+She probably had eaten nothing but a banana since breakfast in Cardiff.
+Guy rushed out and surprized the landlord of the Stag by begging him to
+send the hostler down at once with cold beef and stout and cheese.
+
+"There's the bus," he cried. "Don't forget. At once. My new housekeeper.
+Long journey. And salad. Forgot she'd be hungry. Salt and mustard. I've
+got plates."
+
+The omnibus went rumbling past, and Guy followed at a jog-trot down the
+street, saw it cross the bridge and, making a spurt, caught it up just
+as a woman alighted by the gate of Plashers Mead.
+
+"Ah, Miss Peasey," said Guy breathlessly. "I went up the street to see
+if the bus was coming. Have you had a comfortable journey?"
+
+"Mr. Hazlewood?" asked the new housekeeper blinking at him.
+
+The guard of the omnibus at this moment informed Guy that he had some
+cases for Plashers Mead.
+
+"Where is Mr. Hazlewood then?" asked Miss Peasey turning sharply.
+
+Over her shoulder Guy saw that the guard was apparently punching the
+side of his head, and he said more loudly:
+
+"I'm Mr. Hazlewood."
+
+"I thought you were. I'm a little bit deaf after travelling, so you'll
+kindly speak slightly above the usual, Mr. Hazlewood."
+
+"I hope you've had a comfortable journey," Guy shouted.
+
+"Oh, yes, I think I shall," she said with what Guy fancied was meant to
+be an encouraging smile. "I hope you haven't lost any of my parcels,
+young man," she continued with a severe glance at the guard.
+
+"Four and a stringbag. Is that right, mum?" he bellowed. "She's as deaf
+as an adder, Mr. Hazlewood," he explained confidentially. "We had a
+regular time getting of her into the bus before we found out she
+couldn't hear what was being said to her. Oh, very obstinate she was."
+
+"This is the garden," Guy shouted, as they passed in through the gate.
+
+"Yes, I daresay," Miss Peasey replied ambiguously.
+
+Guy wondered how she would ever be got upstairs to her room.
+
+"This is the hall," he shouted. "Rather unfurnished I'm afraid."
+
+"Oh, yes, I'm quite used to the country," said Miss Peasey.
+
+Guy was now in a state of nervous indecision. Just as he was going to
+shout to Miss Peasey that the kitchen was through the baize-door, the
+hostler from the Stag came up to know whether mutton would do instead of
+beef, and just as he said pork would be better than nothing, the guard
+arrived with Miss Peasey's tin box and wanted to know where he should
+put it. The hall seemed to be thronged with people.
+
+"You'd like your boxes upstairs, wouldn't you?" he shouted to the
+housekeeper.
+
+"Oh, do you want to come upstairs?" she said cheerfully.
+
+"No, your boxes. The kitchen's in here."
+
+He really hustled her into the kitchen and, having got her at last in a
+well-lighted room, he begged her to sit down and expect her supper. By
+this time two men who had been summoned by the driver of the omnibus to
+bring in Guy's books, were staggering and sweating into the hall.
+However, the confusion relaxed in time; and before the clock struck ten
+Guy was alone with Miss Peasey and without an audience was managing to
+make her understand most of what he was saying.
+
+"I'll come down in about half an hour," he told her, "and show you your
+room."
+
+"It's a long way," said Miss Peasey, when the moment was arrived to
+conduct her up the winding staircase to her bower in the roof. Guy had
+calculated that she would miss all the beams, and so from a desire to
+make the best of the staircase he had not mentioned them. He sighed with
+relief when she passed into her bedroom, unbumped.
+
+"Oh, quite nice," she pronounced looking round her.
+
+"In the morning, we'll talk over everything," said Guy, and with a
+hurried good-night he rushed away.
+
+In the hall he attacked with a chisel the first packing-case. One by one
+familiar volumes winked at him with their gold lettering in the
+candlelight. He chose Keats to take upstairs and, having read St.
+Agnes' Eve, stood by the window of his bedroom, poring upon the moonlit
+valley.
+
+In bed his mind skipped the stress of Miss Peasey's arrival and fled
+back to the meadows where he had been walking.
+
+"Monica, Margaret...." he began dreamily. It was a pity he had forgotten
+to find out the name of that sister who was so like a wild rose. Never
+mind: he would find out to-morrow. And for the second time that day the
+word lulled him like an opiate.
+
+
+
+
+_October_
+
+
+It was a blowy afternoon early in October, and Pauline was sitting by
+the window of what at Wychford Rectory was still called the nursery. The
+persistence of the old name might almost be taken as symbolic of the way
+in which time had glided by that house unrecognized, for here were
+Monica, Margaret and Pauline grown up before anyone had thought of
+changing its name even to schoolroom. And with the old name it had
+preserved the character childhood had lent it. There was not a chair
+that did not appear now like the veteran survivor of childish wars and
+misappropriations, nor any table nor cupboard that did not testify to an
+affectionate ill-treatment prolonged over many years. On the walls the
+paper which had once been vivid in its expression of primitive gaiety
+was now faded: but the pattern of berries, birds and daisies still
+displayed that eternally unexplored tangle as freshly as once it was
+displayed for childish fancies of adventure. Pauline had always loved
+the window-seat, and from here she had always seen before anyone else at
+the Rectory the first flash of Spring's azure eyes, the first greying of
+Winter's locks. So, now on this afternoon she could see the bullying
+Southwest wind thunderous against whatever laggards of Summer still
+tried to shelter themselves in the Rectory garden. Occasionally a few
+raindrops seemed to effect a frantic escape from the fierce assault and
+cling desperately to the window-panes, but since nobody could call it a
+really wet day Pauline had been protesting all the afternoon against her
+sisters' unwillingness to go out. Staying indoors was such a surrender
+to the season.
+
+"We ought to practise that Mendelssohn trio," Monica argued.
+
+"I hate Mendelssohn," Pauline retorted.
+
+"Well, I shall practise the piano part."
+
+"Oh, Monica, it will sound so dreadfully empty," cried Pauline. "Won't
+it, Margaret?"
+
+"I'm reading Mansfield Park. Don't talk," Margaret murmured. "If I could
+write like Jane Austen," she went on dreamily, "I should be the happiest
+person in the world."
+
+"Oh, but you are the happiest person already," said Pauline. "At least
+you ought to be, if you'd only...."
+
+"You know I hate you to talk about him," Margaret interrupted.
+
+Pauline was silent. It was always a little alarming when Margaret was
+angry. With Monica one took for granted the disapproval of a fastidious
+nature, and it was fun to teaze her; but Margaret with her sudden
+alternations of hardness and sympathy, of being great fun and
+frightfully intolerant, it was always wiser to propitiate. So Pauline
+stayed in the window-seat, pondering mournfully the lawn mottled with
+leaves, and the lily-pond that was being seamed and crinkled by every
+gust of the wind that skated across the surface. The very high grey wall
+against which the Japanese quinces spread their peacock-tails of foliage
+was shutting her out from the world to-day, and Pauline wished it were
+Summer again so that she could hurry through the little door in the wall
+and across the paddock to the banks of the Greenrush. In the Rectory
+punt she would not have had to bother with sisters who would not come
+out for a walk when they were invited.
+
+The tall trees on either side of the lawn roared in the wind and
+showered more leaves upon the angry air. What a long time it was to
+Summer, and for no reason that she could have given herself Pauline
+began to think about the man who had taken Plashers Mead. Of course it
+was obvious he would fall in love either with Monica or with Margaret,
+and really it must be managed somehow that he should choose Monica.
+Everybody fell in love with Margaret, which was so hard on poor Richard
+out in India who was much the nicest person in the world and whom
+Margaret must never give up. Pauline looked at her sister and felt
+afraid the new tenant of Plashers Mead would fall in love with her, for
+Margaret was so very adorable with her slim hands and her sombre hair.
+
+"Really almost more like a lily than a girl," thought Pauline. Somehow
+the comparison reassured her, since it was impossible to think of
+anyone's rushing to gather a lily without a great deal of hesitation.
+
+"I wish poor Richard would write and tell her she is like a lily,
+instead of always writing such a lot about the bridge he is building,
+though I expect it's a very wonderful bridge."
+
+After all, Monica with her glinting evanescence was just as beautiful as
+Margaret, and even more mysterious; and if she only would not be so
+frightening to young men, who would not fall in love with her! Pauline
+wondered vaguely if she could not persuade Margaret to go away for a
+month, so that the new tenant of Plashers Mead might have had time to
+fall irremediably in love with Monica before she came back. Richard
+would certainly be dreadfully worried out in India when he heard of a
+young man at Plashers Mead, and certainly rather ... yes, certainly in
+church on Sunday he had appeared rather charming. It was only last
+Spring that poor Richard had wished he could be living in Plashers Mead
+himself, and they had had several long discussions which never shed any
+light upon the problem of how such an ambition would be gratified.
+
+"I expect Monica will be like ice, and Margaret will seem so much easier
+to talk to, and if I dared to suggest that Monica should unbend a
+little, she would freeze me as well. Oh, it's all very difficult,"
+sighed Pauline to herself, "and perhaps I'd better not try to influence
+things. Only if he does seem to like Margaret much better than Monica, I
+shall have to bring poor Richard into the conversation, which always
+makes Margaret cross for days."
+
+As she came to this resolution, Pauline looked half apprehensively at
+her sister reading in the tumbledown armchair by the fire. How angry
+Margaret would be if she guessed what was being plotted, and Pauline
+actually jumped when she suddenly declared that Mansfield Park was
+almost the best book Jane Austen ever wrote.
+
+"Is it, darling Margaret?" said Pauline with a disarming willingness to
+be told again that it certainly was.
+
+"Or perhaps Emma," Margaret murmured, and Pauline hid herself behind the
+curtains. How droll Father had been about the 'new young creature' at
+Plashers Mead. It had been so difficult to persuade him to interrupt one
+precious afternoon of planting bulbs to do his duty either as a
+neighbour or as Rector of the parish. And when he came back all he would
+say of the visit was:
+
+"Very pleasant, my dears, oh, yes, he showed me everything, and he
+really has a most remarkable collection of dish-covers, quite
+remarkable. But I ought not to have deserted those irises that Garstin
+sent me from the Taurus. Now perhaps we shall manage that obstinate
+little plum-coloured brute which likes the outskirts of a pine-forest,
+so they tell me."
+
+Just as Pauline was laughing to herself at the memory of her father's
+visit, the Rector himself appeared on the lawn. He was in his
+shirt-sleeves: his knees were muddy with kneeling: and Birdwood the
+gardener, all blown about by the wind, was close behind him, carrying an
+armful of roots.
+
+Pauline threw up the window with a crash and called out:
+
+"Father, Father, what a darling you look, and your hair will be swept
+right away, if you aren't careful."
+
+The Rector waved his trowel remotely, and Pauline blew him kisses, until
+she was made aware of protests in the room behind her.
+
+"Really," exclaimed Monica. "You are so noisy. You're almost vulgar."
+
+"Oh, no, Monica," cried Pauline dancing round the room. "Not vulgar. Not
+a horrid little vulgar person!"
+
+"And what a noise you do make," Margaret joined in. "Please, Pauline,
+shut the window."
+
+At this moment Mrs. Grey opened the door and loosed a whirlwind of
+papers upon the nursery.
+
+"Who's vulgar? Who's vulgar?" asked Mrs. Grey laughing absurdly. "Why,
+what a tremendous draught!"
+
+"Mother, shut the door, the door," expostulated Margaret and Monica
+simultaneously. "And do tell Pauline to control herself sometimes."
+
+"Pauline, control yourself," said Mrs. Grey.
+
+When the papers were settling down, Janet the maid came in to say there
+was a gentleman in the drawing-room, and in the confusion of the new
+whirlwind her entrance raised, Janet was gone before anyone knew who the
+gentleman was.
+
+"Ugh," Margaret grumbled. "I never can be allowed to read in peace."
+
+"I was practising the Mendelssohn trio, Mother," said Monica
+reproachfully.
+
+"Let us all practise. Let us all practise," Mrs. Grey proposed, beaming
+enthusiastically upon her daughters. "That would be charming."
+
+"Father is so sweet," said Pauline. "He's simply covered with mud."
+
+"Has he got his kneeler?" asked Mrs. Grey.
+
+Pauline rushed to the window again.
+
+"Mother says 'have you got your kneeler'?"
+
+The Rector paused vaguely, and Birdwood tried to indicate by kicking
+himself that he had the kneeler.
+
+"Ah, thoughtful Birdwood," said Mrs. Grey in a satisfied voice.
+
+"And now do you think we might have the window shut?" asked Margaret
+resignedly.
+
+Monica was quite deliberately thumping at the piano part she was
+practising. Mrs. Grey sat down and began to tell a long story in which
+three poor people of Wychford got curiously blended somehow into one, so
+that Pauline, who was the only daughter that ever listened, became very
+sympathetic over a fourth poor person who had nothing to do with the
+tale.
+
+"And surely Janet came in to say something about the drawing-room," said
+Mrs. Grey as she finished.
+
+"She said a gentleman," Pauline declared.
+
+"Oh, how vague you all are," exclaimed Margaret, jumping up.
+
+"Well, Margaret, you were here," Pauline said. "And so was Monica."
+
+"But I was practising," said Monica primly. "And I didn't hear a word
+Janet said."
+
+There was always this preliminary confusion at the Rectory when a
+stranger was announced, and it always ended in the same way by Mrs. Grey
+and Monica going down first, by Pauline rushing after them and banging
+the door as they were greeting the visitor, and by Margaret strolling in
+when the stage of comparative ease had been attained. So it fell out on
+this occasion, for Monica's skirt was just disappearing round the
+drawing-room door when Pauline, horrified at the idea of having to come
+in by herself, cleared the last three stairs of the billowy flight with
+a leap and sent Monica spinning forward as the door propelled her into
+the room.
+
+"Monica, I am so sorry."
+
+"Pauline! Pauline!" said Mrs. Grey reprovingly. "So like an avalanche
+always."
+
+Guy, who had by now been waiting nearly a quarter of an hour, came
+forward a little shyly.
+
+"How d'ye do, how d'ye do," said Mrs. Grey quickly and nervously. "We're
+so delighted to see you. So good of you ... charming really. Pauline is
+always impetuous. You've come to study farming at Wychford haven't you?
+Most interesting. Don't tug at me, Pauline. Monica, do ring for tea. Are
+you fond of music?"
+
+Pauline withdrew from the conversation after the whispered attempt to
+correct her mother about Mr. Hazlewood's having taken Plashers Mead in
+order to be a farmer. She wanted to contemplate the visitor without
+being made to involve herself in the confusions of politeness. 'Was he
+dangerous to Richard?' she asked herself, and alas, she had to tell
+herself that indeed it seemed probable he might be. Of course he was
+inevitably on the way to falling in love with Margaret, and as she
+looked at him with his clear-cut pale face, his tumbled hair and large
+brown eyes which changed what seemed at first a slightly cynical
+personality to one that was almost a little wistful, Pauline began to
+speculate if Margaret might not herself be rather attracted to him. This
+was an unforeseen complication, for Margaret so far had only accepted
+homage. Pauline definitely began to be jealous for Richard whose homage
+had been the most prodigal of any; and as Guy drawled on about his first
+adventure of house-keeping she told herself he was affected. The
+impression, too, of listening to someone more than usually
+self-possessed and cynical revived in her mind; and those maliciously
+drooping lids were obliterating the effect of the brown eyes. Sitting by
+herself in the oriel-window Pauline was nearly sure she did not like
+him. He had no business to be at the Rectory when Richard was building a
+bridge out in India; and now here was Margaret strolling graciously in
+and almost at once obviously knowing so well how to get on with this
+idler. Oh, positively she disliked him. So cold and so cruel was that
+mouth, and so vain he was, as he sat there bending forward over
+hand-clasped, long, stupid, crossed legs. What right had he to laugh
+with Margaret about their father's visit? This stranger had assuredly
+never appreciated him. He was come here to spoil the happiness of
+Wychford, to destroy the immemorial perfection of life at the Rectory.
+And why would he keep looking up at herself? Margaret could be pleasant
+to anybody, but this intruder would soon find that she herself was loyal
+to the absent. Pauline wished that, when he met them all on that night
+of the moon, she had been so horridly rude as to make him avoid the
+family for ever. How could Margaret sit there talking so unconcernedly,
+when Richard might be dying of sunstroke at this very moment? Margaret
+was heartless, and this stranger with his drawl and his undergraduate
+affectation would encourage her to sneer at everything.
+
+"What's the matter, Pauline dearest?" her mother turned round to ask.
+
+"Nothing," answered Pauline, biting her lips to keep back surely the
+most unreasonable tears she had ever felt were springing.
+
+"You're not cross with me for calling you a landslide?" persisted Mrs.
+Grey, smiling at her from the midst of a glory momentarily shed by a
+stormy ray of sunshine.
+
+"Oh, mother," said Pauline, now fairly in the midway between laughter
+and tears. "It was an avalanche you called me."
+
+"Why do you always sit near a window?" asked Monica.
+
+"She always rushes into a corner," said Margaret.
+
+Pauline jumped up from her chair and would have run out of the room
+forthwith; but in passing the first table she knocked from it a silver
+bowl of pot-pourri and scattered the contents over the carpet. Down she
+knelt to hide her confusion and repair the damage, and at the same
+moment Guy plunged down beside her to help. She caught his eyes so
+tenderly humorous that she too laughed.
+
+"I think it must be my fault," he said. "Don't you remember how, last
+time we met, your sister upset the mushrooms?"
+
+Pauline knew she was blushing, and when the rose-leaves were all
+gathered up, tea came in. Her attention was now entirely occupied by
+preventing her mother from doing the most ridiculous things with cakes
+and sugar and milk, and when tea was over, Guy got up to go.
+
+There was a brief discussion after his departure, in which Margaret was
+so critical of his dress and of his absurdities that Pauline was
+reassured, and presently indeed found herself taking their visitor's
+part against her sisters.
+
+"Quite right, quite right, Pauline," said Mrs. Grey. "He's charming ...
+charming ... charming! Margaret and Monica so critical. Always so
+critical."
+
+Presently the family hurried out into the drive to protest against the
+Rector's planting any more bulbs, to tell him how unkind he had been not
+to come in to tea, and to warn him that the bell would sound for
+Evensong in two minutes. He was dragged out of the shrubbery where he
+had been superintending a clearance of aucubas, preparatory to planting
+a drift of new and very deep yellow primroses.
+
+"Really, my dears, I have never seen Primula Vulgaris so fine in texture
+or colour. My friend Gilmour has spent ten years working up the stock.
+As large as florins."
+
+So he boasted of new wonders next Spring in the Rectory garden, while
+his wife and daughters brushed him and dusted him and helped to button
+up his cassock.
+
+"Doesn't Father look a darling?" demanded Pauline, as they watched the
+tall handsome dreamer striding along the drive towards the sound of the
+bell, that was clanging loud and soft in its battle with the wind.
+
+"Oh, Pauline, run after him," said Mrs. Grey, "and remind him it's the
+Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity. He started wrong last Sunday, and
+to-day's Wednesday, and it so offends some of the congregation."
+
+Pauline overtook her father in the church-porch, and he promised he
+would be careful to read the right collect. She had not stayed to get a
+hat and therefore must wait for him outside.
+
+"Very well, my dear child, I shan't be long. Do go and see if those
+Sternbergias I planted against the south porch are in flower. Dear me,
+they should be, you know, after this not altogether intolerably overcast
+summer. Sun, though, sun! they want sun, poor dears!"
+
+"But, Father, I can't remember what Sternbergias look like."
+
+"Oh, yes, you can," said the Rector. "Sternbergia Lutea. Amaryllidaceae.
+A perfectly ordinary creature." And he vanished in the gloom of the
+priest's door.
+
+As Pauline came round the corner the wind was full in her face, and
+under the rose-edged wrack of driving clouds the churchyard looked
+desolate and savage. There were no flowers to be seen but beaten down
+Michaelmas daisies and bedabbled phlox. The bell had stopped immediately
+when the Rector arrived; and the wind seemed now much louder as it went
+howling round the great church or rasping through the yews and junipers.
+The churchyard was bounded on the northerly side by the mill-stream,
+along which ran a wide path between a double row of willows now hissing
+and whistling as they were whipped by the blasts. Pauline walked slowly
+down this unquiet ambulatory, gazing curiously over to the other bank of
+the stream where the orchard of Plashers Mead was strewn with red
+apples. There in the corner by the house that was just visible stood
+the owner playing with a dog, a bobtail too, which was the kind Pauline
+liked best. She wanted very much to wave, but of course it was
+impossible for the Rector's daughter to do anything like that in the
+churchyard. Yet if he did chance to walk in her direction, she would,
+whatever happened, shout to him across the stream to bring the dog next
+time he came to the Rectory. Pauline walked four times up and down the
+path, but first the dog disappeared and then the owner followed him, and
+presently Pauline discovered that the path beside the abandoned stream
+was very dreary. The crooked tombstones stood up starkly: the wind
+sighed across the green graves of the unknown: the fiery roses were
+fallen from the clouds. Pauline turned away from the path and went to
+take shelter behind the East end of the church. From here, as she
+fronted the invading night, she could see the grey wall of the Rectory
+garden and the paddock sloping down to the river. How sad it was to
+think of the months that must pass before that small meadow would be
+speckled with fritillaries or with irises blow white and purple. The
+wind shrieked with a sudden gust that seemed more violent, because where
+she was standing not a blade of grass twitched. Pauline looked up to
+reassure herself that the steeple was not toppling from the tower; as
+she did so, a gargoyle grinned down at her. The grotesque was
+frightening in the dusk, and she hurried round to the priest's door. The
+Rector came out as she reached it, and accepted vaguely the information
+that there were no flowers to be seen but Michaelmas daisies and phlox.
+
+"Ah, I told Birdwood to confiscate those abominable dahlias which
+wretched Mrs. Godbold will plant every year. I gave her some of that new
+saxifrage I raised. What more does the woman want?"
+
+Pauline hung upon his arm, while they walked back to the Rectory through
+the darkling plantation.
+
+"Isn't it a perfect place?" she murmured, hugging his arm closer when
+they came to the end of the mossy path and saw the twinkling of the
+drawing-room's oriel on the narrow south side, and the eleven steep
+gables that cleft the now scarcely luminous sky, one after another all
+the length of the house.
+
+"I doubt if anything but this confounded cotoneaster would do well
+against this wall," replied the Rector.
+
+He never failed to make this observation when he reached his front-door;
+and his family knew that one day the cotoneaster would be torn down for
+a succession of camellias to struggle with the east winds of unkind
+Oxfordshire. In the hall Mrs. Grey and Margaret were bending over a
+table.
+
+"Guy has left his card," said Margaret.
+
+"Is that the man who came to see me about the rats?" asked the Rector.
+
+"No, no, Francis," said Mrs. Grey. "Guy is the young man at Plashers
+Mead."
+
+"Isn't Francis sweet?" cried Pauline, reaching up to kiss him.
+
+"Hush, Pauline. Pauline, you must not call your father Francis in the
+hall," said Mrs. Grey.
+
+"How touching of Guy to leave a card," Pauline murmured, looking at the
+oblong of pasteboard shimmering in the gloom.
+
+"Now we've just time to practise the Mendelssohn trio before dinner,"
+declared Mrs. Grey. "And that will make you warm."
+
+The Rector wandered off to his library. Margaret and Pauline went with
+their mother up shadowy staircases and through shadowy corridors to the
+great music-room that ran half the length of the roof. Monica was
+already seated at the piano, all white and golden herself in the
+candlelight. Languidly Margaret unpacked her violoncello: Pauline tuned
+her violin. Soon the house was full of music, and the wind in the night
+was scarcely audible.
+
+
+
+
+_November_
+
+
+When Guy left the Rectory that October afternoon, he felt as if he had
+put back upon its shelf a book the inside of which, thus briefly glanced
+at, held for him, whenever he should be privileged to open it again, a
+new, indeed an almost magical representation of life. On his fancy the
+Greys had impressed themselves with a kind of abundant naturalness; but
+however deeply he tried to think he was already plunged into the heart
+of their life, he realized that it was only in such a way as he might
+have dipped into the heart of a book. The intimacy revealed was not
+revealed by any inclusion of himself within the charm; and he was a
+little sad to think how completely he must have seemed outside the
+picture. Hence his first aspiration with regard to the family was
+somehow to become no longer a spectator, but actually a happy player in
+their representation of existence. Ordinarily, so far as experience had
+hitherto carried him, it had been easy enough to find himself on terms
+of intimacy with any group of human beings whose company was
+sufficiently attractive. For him, perhaps, it had even been particularly
+easy, so that he had never known the mortification of a repulse. No
+doubt now by contriving to be himself and relying upon the interest that
+was sure to be roused by his isolation and poetic ambitions, he would
+very soon be accorded the freedom of the Rectory. Yet such a prospect,
+however pleasant to contemplate, did not satisfy him, and he was already
+troubled by a faint jealousy of the many unknown friends of the Greys to
+whom in the past the privilege of that freedom must have been
+frequently accorded. Guy wanted more than that: in the excess of his
+appreciation he wanted them to marvel at a time when they had not been
+aware of his existence: in fact he was anxious to make himself necessary
+to their own sense of their own completeness. As he entered his solitary
+hall, he was depressed by the extravagance of such a desire, saying to
+himself that he might as well sigh to become an integral figure of a
+pastoral by Giorgione, or of any work of art the life of which seems but
+momentarily stilled for the pleasure of whomsoever is observing it.
+
+Guy was for a while almost impatient even of his own room, for he felt
+it was lacking in any atmosphere except the false charm of novelty. He
+had been here three weeks now, he and deaf Miss Peasey; and were the two
+of them swept away to-morrow, Plashers Mead would adapt itself to
+newcomers. There was nothing wrong with the house: such breeding would
+survive any occupation it might be called upon to tolerate. On the other
+hand were chance to sweep the Greys from Wychford, so essentially did
+the Rectory seem their creation that already it was unimaginable to Guy
+apart from them. And as yet he had only dipped into the volume. Who
+could say what exquisite and intimate paragraphs did not await a more
+leisurely perusal? Really, thought Guy, he might almost suppose himself
+in love with the family, so much did the vision of them in that shadowy
+drawing-room haunt his memory. Indeed they were become a picture that
+positively ached in his mind with longing for the moment of its
+repetition. For some days he spent all his time in the orchard, throwing
+sticks for his new bobtail; denying himself with an absurd
+self-consciousness the pleasure of walking so far along the mill-stream
+even as the bank opposite to the Rectory paddock; denying himself a
+fortuitous meeting with any of the family in Wychford High Street; and
+on Sunday denying himself the pleasure of seeing them in church, because
+he felt it might appear an excuse to be noticed. The vision of the
+Rectory obsessed him, but so elusively that when in verse he tried to
+state the emotion merely for his own satisfaction he failed, and he took
+refuge from his disappointment by nearly always being late for meals.
+Often he would see Miss Peasey walking about the orchard with desolate
+tinkle of a Swiss sheep-bell, the only instrument of summons that the
+house possessed. Miss Peasey herself looked not unlike a battered old
+bell-wether, as she wandered searching for him in the wind; and Guy used
+to watch her from behind a tree-trunk, laughing to himself until Bob the
+dog trotted from one to another, describing anxious circles round their
+separation.
+
+"Your dinner's been waiting ten minutes, Mr. Hazlewood!"
+
+"Doesn't matter," Guy would shout.
+
+"Mutton to-day," Miss Peasey would say, and, "a little variety," she
+always added.
+
+Miss Peasey's religion was variety, and her tragedy was an invention
+that never kept pace with aspiration. For three weeks Guy had been given
+on Sunday roast beef which lasted till Wednesday; while on Thursday he
+was given roast mutton, which as a depressing cold bone always went out
+from the dining-room on Saturday night. Every morning he was asked what
+he would like for dinner, to which he always replied that he left it to
+her. Once indeed in a fertile moment he had suggested a curry, and Miss
+Peasey, brightening wonderfully, had chirped:
+
+"Ah, yes, a little variety."
+
+But in the evening the taste of hot tin that represented Miss Peasey's
+curry made him for ever afterward leave the variety to her own fancy,
+thereby preserving henceforth that immutable alternation of roast beef
+and roast mutton which was the horizon of her house-keeping.
+
+These solitary meals were lightened by the thought of the Rectory.
+Neither beef nor mutton seemed of much importance, when his mind's eye
+could hold that shadowy drawing-room. There was Monica with her pale
+gold hair in the stormy sunlight, cold and shy, but of such a marble
+purity of line that but to sit beside her was to admire a statue whose
+coldness made her the more admirable. There was Margaret, carved slimly
+out of ivory, very tall with weight of dusky hair, and slow fastidious
+voice that spoke dreamily of the things Guy loved best. There was
+Pauline sitting away from the others in the window seat, away in her
+shyness and wildness. Was not the magic of her almost more difficult to
+recapture than any? A briar rose she was whose petals seemed to fall at
+the touch of definition, a briar rose that was waving out of reach, even
+of thought. Guy wished he could visualize the Rector in his own
+drawing-room; but instead he had to set him in Plashers Mead, of which
+no doubt he had thought the owner a young ass; and Guy blushed to
+remember the nervous idiocy which had let him take the Rector solemnly
+into the kitchen to look at dish-covers in a row, and deaf Miss Peasey
+sitting by as much fire as the table would yield to her chair. But if
+the Rector were missing from the picture, at any rate he could picture
+Mrs. Grey, shy like her daughters and with a delicious vagueness all her
+own. She was most like Pauline, and indeed in Pauline Guy could see her
+mother, as the young moon holds in her lap the wraith of the old
+moon....
+
+"Why, you haven't eaten anything," remonstrated Miss Peasey, breaking in
+upon his vision. "And I've made you a rice pudding for a little
+variety."
+
+The shadowy drawing-room faded with the old chintz curtains and fragile
+almost immaterial silver; the china bowls of Lowestoft; the dull white
+panelling and faintly aromatic sweetness. Instead remained a rice
+pudding that smelt and looked as solid as a pie.
+
+However, that very afternoon Guy was greatly encouraged to get an
+invitation to dinner at the Rectory from the hands of the gardener.
+Birdwood was one of those servants who seem to have accepted with the
+obligations of service the extreme responsibilities of paternity; and
+Guy hastened to take advantage of the chance to establish himself on
+good terms with one who might prove a most powerful ally.
+
+"Not much of a garden, I'm afraid," he said deprecatingly to Birdwood,
+as they stood in colloquy outside. The gardener shook his head.
+
+"It wouldn't do for the Rector to see them cabbages and winter greens.
+'I won't have the nasty things in my garden,' he says to me, and he'll
+rush at them regular ferocious with a fork. 'I won't have them,' he
+says. 'I can't abear the sight of them,' he says. Well, of course I
+knows better than go for to contradict him when he gets a downer on any
+plant, don't matter whether it's cabbage or calceolaria. But last time,
+when he'd done with his massacring of them, I popped round to Mrs. Grey,
+and I says, winking at her very hard, but of course not meaning any
+disrespectfulness, winking at her very hard, I says, 'Please, mum, I
+want one of these new allotments from the glebe.' 'Good Heavings,
+Birdwood,' she says, 'whatever on earth can you want with for an
+allotment?' With that I winks very hard again and says in a low voice
+right into her ear as you might say, 'To keep the wolf from the door,
+mum, with a few winter greens.' That's the way we grow our vegetables
+for the Rectory, out of an allotment, though we have got five acres of
+garden. Now you see what comes of being a connosher. You take my advice,
+Mr. Hazlenut, and clear all them cabbages out of sight before the Rector
+comes round here again."
+
+"I will certainly," Guy promised. "But you know it's a bit difficult for
+me to spend much money on flowers."
+
+"_We_ don't spend money over at the Rectory," said Birdwood, smiling in
+a superior way.
+
+"No?"
+
+"_We_ don't spend a penny. _We_ has every mortal plant and seed and
+cutting given to us. And not only that, but we gives in our turn. Look
+here, Mr. Hazlenut, I'm going to hand you out a bit of advice. The first
+time as you go round our garden with the Rector, when you turn into the
+second wall-garden, and see a border on your right, you catch hold of
+his arm and say, 'Why, good Heavings, if that isn't a new berberis."
+
+"Yes, but I don't know what an old berberis looks like," said Guy
+hopelessly. "Let alone a new one."
+
+"Never mind what the old ones look like. It's the new I'm telling you
+of. Don't you understand that everyone who comes down, from Kew even,
+says, 'That's a nice healthy little lot of Berberis Knightii as you've
+got a hold of.' 'Ha,' says the Rector. 'I thought as you'd go for to say
+that. But it ain't Knightii,' he chuckles, 'and what's more it ain't got
+a name yet, only a number, being a new importation from China,' he says.
+You go and call out what I told you, and he'll be so pleased, why, I
+wouldn't say he won't shovel half of the garden into your hands straight
+off."
+
+"Do the young ladies take an interest in flowers?" Guy asked.
+
+"Of course they try," said Birdwood condescendingly. "But neither them
+nor their mother don't seem to learn nothing. They think more of a good
+clump of dellyphiniums than half-a-dozen meconopises as someone's gone
+mad to discover, with a lot of murderous Lammers from Tibbet ready to
+knife him the moment his back's turned."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Oh, I was like that myself once. I can remember the time when I was as
+fond of a good dahlia as anything. Now I goes sniffing the ground to
+see if there's any Mentha Requieni left over from the frost."
+
+"Sniffing the ground?"
+
+"That's right. It's so small that if it wasn't for the smell anyone
+wouldn't see it. That's _worth_ growing that is. Only, if you'll
+understand me, it takes anyone who's used to looking at peonies and
+suchlike a few years to find out the object of a plant that isn't any
+bigger than a pimple on an elephant."
+
+Guy was reluctant to let Birdwood go without bringing him to talk more
+directly of the family and less of the flowers. At the same time he felt
+it would be wiser not to rouse in the gardener any suspicion of how much
+he was interested in the Rectory: he was inclined to think he might
+resent it, and he wanted him as a friend.
+
+"Who is working in your garden?" asked Birdwood, as he turned to go.
+
+"Well, nobody just at present," said Guy apologetically.
+
+"All right," Birdwood announced. "I'll get hold of someone for you in
+less than half a pig's whisper."
+
+"But not all the time," Guy explained quickly. He was worried by the
+prospect of a gardener's wages coming out of his small income.
+
+"Once a week he'll come in," said Birdwood.
+
+Guy nodded.
+
+"What's his name?"
+
+"Graves he's called, but being deaf and dumb, his name's not of much
+account."
+
+"Deaf and dumb?" repeated Guy. "But how shall I explain what I want
+done?"
+
+"I'll show you," said Birdwood. "I'll come round and put you in the way
+of managing him. Work? I reckon that boy would work any other mortal in
+Wychford to the bone. Work? Well, he can't hear nothing, and he can't
+say nothing, so what else can he do? And he does it. Good afternoon, Mr.
+Hazlenut."
+
+And Birdwood retired, whistling very shrilly as he went down the path to
+the gate.
+
+Two nights later, Guy with lighted lantern in his hand set out to the
+Rectory. He did not venture to go by the orchard and the fields and so,
+crossing the narrow bridge over the stream, enter by way of the garden.
+Such an approach seemed too familiar for the present stage of his
+friendship, and he took the more formal route through an alley of
+mediaeval cottages that branched off Wychford High Street. Mysterious
+lattices blinked at him, and presently he felt the wind coming fresh in
+his face as he skirted the churchyard. The road continued past the back
+of a long row of almshouses, and when he saw the pillared gate of the
+Rectory drive, over which high trees were moaning darkly, Guy wondered
+if he were going to a large dinner-party. No word had been said of any
+one else's coming, but with Mrs. Grey's vagueness that portended
+nothing. He hoped that he would be the only guest and, swinging his
+lantern with a pleased expectancy, he passed down the drive. Suddenly a
+figure materialized from the illumination he was casting and hailed him
+with a questioning 'hulloa'?
+
+"Hulloa," Guy responded.
+
+"Oh, beg your pardon," exclaimed the other. "I thought it was Willsher."
+
+"My name's Hazlewood," said Guy a little stiffly.
+
+"Mine's Brydone. We may as well hop in together."
+
+Guy rather resented the implication of this birdlike intrusion in
+company with the doctor's son, a lanky youth whom he had often noticed
+slouching about Wychford in a cap ostensibly alive with artificial
+flies. Apparently Willsher must also be expected, against whom Guy had
+already conceived a violent prejudice dating from the time he called at
+his father's office to sign the agreement for the tenancy of Plashers
+Mead. It was of ill augury that the Greys should apparently be supposing
+that he would make a trio with Brydone and Willsher.
+
+"Brought a lantern, eh?" said Brydone.
+
+"Yes, this is a lantern," Guy answered coldly.
+
+"You'll never see me with a lantern," Brydone declared.
+
+Guy would like to have retorted that he hoped he would never even see
+Brydone without one. But he contented himself by saying with all that
+Balliol could bring to his aid of crushing indifference,
+
+"Oh, really?"
+
+Somebody behind them was running down the drive and shouting 'Hoo-oo' in
+what Guy considered a very objectionable voice. It probably was
+Willsher.
+
+"Hullo, Charlie," said Brydone.
+
+"Hullo, Percy," said Willsher, for it was he.
+
+"Know this gentleman? Mr. Hazlewood?"
+
+"Only officially. Pleased to meet you," said the new-comer.
+
+"Not at all," answered Guy. He felt furious to think that the Greys
+would suppose he had arranged to arrive with these two fellows.
+
+"Done any fishing yet?" asked Brydone.
+
+"No, not yet," said Guy.
+
+"Well, your bit of river has been spoilt. Old Burrows let everyone go
+there. But when you want some good fishing, Willsher and I rent about a
+mile of stream farther up and we'll always be glad to give you a day.
+Eh, Charlie?"
+
+Charlie replied with much cordiality that Percy had taken the very words
+of invitation out of his mouth; and Guy, unable any longer to be frigid,
+said that he had some books at which they might possibly care to come
+and look one afternoon. Mr. Brydone and Mr. Willsher both declared they
+would be delighted, and the latter added in the friendliest way that he
+knew an old woman in Wychford who was very anxious to sell a Milton
+warranted to be a hundred years old at least. Was that anything in Mr.
+Hazlewood's way? Guy explained that a Milton of so recent a date was not
+likely to be much in his way, and Mr. Brydone remarked that no doubt if
+it had been a Stilton, it would have been another matter. His friend
+laughed very heartily indeed at this joke, and in an atmosphere of
+almost hilarious good fellowship, that was to Guy still a little
+mortifying, they rang the Rectory bell.
+
+None of the family had reached the drawing-room when they were shown in,
+and Guy was afraid they were rather early.
+
+"Always like this," said Brydone. "Absolutely no notion of time.
+Shouldn't be surprized if we had to wait another quarter of an hour.
+Known them for years, and they've always been like this. Eh, Charlie?"
+
+The solicitor's son shook his head gravely. He seemed to feel that as a
+man of business he should display a slight disapproval of such a casual
+family.
+
+"Ever since I was a kid I can remember it," he said.
+
+Guy tried to tell himself that all this talk of intimacy was merely due
+to the accidental associations of country life over many years. But it
+was with something very like apprehension that he waited for the Greys
+to come down. It would be dreadful to find that Brydone and Willsher had
+a status in the Rectory. When, however, their hosts appeared, Guy
+realized with a tremendous relief that Brydone and Willsher obviously
+existed outside his picture of the Rectory. To be sure, they were
+Charlie and Percy to Monica, Margaret and Pauline; but galling as this
+was, Guy told himself that after a lifelong acquaintance nothing else
+could be expected.
+
+It pleased Guy really that the dinner was not a great success, for he
+was able to fancy that the Greys were encumbered by the presence of
+Brydone and Willsher. Monica was silent; Margaret was deliberately
+talking about things that could not possibly interest either of the
+young men; and Pauline was trying to save the situation by wild
+enthusiasms which were continually being repressed by her sisters. Mrs.
+Grey alternated between helping to check Pauline and behaving in exactly
+the same way herself. As for the Rector, he sat silent with a twinkle in
+his eye. Guy wished regretfully, when the time came to depart, that he
+could have stayed another few minutes to mark his superiority to the
+other guests; but alas, he was still far from that position, and no
+doubt he would never attain to it.
+
+"Oh, have you brought a lantern?" asked Pauline excitedly in the hall.
+"Oh, I wish I could walk back with you. I love lantern-light."
+
+"Pauline! Pauline! Do think what you're saying," Mrs. Grey protested.
+
+"I like lantern-light too," Margaret proclaimed.
+
+"When you come to see us again," said Pauline, "will you bring your
+dog?"
+
+"Oh, I say, shall I?" asked Guy flushing with pleasure.
+
+"Such a lamb, Margaret," said Pauline, kissing her sister impulsively
+and being straightly reproved for doing so.
+
+The good-nights were all said, and Guy walked up the drive with Brydone
+and Willsher.
+
+"Queer family, aren't they?" commented the doctor's son.
+
+"Extraordinarily charming," said Guy.
+
+"I've known them all my life," said Willsher a little querulously. "And
+yet I never seem to know them any better."
+
+Guy was so much elated by this admission that he repeated more warmly
+his invitation to come and see him and his books, and parted from the
+two friends very pleasantly.
+
+Two or three days later Guy thought he might fairly make his dinner
+call, and with much forethought did not take Bob with him, so that soon
+there might be an excuse to come again to effect that introduction. Mrs.
+Grey and Monica were out; and Guy was invited to have tea in the nursery
+with Margaret and Pauline. He was conscious that an honour had been paid
+to him, partly by intuition, partly because neither of the girls said a
+conventional word about not going into the drawing-room. He felt, as he
+sat in that room fragrant with the memories of what must have been an
+idyllic childhood, the thrill that, as a child, he used to feel when he
+read: '_The Queen was in her parlour eating bread and honey_.' This was
+such another parlour infinitely secluded from the world; and he thought
+he had never experienced a more breathless minute of anticipation than
+when he followed the girls along the corridor to their nursery. The
+matting worn silky with age seemed so eternally unprofaned, and on the
+wall outside the door the cuckoo calling five o'clock was like a
+confident bird in some paradise where neither time nor humanity was of
+much importance. Janet, the elderly parlourmaid, came stumping in behind
+them with the nursery tea-things; and, as Guy sat by the small hob-grate
+and saw the moist autumnal sun etherealize with wan gold the tattered
+volumes of childhood, the very plumcake on the tea-table was endowed
+with the romantic perfection of a cake in a picture-book. When the sun
+dipped behind the elms, Guy half expected that Margaret and Pauline
+would vanish too, so exactly seemed they the figures that, were this
+room a mirage, he would expect to find within as guardians of the rare
+seclusion. Guy never could say what was talked about, that afternoon;
+for when he found himself outside once again in the air of earth, he was
+bemused with the whole experience, as if suddenly released from
+enchantment. Out of a multitude of impressions, which had seemed at the
+time most delicately strange and potent, only a few incidents quite
+common-place haunted his memory tangibly enough to be seized and
+cherished. Tea-cups floating on laughter against that wall-paper of
+berries, birds and daisies; a pair of sugar-tongs clicking to the
+pressure of long white fingers (so much could he recapture of Margaret);
+crumpets in a rosy mist (so much was Pauline); a copper kettle singing;
+the lisp of the wind; a disarray of tambour-frames and music, these were
+all that kept him company on his way back to Plashers Mead through the
+colourless twilight.
+
+Chance favoured Guy next day by throwing him into the arms of the
+Rector, who asked if he were fond enough of flowers to look round the
+garden at a dull season of the year. Guy was so much elated that, if
+love of flowers meant more frequent opportunities of going to the
+Rectory, he would have given up poetry to become a professional
+gardener. Of course there was nothing to see, according to the Rector--a
+few Nerines of his own crossing in the greenhouse; a Buddleia Auriculata
+honeycomb-scented in the angle of two walls; the double Michaelmas
+daisy, an ugly brute already condemned to extermination; a white Red Hot
+Poker, evidently a favourite of the Rector's by the way he gazed upon it
+and said so casually Kniphofia Multiflora, as if it were not indeed a
+treasure blooming in Oxfordshire's dreary Autumn.
+
+"Tulips to go in next week," said the Rector, rolling the prospect upon
+his tongue with meditative enjoyment. "A friend of mine has just sent me
+some nice fellows from Bokhara and Turkestan. I ought to get them in
+this week, but Birdwood must finish with these roses. And I've got a lot
+of Clusiana too that ought to be in. I am going to try her in
+competition with shrubbery roots and see if _they'll_ make her behave
+herself."
+
+"Could I come in and help?" offered Guy.
+
+"Well, now that would certainly be most kind," said the Rector; and his
+thin handsome face lit up with the excitement of infecting Guy with his
+own passion. "But aren't you busy?"
+
+"Oh, no. I usually work at night."
+
+So Guy came to plant tulips and from planting tulips to being asked to
+lunch was not far, and from finishing off a few left over to being asked
+to tea was not far either. Moreover when the tulips were all planted,
+there were gladioli to be sorted and put away. Incidentally too the punt
+had to be caulked and the boathouse had to be strengthened, so that in
+the end it was half way into November before Guy realized he had been
+coming to the Rectory almost every day. The more he came, however, the
+more he was fascinated by the family. They still eluded him, and he was
+always aware, particularly between Margaret and Pauline, of a life in
+which as yet he hardly shared. At the same time, so familiar now were
+the inner places of the house and most of all the nursery, he felt as if
+happily there would come a day when to none of the sisters would he seem
+more noticeable than one of their tumbledown armchairs.
+
+Once or twice he stayed to dinner, and the long dining-room with the
+sea-grey wall-paper and curtains of the strawberry-thief design was
+always entered with a particular contentment of spirit. The table was
+very large, for somebody always forgot to take out the extra leaf put in
+for a dinner sometime last summer, or perhaps two summers ago. The
+result was that the Rector was far away in the shadows at one end; Mrs.
+Grey equally remote at the other; while Guy would in turn be near to
+Margaret or Pauline or even Monica in the middle. Old fashioned glasses
+with spirals of green and white blown in their stems; silver that was
+nearly diaphanous with use and age; candlesticks solid as the Ionic
+columns they counterfeited, or tapering and fluted with branches that
+carried the candle-flames like flowers, everything seemed as if it had
+been created for this room alone. From the wall a lacquered clock as
+round and big and benign as the setting sun wavered in the coppery
+shadows of the fire, and with scarcely the sound of a tick showed forth
+time. Guy had never appreciated the sacredness of eating in good company
+until he dined casually like this at the Rectory. He never knew what he
+ate and always accepted what was put before him like manna; yet he was
+always conscious of having enjoyed the meal, and next morning he used to
+face, unabashed, Miss Peasey's tale of ruined tapioca which had waited
+for him too long.
+
+The seal of perfection was generally set on these unexpected dinners by
+chamber-music afterward, when under the arched roof of the big
+music-room for an hour or more of trios and quartets Guy contemplated
+that family. The Greys could not have revealed the design of their life
+with anything but chamber-music, and setting aside any expression of
+inward things, thought Guy, how would it be possible to imagine them
+more externally decorative than seated so at this formal industry of
+art? He liked best perhaps the trios, when he and Mrs. Grey, each in a
+Caroline chair with tall wicker back, remained outside, and yet withal
+as much in the picture as two donors painted by an old Florentine.
+Monica in a white dress sat straight and stiff with pale gold hair that
+seemed the very colour of the refined, the almost rarefied accompaniment
+upon which her fingers quivered and rippled. Something of her own
+coldness and remoteness and crystalline severity she brought to her
+instrument, as if upon a windless day a fountain played forth its
+pattern. Margaret's amber dress deepened from the shade of Monica's
+hair, and Margaret's eyes glowed deep and solemn as the solemn depths of
+the violoncello over which she hung with a thought of motherhood in the
+way she cherished it. Was it she, wondered Guy, who was the ultimate
+lure of this house, or was it Pauline? Of her, as she swayed to the
+violin, nothing could be said but that from a rose-bloomed radiance
+issued a sound of music. And how clearly in the united effect of the
+three sisters was written the beauty of their lives. Guy could almost
+see every hour of their girlhood passing in orderly pattern, as the
+divine Hours dance along a Grecian frieze. There was neither passion nor
+sentiment in the music: there was neither sorrow nor regret. It was
+heartless in its limpid beauty; it was remote as a cloud against the
+sunrise; cold as water was it, and incommunicable as a dream; yet in
+solitude when Guy reconjured the sound afterward, it returned to his
+memory like fire.
+
+A great occasion for Guy was the afternoon when first the Greys came to
+tea with him at Plashers Mead. Himself went into Wychford and bought the
+cakes, so many that Miss Peasey held up her hands with that ridiculously
+conventional gesture of surprize she used, exclaiming:
+
+"Oh, dear, this is a variety!"
+
+Guy led them solemnly round the house and furnished the empty rooms with
+such vivid descriptions that their emptiness was scarcely any longer
+perceptible. In his own room he waited anxiously for judgment. Margaret
+was of course the first to declare an opinion. She did not like his
+curtains nor his green canvas, and she was by no means willing to accept
+his excuse that they were relics of undergraduate taste.
+
+"If you don't like them now, why do you have them? Why not plain white
+for the walls and no curtains at all, until you can get ones you really
+do like?"
+
+Pauline was afraid his feelings would be hurt and declared with such
+transparent dishonesty how greatly she loved everything in the room that
+Guy, grateful though he was to her intended sweetness, was more
+discouraged than ever. Monica objected to his having Our Lady on the
+mantelshelf, and would not admit her as Saint Rose of Lima; but Guy was
+enough in awe of Monica not to justify the identification with Saint
+Rose by his desire for a poetic apostrophe. As for Mrs. Grey, she
+behaved as she always did when Monica and Margaret were being critical,
+that is by firing off 'charmings!' in a sort of benevolent musketry; but
+if Guy was not convinced by her 'charmings!' he could not resist her
+when she said:
+
+"I think Guy's room is charming ... charming!"
+
+He felt his room could be an absolute failure if from the ashes of its
+reputation he were alluded to actually for the first time as 'Guy.' Gone
+then was Mr. Hazlewood: fled were those odious 'misses.' He turned to
+Pauline and said momentously, boldly:
+
+"I say, Pauline, you haven't seen my new kitten."
+
+She blushed, and Guy stood breathless with the attainment of the first
+peak. Then triumphantly he turned to Mrs. Grey:
+
+"Monica and Margaret are very severe, aren't they?"
+
+How easy it was after all, and he wished he had addressed them directly
+by their Christian names instead of taking refuge in a timid reference.
+Now all that was wanting for his pleasure was that Monica, Margaret or
+Pauline should call him Guy. He wondered which would be the first. And
+vaguely he asked himself which he wanted to be the first.
+
+Pauline was talking to Margaret in the bay-window.
+
+"Do you remember," she was saying, "when Richard came to look at
+Plashers Mead and we pretended he was going to take it?"
+
+Margaret frowned at her for answer; but for Guy the afternoon so lately
+perfected was spoilt again; and when they were gone, all the evening he
+glowered at phantom Richards who, whether Adonises or Calibans, were all
+equally obnoxious and more than obnoxious, positively minatory. Next day
+he felt he had no heart to make an excuse to visit the Rectory; and he
+was drearily eating some of the cakes of the tea-party, when Mr. Brydone
+and Mr. Willsher paid him their first call. Guy did not think they would
+appreciate the empty rooms, however eloquently he narrated their future
+glories; so he led his visitors forthwith to the cakes, listening to the
+talk of trout and jack. After a while he asked with an elaborate
+indifference if either of them had lately been round to the Rectory.
+
+"Too clever for me," said Brydone shaking his head. "Besides, Pauline
+kicked up a fuss a fortnight ago because we asked if we could have the
+otter-meet in their paddock."
+
+"They were never sporting, those Rectory kids," said Willsher gloomily.
+
+"Never," his friend agreed, shaking his head. "Do you remember when
+Margaret egged on young Richard Ford to punch your head because your old
+terrier chivied the Greys' cat round the churchyard?"
+
+"I punched _his_ head, I remember," said Willsher in wrathful
+reminiscence.
+
+"Does Richard Ford live here?" Guy asked.
+
+"His father's the Vicar of Little Fairfield, the next parish, you know.
+Richard's gone to India. He's an engineer, awfully nice chap and head
+over heels in love with the fair Margaret. I believe there's a sort of
+engagement."
+
+In that moment by the lightening of his heart Guy knew that he was in
+love with Pauline.
+
+Outside, the November night hung humid and oppressive.
+
+"I thought we should get it soon," said Willsher, and as the two friends
+vanished in the mazy garden, Guy looking up felt rain falling softly yet
+with gathering intensity. He stood for a while in his doorway, held by
+the whispering blackness. Then suddenly in a rapture of realization he
+slammed the door and, singing at the top of his voice, marched about the
+hall. Once upon a time 'to-morrow' had been wont to drowse him: now the
+word sounded upon his imagination like a golden trumpet.
+
+
+
+
+WINTER
+
+
+
+
+_December_
+
+
+The rain which began the day after the Greys' visit to Plashers Mead
+went on almost without a break for a whole week. December with what it
+could bring of deadness, gloom and moisture came drearily down on
+Wychford, and Pauline as she sat high in her window-seat lamented the
+interminable soak.
+
+"I can't think why Guy hasn't been near the Rectory lately," she
+grumbled.
+
+"I expect he's tired of us," said Margaret.
+
+"You don't really think so," Pauline contradicted. "You're much much
+_much_ too conceited to think so really."
+
+Margaret laughed.
+
+"You don't mind a bit when I call you conceited," Pauline went on,
+challenging her sister. "I believe you're so conceited that you're proud
+even of being conceited. Why doesn't Guy come and see us, I wonder."
+
+"Why should he come?" Monica asked rather severely. "Perhaps he's doing
+some work for a change."
+
+"I believe he's hurt," Pauline declared.
+
+"Hurt?" repeated her sisters.
+
+"Yes, because you were both so frightfully critical of his room. Oh, I
+_am_ glad that Mother and I aren't critical."
+
+"Well, if he's hurt because I said he oughtn't to have an image of Our
+Lady on his mantelshelf," said Monica, "I really don't think we need
+bother any more about him. Was I to encourage him in such stupid little
+Gothic affectations?"
+
+"Oh, oh," cried Pauline. "I think he's frightened of you, Monica dear,
+and of your long sentences, for I'm sure I am."
+
+"He wasn't at all frightened of me," Monica asserted. "Didn't you hear
+him call me Monica?"
+
+"And surely," Margaret put in, "you didn't really like those stupid mock
+mediaeval curtains. No design, just a lot of meaningless fleurs-de-lys
+looking like spots. It's because I think Guy has got a glimmering of
+taste that I gave him my honest opinion. Otherwise I shouldn't have
+bothered."
+
+"No, I didn't like the curtains," Pauline admitted. "But I thought they
+were rather touching. And, oh, my dears, I can't tell you how touching I
+think the whole house is, with that poor woman squeezing her way about
+that enormous kitchen-furniture!"
+
+Pauline looked out of the window as she spoke, and there at last was Guy
+standing on the lawn with her father, who was explaining something about
+a root which he held in his hand. On the two of them the rain poured
+steadily down. Pauline threw up the sash and called out that they were
+to come in at once.
+
+"I am glad he's ... why what's the matter, Margaret?" she asked, as she
+saw her sister looking at her with an expression of rather emphatic
+surprize.
+
+"Really," commented Margaret. "I shouldn't have thought it was necessary
+to soothe his ruffled feelings by giving him the idea that you've been
+watching at the window all the week for his visit."
+
+"Oh, Margaret, you are unkind," and, since words would all too soon have
+melted into tears, Pauline rushed from the nursery away to her own white
+fastness at the top of the house. She did not pause in her headlong
+flight to greet her mother in the passage; nor even when she entangled
+herself in Janet's apron could she say a word.
+
+"Good gracious, Miss Pauline," gasped Janet. "And only just now the cat
+went and run between my legs in the hall."
+
+Pauline's bedroom was immediately over the nursery; but so roundabout
+was the construction of the Rectory that, to reach the one from the
+other, all sorts of corridors and twisting stairways had to be passed;
+and when finally she flung herself down in her small armchair she was
+breathless. Soon, however, the tranquillity of the room restored her.
+The faded blue linen so cool to her cheeks quieted all the passionate
+indignation. On the wall Saint Ursula asleep in her bed seemed
+inconsistent with a proud rage; nor did Tobit laughing in the angel's
+company encourage her to sulk. Therefore almost before Guy had taken off
+his wet overcoat, Pauline had rushed downstairs again; had kissed
+Margaret; and had put three stitches in the tail of the scarlet bird
+that occupied her tambour-frame. Certainly when he came into the
+drawing-room she was as serene as her two sisters, and much more serene
+than Mrs. Grey, who had just discovered that she had carefully made the
+tea without a spoonful in the pot, besides mislaying a bottle of
+embrocation she had spent the afternoon in finding for an old
+parishioner's rheumatism.
+
+Pauline, however, soon began to worry herself again because Guy was
+surely avoiding her most deliberately, and not merely avoiding her but
+paying a great deal of attention to Margaret. Of course she was glad for
+him to like Margaret, but Richard out in India must be considered. She
+could not forget that promise she had made to Richard last June, when
+they were paddling upstream into the sunset. Guy was charming; in a way
+she could be almost as fond of him as of Richard, but what would she say
+to Richard if she let Guy carry off Margaret? Besides, it was unkind not
+to have a word for her when she was always such a good listener to his
+tales of Miss Peasey, and when they could always laugh together at the
+same absurdities of daily life. Perhaps he had felt that Margaret, who
+had been so critical over his curtains, must be propitiated--and yet now
+he was already going without a word to herself: he was shaking hands
+with her so formally that, though she longed to teaze him for wearing
+silk socks with those heavy brogues, she could not. He seemed to be
+angry with her ... surely he was not angry because she had hailed him
+from the window.
+
+"What was the matter with Guy?" she asked when he was gone, and when
+everybody looked at her sharply, Pauline felt herself on fire with
+blushes; made a wild stitch in the tail of the scarlet bird; and then
+rushed away to look for the lost embrocation, refusing to hear when they
+called after her that Mother had been sitting on it all the afternoon.
+
+The windows along the corridors were inky blue, almost turning black, as
+she stared at them, half frightened in the unlighted dusk: outside, the
+noise of the rain was increasing every moment. She would sit up in her
+bedroom till dinner-time and write a long letter to India. By
+candlelight she wrote to Richard, seated at the small desk that was full
+of childish things.
+
+     WYCHFORD RECTORY
+
+     OXON.
+
+     _Tuesday._
+
+     _My dear Richard,_
+
+     _Thank you for your last letter which was very interesting. I
+     should think your bridge was wonderful. Will you come back to
+     England when it's finished? There is not much to tell you except
+     that a man called Guy Hazlewood has taken Plashers Mead. He is very
+     nice, or else I should have hated him to take the house you wanted.
+     He is very tall--not so tall as father, of course--and he is a
+     poet. He has a very nice bobtail and a touching housekeeper who is
+     deaf. Birdwood likes him very much; so I expect you would too.
+     Birdwood wants to know if it's true that people in India--oh,
+     bother, now I've forgotten what it was, only I know he's got a bet
+     with Godbold's nephew about it. Guy--you mustn't be jealous that we
+     call him Guy because he really is very nice--has just been in to
+     tea. Margaret is a darling, but I wish you'd take my advice and
+     write more about_ her _when you write. Of course I don't know what
+     you do write, and I'm sure she really is interested in your bridge,
+     but of course you must remember that she's not used to the kind of
+     bridges you're building. But she's a darling and I'm simply longing
+     for you to be married so that I can come and stay with you when I'm
+     an old maid which I've quite made up my mind I'm going to be. Guy
+     has been gardening with Father a good deal. Father says he's_
+     fairly _intelligent. Isn't Father sweet? He drank your health at
+     dinner the other night without anybody's reminding him it was your
+     birthday. I think Guy likes Monica best. I don't think he cares at
+     all for Margaret except of course he must admire her--Margaret is
+     such a darling! Oh, a merry Christmas because it will be Christmas
+     before you get this letter. Percy Brydone and Charlie Willsher came
+     to dinner last month. They were so touching and bored._
+
+     _Lots of love from_
+
+     _Your loving_
+
+     _Pauline_.
+
+     _Don't forget about writing to Margaret more about herself._
+
+Pauline put the letter in its crackling envelope with a sigh for the
+unformed hand in which it was written. Nothing brought home to her so
+nearly as this handwriting of hers the muddle she was always apt to make
+of things. How it sprawled across the page, so unlike Monica's that was
+small and neat and exquisitely formed or Margaret's that was decorated
+with fantastic and beautiful affectations of manner. It was obvious, of
+course, that her sisters must always be the favourites of everybody, but
+it had been rather unkind of Guy to avoid her so obviously to-day.
+Richard had always realized that even if she were impulsive and foolish
+she was also tremendously sympathetic.
+
+"For I really am sympathetic," she assured her image in the glass, as
+she tried to make the light brown hair look tidy enough to escape
+Margaret's remonstrances at dinner. If Guy were hopelessly in love with
+Margaret, how sympathetic she would be; and she would try to explain to
+him how interesting an unhappy love-affair always made people. For
+instance there was Miss Verney whom everybody thought was just a cross
+old maid; but if they had only seen, as she had seen, that cracked
+miniature, what romance even her cats would possess. She must take Guy
+to see Miss Verney or bring Miss Verney to see Guy: a meeting must
+somehow be arranged between these two, who would surely be drawn
+together by their misfortunes in love. Guy was exactly the person whom
+an unhappy love-affair would become. It would be so interesting in ten
+years' time, when she would be nearly thirty and old enough to be Guy's
+confidante without anybody's interference, to keep back the inquisitive
+world from Plashers Mead. No doubt by then Guy would be famous: he
+always spoke with such confidence of fame. Monica and Margaret would
+both be married, and she would still be living at the Rectory with her
+father and mother. Pauline, as she pictured the future, saw no change in
+them, but rather sacrificed to the ravages of time her own appearance
+and Guy's, so that at thirty she fancied both herself and him as already
+slightly grey. The gong sounded from the depths of the house, and
+hastily she snatched from her wardrobe the first frock she found: it
+happened to be a white one, more suitable to June than to December,
+with a skirt of many flounces all stiffly starched. After rustling down
+passages and stairs she reached the dining-room just as the others were
+going into dinner.
+
+"Pauline, how charming you look in that frock," her mother exclaimed.
+"Why it's like Summer just to see you."
+
+Pauline was very happy that night because her mother and sisters petted
+her with the simple affection for which she was always longing.
+
+The next day seemed fine enough to justify Mrs. Grey, Margaret and
+Monica in making an expedition into Oxford to see about Christmas
+presents; and in the afternoon, while Pauline was sitting alone in the
+nursery, Guy was shown in by Janet. Pauline felt very shy and blushful
+when she met him so intimately as this, after all her plans for him on
+the night before. He too seemed ill at ease, and she was sadly positive
+he missed Margaret. The sense of embarrassment lasted until tea-time,
+when Janet came in to say that the Rector hearing of Mr. Hazlewood's
+arrival had decided to have tea in the nursery.
+
+"Oh, what fun," cried Pauline clapping her hands. "Janet, do give him
+the mug with 'A PRESENT FOR A GOOD BOY' on it."
+
+"Dear me, Miss Pauline, what things you do think of, I do declare. Well,
+did you ever? Tut-tut! Fancy, for your father too!"
+
+Nevertheless Janet sedately put the mug on the tray. When she was gone
+Pauline turned to Guy, and said:
+
+"I'm sure Father thinks he ought to come and chaperone us. Isn't he
+sweet?"
+
+Presently the Rector appeared looking very tall in the low doorway. He
+nodded cheerfully to Guy:
+
+"Seen Vartani? You know, he's that pale blue fellow from Nazareth. Very
+often he's a washy lilac, but this is genuinely blue."
+
+"No, I don't think I noticed it--him, I mean," said Guy apologetically.
+
+"Oh, Father, of course he didn't! It's a tiny iris," she explained to
+Guy, "and Father puts in new roots every year...."
+
+"Bulbs, my dear, bulbs," corrected Mr. Grey. "It's one of the Histrio
+lot."
+
+"Well, bulbs. And every year one flower comes out in the middle of the
+winter rain and lasts about ten minutes, and then all the summer
+Birdwood and Father grub about looking for the bulb, which they never
+find, and then Father gets six new ones."
+
+They talked on, the three of them, about flowery subjects while the
+Rector drank his tea from the mug without a word of comment on the
+inscription. Then he went off to write a letter, and Guy with a
+regretful glance at the room supposed he ought to go.
+
+"Oh, no, stay a little while," said Pauline. "Look, it's raining again."
+
+It was only a shower through which the declining sun was lancing silver
+rays. As they watched it from the window without speaking, Pauline
+wondered if she ought to have given so frank an invitation to stay
+longer. Would Margaret have frowned? And how odd Guy was this afternoon.
+Why did he keep looking at her so intently as if about to speak, and
+then turn away with a sigh and nothing said.
+
+"I do love this room," said Guy at last.
+
+"I love it too," Pauline agreed.
+
+"May I ask you something?"
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+"You spoke to Margaret the other day about someone called Richard. Do
+you like him very much?"
+
+"Yes, of course. Only you mustn't ask me about him. Please don't. I've
+promised Margaret I wouldn't talk about him. Please, please, don't ask
+me any more."
+
+"But leaving Margaret out of it, do you like him ... well ... very much
+better than me, for instance?"
+
+Guy used himself for comparison with such an assumption of carelessness
+as might give the impression that only by accident did he mention
+himself instead of the leg of the table, or the kitten.
+
+"Oh, I couldn't tell you that. Because if I said I liked you even as
+much, I should feel disloyal to Richard, and he's the best friend I've
+got. Oh, do let's talk about something else. Please do, Mr. Hazlewood."
+
+"Oh, look here, I'm going," exclaimed Guy, and he went instantly.
+
+Pauline felt unhappy to think she had hurt his feelings; but he should
+not expect her to like him better than Richard. If Richard were married
+to Margaret, it might be different; but suppose that Margaret fell in
+love with Guy? Pauline felt her heart almost stop beating at the notion,
+and she made up her mind that if such a calamity befell it would be
+entirely her fault. The idea that she should so betray Richard's
+confidence made her miserable for the rest of the evening. Yet, though
+she was unhappy about Richard, it was always the picture of Guy hurrying
+from the nursery and his reproachful backward look that was visibly
+before her mind. And in the morning when she woke up, it was with a
+strange unsatisfactory feeling such as she had never known before.
+Yesterday came back to her remembrance with a great emptiness, seeming
+to her a day which had somehow never been properly finished. Here was
+the rain again raining, raining; and the old prospect of dreary weather
+that would not change for months.
+
+A week went by without any sign of Guy. There were no amusing evenings
+now when he stayed to dinner: there were no delightful days of planting
+bulbs in the garden: there was nothing indeed to do, but visit bedridden
+old ladies to whom fine or bad weather no longer mattered. Yet nobody
+else except herself seemed at all unhappy it. Actually not one of the
+family commented upon Guy's absence.
+
+"I really am afraid that Margaret _is_ heartless," said Pauline to her
+image in the glass. "She doesn't seem to care a bit whether he is here
+or not."
+
+Then suddenly the weather changed. The country sparkled with hoar frost,
+and everybody forgot about the rain, asking if ever before such weather
+had been known for Christmas. Guy was invited to dinner at the Rectory,
+and Pauline forgot about her problems in the pleasure that the jolly
+afternoon brought. Self-consciousness under the critical glances of
+Monica and Margaret vanished in the atmosphere of intimacy shed by the
+occasion. She could laugh and make a great noise without being reproved,
+and Guy himself was obviously more at home than he had ever been. There
+seemed a likelihood that now once again the progress of simple
+friendship would advance undisturbed by the complications of love, and
+Pauline was glad to be able to assure herself that Guy did not that
+afternoon display the slightest sign of a hopeless passion for Margaret.
+He was more in his mood and demeanour of last month, and diverted them
+greatly with an account of struggling to explain to Graves, the deaf and
+dumb gardener, what he wanted done in the garden.
+
+"But didn't Birdwood help you?" they asked laughing.
+
+"Well, Birdwood showed me what I ought to do," said Guy. "But it seemed
+such a rough method of information that I hadn't the heart to adopt it.
+You see, as far as I could make out, it consisted of pulling up a
+cabbage by the root, hitting Graves on the head with it, and then
+nodding violently. That meant 'clear away these cabbages.' Or if
+Birdwood wanted to say 'plant broccoli here,' he dug Graves in the ribs
+with the dibbler and rubbed his nose in the unthinned seedlings."
+
+"What does Miss Peasey say?" asked Pauline who was in a state of the
+highest amusement, because deaf and dumb Graves was one of the villagers
+who lived under her particular patronage.
+
+"Well, at first Miss Peasey was rather huffed, because she thought
+Graves was mocking her by pretending to be deaf. Now, however, she comes
+out and watches him at work and hopes that next Spring there'll be a
+little more variety in the garden."
+
+The sunny sparkling weather lasted for a few days after Christmas; and
+one morning Pauline, walking by herself on Wychford down, met Guy.
+
+"I wondered if I should see you," he said.
+
+"Did you expect to see me, then?"
+
+"Well, I knew you often came here, and this morning I couldn't resist
+coming here myself."
+
+Pauline felt a sudden impulse to run away; and yet most unaccountably
+the impulse led her into walking along with Guy at a brisk pace over the
+close-cropped glittering turf. Round them trotted Bob in eddies of
+endless motion.
+
+"Listen," said Guy. "I'm sure I heard a lark singing."
+
+They stopped, and Pauline thought that never was there so sweet a
+silence as here upon the summit of this green down. Guy's lark could not
+be heard. There was not even the faint wind that sighs across high
+country. There was nothing but gorse and turf and a turquoise sky
+floating on silver deeps and distances above the winter landscape.
+
+"When the gorse is out of bloom, kissing's out of fashion," he said,
+pointing to a golden spray.
+
+Pauline had heard the jingle often enough, but spoken solemnly like this
+by Guy on Wychford down it flooded her cheeks with blushes, and in a
+sort of dear alarm the truth of it declared itself. She was startlingly
+aware of a new life, as it were demanding all sorts of questions of her.
+She felt a shyness that nearly drove her to run away from her companion
+and yet at the same moment brought a complete incapacity for movement of
+any kind, an incapacity too that was full of rapture. She longed for him
+to say something of such convincing ordinariness as would break the
+spell and prove to her that she was still Pauline Grey; while with all
+her desire for the spell to be broken, she was wondering if every moment
+she were not deliberately offering herself to enchantment.
+
+"Have you ever felt," Guy was asking, "a long time after you've met
+somebody, as if you had suddenly met them again for the first time?"
+
+Pauline shook her head vaguely. Then with an effort she recaptured her
+old self and said laughing:
+
+"But then, you see, I never think about anything."
+
+"Sleeping beauty, sleeping beauty," said Guy.
+
+And with an abrupt change of manner, he began to throw sticks for Bob,
+so that the lucid air was soon loud with continuous barking.
+
+"I wonder if we shall ever meet again on Wychford down," said Guy as
+together they swung along the rolling highroad towards the village.
+
+A horse and trap caught them up before Pauline could answer the
+speculation, and Mr. Godbold, as he passed, wished them both a very good
+morning.
+
+"Godbold seems extraordinarily interested in us," Guy remarked, when for
+the third time before he turned the corner Mr. Godbold looked back at
+them.
+
+"Oh, I wonder...." Pauline began, expressing with her lips sudden
+apprehension.
+
+"You mean, he thought it strange to see us together?"
+
+"People in the country...." she began again.
+
+"Why don't you hurry on alone?" Guy asked. "And I'll come in to Wychford
+later."
+
+"Don't be stupid. What do the Wychford people matter? Besides I should
+hate to do anything like that."
+
+She was half angry with Guy for the suggestion. It seemed to cast a
+shadow on the morning.
+
+When Pauline got back home, she told them all about her meeting with
+Guy: nobody had a word of disapproval, not even Margaret, and the faint
+malaise of uncertainty vanished.
+
+After tea, however, Mrs. Grey came in looking rather agitated.
+
+"Pauline," she began at once. "You must not meet Guy alone like that
+again."
+
+"Oh, darling Mother, you _are_ looking so pink and flustered," said
+Pauline.
+
+"No, there's nothing to laugh at. Nothing at all. I was most annoyed.
+Four of the people I visited actually had the impertinence to ask me if
+you and Guy were engaged."
+
+Pauline went off into peals of laughter and danced about the room; but
+when she was alone and thought again of what the gossips were saying,
+she suddenly realized it was not altogether for Richard's sake that she
+had dreaded the idea of Guy's falling in love with Margaret.
+
+
+
+
+_January_
+
+
+Plashers Mead and the Rectory were not the only romantic houses in
+Wychford. Indeed the little town as a whole had preserved by reason of
+its remoteness from railways and important highroads the character given
+to it during the many years of prosperity which lasted until the reign
+of Charles the First. From that time it had slowly declined; and now
+with a stagnation that every year was more deeply accentuated by modern
+conditions it was still declining. New houses were never built, and even
+the King's Head, a pledge of commercial confidence in the Hanoverian
+succession, seemed to flaunt with an inappropriate modernity its red
+bricks mellowed by the passage of two centuries. Apart from this rival
+to the Stag Inn the fabric of Wychford was uniformly grey, to which,
+notwithstanding Miss Peasey's declaration of sameness, variety was amply
+secured by the character of the architecture. Gables and mullions; oaken
+eaves and corbels carefully ornamented; latticed oriels and sashed bows;
+roofs of steep unequal pitch to which age had often added strange
+undulations; chimney stacks of stone and gothic entries, all these gave
+variety enough; and if the whole effect was too sober for Miss Peasey's
+taste, the little town on the hillside was now safe for ever from the
+brightening of the dolls-house spirit.
+
+Wychford could still be called a town, for it possessed a few
+side-streets, along the grassgrown cobbles of which there still existed
+many houses of considerable beauty and dignity. These had lapsed into a
+more apparent decay, because a dwindling population had avoided their
+direct exposure to the bleak country and had left them empty. In the
+High Street this melancholy of bygone fame was less noticeable, and here
+scarcely a house was unoccupied. Some buildings, indeed, had been
+degraded to unworthy usages; and it was sad to see Perpendicular
+fireplaces filled with cheap lines in drapery, or to find an ancient
+chantry trodden by pigs and fowls. Generally, however, the High Street
+to the summit of its steep ascent had an air of sedate prosperity that
+did not reflect the reality of a slow depopulation.
+
+About half way up the hill on the other side of the town from Plashers
+Mead and the Rectory was a side-street called Abbey Lane that, instead
+of leading to open country, was bounded by a high stone wall. This
+blocked the thoroughfare except so far as to allow a narrow path to
+skirt its base and give egress along some untidy cottage-gardens to a
+cross-road farther up the hill.
+
+In the middle of the wall confronting the street two columns surmounted
+with huge round finials showed where there had once been a gate wide
+enough to admit a coach. Above the wall a belt of high trees obscured
+the view and gave a dank shadow to the road beneath. At one corner a
+small wooden wicket with a half obliterated proclamation of privacy
+enabled anyone to pass through the wall and enter the grounds of
+Wychford Abbey. This wicket opened directly on a path that wound through
+a plantation of yews interspersed with tall beeches and elms whose
+overarching tops intensified even in wintry leaflessness the prevalent
+gloom. The silence of this plantation made Wychford High Street seem in
+remembrance a noisy cheerful place, and the mere crackling of twigs and
+beech-mast induced the visitor to walk more quietly, fearful of
+profaning the mysteriousness even by so slight an indication of human
+presence. The plantation continued in tiers of trees down the hill to
+the Greenrush, which had been deepened by a dam to support this gloom
+of overhanging branches with slow and solemn stream. The path, however,
+kept to the level ground and emerged presently upon a large square of
+pallescent grass the farther side of which was bounded by a deserted
+house.
+
+There were no ruins of the ecclesiastical foundation to fret a gothic
+moonlight, but Wychford Abbey did not require these to justify the
+foreboding approach; and the great Jacobean pile, whose stones the
+encroaching trees had robbed of warmth and vitality, brooded in the
+silence with a monstrous ghostliness that was scarcely heightened by the
+signs of material decay. Nevertheless the casements whose glass was
+filmy like the eyes of blind men or sometimes diced with sinister gaps;
+the cracks and fissures in the external fabric; the headless supporters
+of the family coat; and the roof slowly being torn tile from tile by
+ivy, did consummate the initial impression. Within, the desolation was
+more marked. A few rotten planks had been nailed across the front door,
+but these had been kicked down by inquisitive explorers, and the hall
+remained perpetually open to the weather. In some of the rooms the
+floors had jagged pits, and there was not one which was not defiled by
+jackdaws, owls and bats. Strands of sickly ivy, which had forced an
+entrance through the windows, clawed the dusty air. A leprosy had
+infected the plaster ceilings so that the original splendour of their
+mouldings had become meaningless and scarcely any longer discernible;
+and the marble of the florid mantelpieces was streaked with abominable
+damp. The back of the house seemed to go beyond the rest in the
+expression of utter abandonment. Crumbling walls with manes of ivy
+enclosed a series of gardens rank with docks and nettles and almost
+impenetrable on account of the matted briars. As if to add the final
+touch of melancholy the caretaker (for somewhere in the depths of the
+house existed ironically a caretaker) had cultivated in this wilderness
+some dreary patches of potatoes. Beyond the forsaken parterres stretched
+a great unkempt shrubbery where laurels, peterswort and hollies
+struggled in disorderly and overgrown profusion for the pleasure of
+numberless birds, and where a wide path still maintained its slow
+diagonal down the hillside to the river's edge.
+
+Such were the surroundings Guy chose to embower the doubts and
+hesitations that followed close upon the morning when on Wychford down
+he had been so nearly telling Pauline he loved her. Perhaps the almost
+savage gloom of this place helped to confirm his profound hopelessness.
+A black frost had succeeded the sparkle of Christmastide. The banks of
+the river in such weather were impossible, for the wind came biting
+across the water-meadows and piped in the withered reeds and rushes with
+an intolerable melancholy. Here in the grounds of Wychford Abbey there
+was comparative warmth, and the desolation suited the unfortunate end he
+was predicting for his hopes. To begin with, it was extremely improbable
+that Pauline cared about him. His assay with regard to Richard had not
+been encouraging, and his worst fears of being too late for real
+inclusion within the charm of the Rectory were surely justified. He had
+known all along how much exaggerated were his ambitions, and he wished
+now that in the first moment of their springing he had ruthlessly
+strangled them. Moreover, even if Pauline did ultimately come to care
+for him, how much farther was he advanced upon the road of a happy
+issue? It were presumptuous and absurd with only £150 a year to propose
+marriage, and if he gave up living here and became a schoolmaster at
+home, he knew that the post would be made conditional upon a willingness
+to wait as many years for marriage as the wisdom of age decreed.
+Besides, he could not take Pauline from Wychford and imprison her at Fox
+Hall to dose little boys with Gregory's Powder or check the schedule of
+their underclothing. The only justification for taking Pauline away
+from the Rectory would be to make her immortal in poetry. Yet
+encouraging as lately one or two epithets had certainly been, he was
+still far from having written enough to fill even a very thin book; and
+really as he came to review the past three months he could not say that
+he had done much more or much better than in the days when Plashers Mead
+was undiscovered. Time had lately gone by very fast not merely on
+account of the jolly days at the Rectory, but also because weeks that
+were terminated by weekly bills seemed to be endowed with a double
+swiftness.
+
+"I really must eat less meat," said Guy to himself. "It's ridiculous to
+spend eleven shillings and sixpence every week on meat ... that's
+roughly £30 a year. Why, it's absurd. And I don't eat it. Bother Miss
+Peasey! What an appetite she has got."
+
+He wondered if he could break through the barrier of his housekeeper's
+deafness so far as to impress upon her the fact that she ate too much
+meat. She spent too much, also, on small things like pepper and salt.
+This reckless buying of pepper and salt made the grocer's bill an
+eternal irritation, for it really seemed absurd to be spending all one's
+money on pepper and salt. Yet people did live on £150 a year. Coleridge
+had married with less than that and apparently had got on perfectly
+well, or would have if he had not been foolish in other ways. How on
+earth was it done? He really must try and find out how much for instance
+Birdwood spent every week on the necessities of life. That was the worst
+of Oxford ... one came down without the slightest idea of the elementary
+facts of domestic economy. There had been a lot of soda bought last
+week. He remembered seeing it in one of those horrid little slippery
+tradesmen's books. Soda? What was it for? Vaguely Guy thought it was
+used to soften water, but there were plenty of rain tubs at Plashers
+Mead, and soda must be an unjustifiable extravagance. Then Miss Peasey
+herself was getting £18 a year. It seemed very little, so little indeed
+that when he paid her every month, he felt inclined to apologize for the
+smallness of the amount, but little as it was it only left him with
+£132. Knock off £30 for meat and he had £102. £18 must go in rent and
+there was left £84. Then there was milk and bread and taxes and the
+subscription to the cricket-club and the subscription to all the other
+vice-presidencies to which the town had elected him. There was also
+Graves his deaf and dumb gardener, and a new bucket for the well. Books
+and clothes, of course, could be obtained on credit, but even so
+sometime or other bills came in. Guy made a number of mental
+calculations, but by no device was he able to make the amount required
+come to less than £82. That left £2 for Pauline, and then by the way
+there was the dog-licence which he had forgotten. Thirty-two and
+sixpence for Pauline! Guy roamed through the sad arbours of Wychford
+Abbey in the depths of depression, and watched with a cynical amusement
+the birds searching for grubs in the iron ground. He began to feel a
+positive sense of injury against love which had descended with
+proverbial wantonness to complicate mortal affairs. He tried to imagine
+the Rectory without Pauline, and when he did so all the attraction was
+gone. Yet distinctly when he had first met the Greys, he had not thought
+more often of Pauline than of her sisters. What perversity of
+circumstance had introduced love?
+
+"It's being alone," said Guy. "I feed myself upon dreams. Michael was
+perfectly right. Wychford is a place of dreams."
+
+He would cure this love-sickness. That was an idea for a sonnet. Damn!
+'_I attempt from love's sickness to fly._' It need not be said again. At
+the same time, poem or not, he would avoid the Rectory and shut himself
+close in that green room which Margaret and Monica had thought so crude
+with undergraduate taste. If this cold went on, there would be skating;
+and he began to picture Pauline upon the ice. The vision flashed like a
+diamond through these gloomy groves, and with the soughing of the skates
+in his ears and the thought of Pauline's hands criss-cross in his own,
+Guy's first attack on love ended in complete surrender. Skating meant
+long talks with never a curious eye to cast dismay; and in long talks
+and rhythmic motion possibly she might come to love him. Guy's footsteps
+began to ring out upon the iron-bound walk, and of all the sad ghosts
+that should have haunted his path, there was not one who walked now
+beside him; for, as he dreamed upon the vision of Pauline, the
+melancholy of that forsaken place was lightened with a sort of April
+exultation and the promise of new life to gladden the once populous
+gardens where lovers might have been merry in the past.
+
+However, when he was back in his house, Guy's earlier mood returned, and
+he made up his mind anew not to go to the Rectory. Nothing would do for
+him but the metaphysics and passion of Dr. John Donne; and on the dreary
+evening when the frost yielded to rain before there had been one day's
+skating, Guy was as near as anyone may ever have been to conversing with
+that old lover's ghost who died before the god of Love was born. All his
+plans wore mourning, and the bills that week rose two-and-sixpence-halfpenny
+higher than their highest total so far. Guy moped in his green library
+and, as he read through the manuscripts of poetry that with the progress
+of the night seemed to him worse and worse, he wished he could recapture
+some of that self-confidence which had carried him so serenely through
+Oxford; and he asked himself if Pauline's love would endow him once more
+with that conviction of ultimate fame, to the former safe tenure of
+which he now looked back as from a disillusioned old age.
+
+Another week passed, and Guy wondered what they were thinking of him at
+the Rectory for his neglect of all they might justly suppose had been
+offered him. Absence from Pauline did not seem to have effected much so
+far except a complete paralysis of his power to work with that diligence
+he had always preached as the true threshold of art. Perhaps he had been
+always a little too insistent upon the merit of academic industry, too
+conscious of a deliberate embarkation upon a well-built career, too
+careful of mere equipment in his exploration of Parnassus. So long as he
+had been exercizing his technical accomplishment, everything had seemed
+to be advancing securely toward the moment when inspiration should
+vitalize the promise of his craftsmanship. Now inspiration was at hand,
+and accomplishment had betrayed him. These effusions of restless love
+which he had lately produced were surely the most wretched cripples ever
+sent to climb the Heliconian slope. Guy looked at his notebook and
+marked how many apostrophes, the impulses to declaim which had seemed to
+scorch his imagination with bright ardours, had, alas, failed to kindle
+his uninflammable pencil. He derived a transient consolation from
+Browning's Pauline which was surely as inadequate as his own verse to
+celebrate the name. '_Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me._' That opening
+half-line was the only one which moved him. But after all Browning did
+not esteem his own Pauline and had written it when he was twenty.
+Himself was twenty-two, and could not declare his passion in one lyric.
+A graceful sonnet for his father's birthday would not compensate for
+this dismaying failure. Moreover in rhymes, thought Guy, Pauline was no
+niggard; and with a flicker of sardonic humour he recalled how many
+Swinburne had found for Faustine.
+
+It was Godbold who fed the vexations and torments of untried love with
+the bitterest medicine of all. He had come down to see Guy about an old
+chair that had to be fetched from a neighbouring village and, when his
+business was over, seemed inclined to chat for a while.
+
+"Have you ever noticed, Mr. Hazlewood," he began, "as there's a lot of
+people in this world who know more than a man knows himself?"
+
+Guy indicated that the fact had struck him.
+
+"Well, now, just because I happen to see you with Miss Pauline the other
+morning, there's half-a-dozen wise gabies in Wychford who've almost
+married you to her out of hand."
+
+Guy tried not to look annoyed.
+
+"Oh, you may well frown, Mr. Hazlewood, for as I said to them, it's
+nothing more than nonsense to tie up a young man and a young woman just
+because they happen to take a walk together on a fine morning."
+
+"I hope this sort of intolerable gossip isn't still going on," said Guy
+savagely.
+
+"Oh, well, you see, sir, Wychford is a middling place for gossip. And if
+it wasn't one of the Miss Greys it would be some other young Miss
+roundhereabouts. Human nature, like pigeons, is set on mating."
+
+"I hope you'll contradict this ridiculous rumour," said Guy.
+
+"Oh, I have done already. In fact I may say that one of my principles,
+Mr. Hazlewood, is to contradict everything. As I said to them, when they
+was talking about it in the post-office the other night, and that
+post-office is a rare place for gossip! Perhaps you've noticed that the
+nosiest man in a town always gets made postmaster? Where had I got
+to?--ah, yes, I said to them, 'You know a great lot about other people's
+business,' I said, 'but when I tell you that old Mrs. Mathers who lives
+in the last cottage but one in Rectory Lane says she's taken particular
+note as Mr. Hazlewood has never been near the Rectory for the last
+fortnight unless it was once when she heard footsteps and hadn't time
+to get to the window to see who it was on account of the kettle being on
+the boil at that moment, where's your Holy Matrimony?' I said. With that
+up speaks Miss Burge from the back of the shop whose father used to keep
+the King's Head before he dropped dead of the apoplexy on Shipcot
+platform. 'That doesn't say he hasn't gone round by the field the same
+as Mr. Burrows's servant used to when she was being courted by
+We'll-mention-no-names.' 'No, and that he hasn't either,' said I
+smacking the counter, for I was feeling a bit angry by now at all this
+poking about in other people's business, 'that he hasn't,' I said,
+'because the Rectory cook asked me most particular if there was anything
+the matter down at Plashers Mead seeing as Mr. Hazlewood hadn't been
+near the Rectory for a fortnight. That doesn't look like Holy
+Matrimony,' I said, and with that I walked out of the post-office. Mr.
+Hazlewood," Godbold concluded very earnestly, "the gossip of Wychford is
+something as no one would believe, if they hadn't heard it, as I have,
+every mortal day of my life."
+
+Guy could have laughed on his own account, but the notion of Pauline's
+being dragged into the chatter made him furious. Yet what could he do?
+If he went frequently to the Greys' house, he must be engaged according
+to Wychford. And if he did not go....
+
+"I suppose they'll be saying next that the engagement has been broken
+off," he enquired with cold sarcasm.
+
+"Oh, they have said it. Depend upon it, Mr. Hazlewood, it undoubtedly
+has been said."
+
+It began to appeal to Guy as extremely undignified--the way in which he
+had let Godbold chatter on like this.
+
+"I'm afraid I must be getting back to my work," he said curtly.
+
+"That's right. Work's the best answer to talk. Did you feel it much here
+in that rainy spell?"
+
+"The meadows were a bit splashy of course, but the water never got
+anywhere near the house."
+
+"But it will. Don't you make any mistake. It will. Only of course we've
+had a dry autumn. Why, last June year Miss Peasey could have been
+fishing for minnows in her kitchen. Now that seems a nice upstanding
+sort of woman. A Wesleen, they tell me? I haven't seen her in church
+that I can remember, and which would account for it. But I never talk to
+the chapel folk, they being that uncivilized. She's rather deaf, isn't
+she?"
+
+"Yes, and therefore cannot gossip," Guy snapped.
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Godbold doubtfully. "Some of the most
+unnatural scandals I ever heard were made by deaf women. Though that
+doesn't mean I'm saying Miss Peasey is a talker."
+
+"I'm sure she isn't," Guy agreed. "Good-night, Mr. Godbold."
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Hazlewood, don't you be discouraged by the gossip in
+Wychford. I always say, if you believe nothing you hear, next to nothing
+of what you read, and only half of what you see, no one can touch you.
+Good-night once more, sir. And don't you fret over what people say. I
+remember they once said I tried to work a horse which had the blind
+staggers, and Mrs. Godbold was that aggravated she went and washed a
+shirt of mine twice over, worrying herself. Good-night, Mr. Hazlewood."
+
+This time the red-bearded carrier of Wychford (not an inappropriate
+profession for him) really departed, leaving Guy in a state of
+considerable resentment at the thought of the Wychford commentary.
+
+That night the raw drizzle turned to snow; and when he looked out of his
+window next morning, it was lying thick over the country and was making
+his bedroom seem as grey as the loaded clouds above. That exhilaration
+of a new landscape which comes with snow drove away some of Guy's
+depression, and after breakfast he went out, curious to contemplate its
+effect upon the Abbey. In the black frost the great pile had seemed to
+possess scarcely more substance than a shredded leaf; and when it lay
+sodden beneath the dripping trees, a manifest decay had made extinction
+infamous with the ooze of a rotting fungus. The weather now had brought
+a strange restoration to the abandoned house, and so completely had the
+covering of snow hidden most of the signs of dissolution that Wychford
+Abbey seemed no longer dead, but asleep in the quiet of a winter
+morning. The lawn in front stretched before it in decent whiteness, and
+the veiling of the ragged unhealthy grass took away from the front of
+the house that air of wan caducity, endowing the stones by contrast with
+tinted warmth and richness. The decrepit roof was hidden, and Wychford
+Abbey dreamed under its weight of snow with all the placid romance of a
+house on a Christmas card. The dark plantation was deprived of its
+gloom, and what was usually a kind of haunted stillness was now
+aspectful peace. Guy went over the crinching ground and strolled down
+the broad walk through the shrubbery. Everywhere the snow glistened with
+the footprints of many birds, but not a single call broke a silence
+which was cold and absolute except for the powdery whisper of the snow
+where it was sliding from the holly leaves.
+
+When Guy reached the bottom of the shrubbery, he sat down on a fallen
+trunk by a backwater, which dried up here in the drift of dead leaves;
+and he watched the surface of it glazing perceptibly, yet not so fast
+but that the faint motion of the freezing air could write upon the
+smoothness a tremulous reticulation. He had not been resting long when
+he saw Margaret coming toward him down the walk, and with so light a
+tread that in her white coat she might have been a figment created for
+his fancy by the snow. He wondered if a sense of the added beauty her
+presence gave the scene were in her mind. Probably it was, for Margaret
+had a discreet vanity that would never gratify itself so well as when
+she was alone; and plainly she must suppose herself alone, since here on
+this snowy morning she would not have expected to meet anybody. Guy
+thought it would be considerate to draw aside without spoiling her dream
+whatever the subject of the meditation. However, as he rose from the log
+to take the narrow path along the back-water and so turn homeward across
+the fields by the river, Margaret saw him and waved with a feathery
+gesture. As Guy went up the path to greet her, he was thinking how much
+her hair was like a dark leaf that had shaken off the snow, so easily
+might her blanched attire have fallen upon her from the clouds; then, as
+he came close, every charming fancy was suddenly spoilt by a remembrance
+of Wychford gossip, and he turned hastily round to see if there were
+prying glances in the laurels.
+
+"What are you looking at?" she asked.
+
+"A squirrel," said Guy quickly. He would not have had his absence from
+the Rectory ascribed to any fear of gossip; moreover, since a meeting
+with Margaret did not make his conscience the thrall of public opinion,
+he would not have her discreet vanity at all impaired. Therefore it was
+a squirrel he saw.
+
+"We've been wondering what has become of you," she said.
+
+"Well, I've been working rather hard; and as a matter of fact I was
+going to the Rectory this afternoon. Isn't the snow jolly after the
+rain? Especially here, don't you think?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I've got to go and visit an old woman who lives almost in Little
+Fairfield, and I thought I'd avoid as much as I could of the high road."
+
+"Shall I come with you?" asked Guy, but in so doubtful a voice that
+Margaret laughingly declared she was sure he was in a state of being
+offended with the Rectory.
+
+"Oh, Margaret, don't be absurd. Offended?"
+
+"Over the curtains?" she asked.
+
+"Why if it wouldn't betray a gross insensibility to your opinion, I
+should tell you I thought no more about what you said. Besides, we've
+had reconciling Christmas since then."
+
+"Ah, but you see, Pauline is always impressing on Monica and me our
+cruelty to you, and by this time Mother has been talked into believing
+in our hard and impenitent hearts."
+
+"Pauline is...." Guy broke off and saw another squirrel. He could not
+trust himself to speak of Pauline, for in this stillness of snow he felt
+that the lightest remark would reveal his love; and there was in nature
+this morning a sort of suspense that seemed to rebuke unuttered secrets.
+
+"Well, as you're walking with me to Fairfield--or nearly to
+Fairfield--your neglect of us shall be forgiven," Margaret promised.
+"Here we are out of the warm trees already. I'm glad I came this way,
+though I think it was rather foolish. Look how deep the snow seems on
+that field we've got to cross."
+
+"It isn't really," said Guy, vaulting over the fence that ran round the
+confines of the Abbey wood.
+
+"Ah, now you've spoilt it," she exclaimed. But Margaret did not pause a
+moment to regret the ruffling of that sheeted expanse and they walked on
+silently, watching the toes of their boots juggle with the snow.
+
+"It generally is a pity," said Guy after a while.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Impressing one's existence on so lovely and inviolate a thing as this."
+He indicated the untrodden field in front of them.
+
+"But look behind you," said Margaret. "Don't you think our footprints
+look very interesting?"
+
+"Interesting, perhaps," Guy admitted. "Yet footprints in snow never seem
+to be going anywhere."
+
+"Now I know quite well what you're doing," Margaret protested. "You're
+making that poor little wobbly track of ours try to bear all sorts of
+mysterious and symbolic intensities of meaning. Just because you're
+feeling annoyed with a sonnet, footprints in the snow mustn't lead
+anywhere. Why, Guy, if I told you what sentimental import my 'cello
+sometimes gives to a simple walk before lunch.... I mean of course when
+I've been playing badly."
+
+She sighed, and Guy wondered if the violoncello had been used with as
+little reference as a sonnet to the real cause of the mood.
+
+"Why did you sigh just now?" he asked after another minute or two of
+silent progress.
+
+"I wonder whether I'll tell you. No, I don't think I will. And yet...."
+
+"And yet perhaps after all you will," said Guy eagerly. "And if you do,
+I'll tell you something in turn."
+
+"That's no bribe," said Margaret laughing. "You foolish creature, don't
+you think I know what you'll tell me?"
+
+Guy shook his head.
+
+"I don't think you do. You may suspect. But for that matter, so may I.
+Isn't what you might have told me something that might most suitably be
+told on the way to Fairfield?"
+
+"You've been talking about me to Pauline," said Margaret angrily.
+
+"Never," he declared. "But you don't suppose you can have all these
+mysterious allusions to Richard without my guessing that his father is
+Vicar of Fairfield. Dear Margaret, forgive me for guessing and tell me
+what you were going to tell."
+
+"Have you heard I was engaged to Richard Ford?" she asked.
+
+"I heard he was in love with you."
+
+"Oh he is, he is," she murmured, and Guy thinking of Richard in India
+wondered if he ever dreamed of Margaret walking like this in a snowy
+England. The clock in Fairfield church struck eleven with an icy tinkle
+that on the muted air sounded very thinly. "But the problem for me,"
+Margaret went on, "is whether I'm in love with him, or if Richard is
+merely the nicest person who has been in love with me so far."
+
+"Well, if you'd asked me that three months ago," Guy said, "I would have
+answered decidedly that you weren't in love with him if you had one
+doubt. But now ... well, you know really now I'm rather in the state of
+mind that wants everybody to be in love. And why do you think you're not
+in love with him?"
+
+"I haven't really explained well," said Margaret. "What I'm sure of is
+that I'm not as much in love with him as I want to be in love."
+
+"You're living opposite a looking-glass," said Guy. "That's what is the
+matter."
+
+They had reached the stile leading over into the high road, and Margaret
+gazed back wistfully at the footprints in the snow, before they crossed
+it and went on their way.
+
+"Yes," she said. "I am conceited. But my conceit is really cowardice. I
+long for admiration, and when I am admired I despise it. I lie in bed
+thinking how well I play the 'cello, and when I have the instrument by
+me I don't believe I can play even moderately well. I am really fond of
+him, but the moment I think that anybody else is thinking about my being
+fond of him I almost hate his name. I can't bear the idea of going to
+live in India and I detest bridges--you know he builds bridges--and yet
+I couldn't possibly write to him and say that he must think no more
+about me. I'm really a mixture of Monica and Pauline, and so I'm not as
+happy as either of them."
+
+"Yes, I suppose Pauline is very happy," said Guy in a depressed voice.
+
+"What am I to do?" Margaret asked.
+
+"I'm sure you're much more in love than you think," he declared quickly,
+for he had the ghost of a temptation to tell her she was foolish to
+think any more of a love so uncertain as hers. There was enough jealousy
+of his standing at the Rectory to give him the impulse to rob Richard of
+his foothold, but the meanness destroyed itself on this virginal morning
+almost before Guy realized it had tried to exist. "Yes, I'm sure you're
+really in love," he repeated. "I think I can understand what you feel."
+
+"Do you?" said Margaret shaking her head a little sadly. "I'm afraid
+it's only a very willing sympathy on your part, for I'm sure I don't
+understand myself. That's why I'm conceited, perhaps. I'm trying to
+build up a Margaret Grey for other people to look at, which I admire
+like any pretty thing one makes oneself, and perhaps why I can't fall
+really in love is because I'm afraid of someone's understanding me and
+showing me to myself."
+
+"You'd have to be very clever to disappoint that person," said Guy. "And
+why shouldn't Richard Ford be the one?"
+
+"Oh, he'll never discover me," said Margaret. "That's what's so dull."
+
+"Aren't you a little unreasonable?" Guy asked.
+
+"Of course I am. Now don't let's talk about me any more: I'm really not
+worth discussing--only just because my family is so exquisite and
+because I adore them, I never talk about Richard to them. Here's the old
+woman's cottage. I shan't be more than a few minutes."
+
+Guy felt honoured by Margaret's confidence, but his heart was so full
+of Pauline that he transferred all the substance of what she had been
+saying to suit his own case. Would Pauline never know if she were in
+love? Would he be doomed to the position of Richard? Or worse, would
+Pauline fly from his love in terror of anything so disturbing to the
+perfection of her life at present? On the whole he was inclined to think
+that this was exactly what she would do; and he felt he would never have
+the courage to startle her with the question. When he thought of the
+girls to whom in the past of long vacations he had made protestations of
+devotion that were light as the thistledown in the summery meadows where
+they were uttered, it was incredible that the asking of Pauline should
+speed his heart like this. With other girls he had always imagined them
+slightly in love with him, but for Pauline to be in love with him seemed
+hopeless, though he qualified his humility by assuring himself that she
+could be in love with nobody. Did Margaret really have a suspicion that
+he was in love with Pauline? If she had, why had she not drawn his
+confidence before she gave her own? She came out from the cottage as he
+propounded this, and he told her, when their faces were set towards
+Wychford and a chilly wind that was rising, how he had been thinking
+about her confidence all the while she was in the cottage. Moreover, he
+was under the impression this was the truth.
+
+"But don't think about me any more," she commanded.
+
+"Never?"
+
+"Not until I speak first. Isn't it cold? You must have been frozen
+waiting for me."
+
+They hurried along talking mostly, though how the topic arose Guy never
+knew, about whether Alice in Wonderland were better than Alice Through
+the Looking-glass or not. The quotations that went to sustain the
+argument were so many that they arrived back very quickly, it seemed, at
+the stile leading into the snowy field.
+
+"Will you go home the same way?" Guy suggested. "Look, nobody has spoilt
+our tracks. They're jollier than ever, and do you see those rooks
+farther down the field? It will snow again this afternoon and our
+footprints will vanish."
+
+By the time they reached the Abbey wood Guy had made up his mind that as
+they walked up through the shrubbery, unless people were listening
+there, he would tell Margaret how deeply he was in love with Pauline.
+The resolution taken, his throat seemed to close up with nervousness,
+and vaulting over the fence he tripped and fell in a snow drift.
+
+"Why this violent activity all of a sudden?" Margaret asked.
+
+He laughed gloomily and vowed it was the exhilarating weather. Up the
+broad walk they went slowly, and every yard was bringing them dreadfully
+nearer to Wychford High Street and the profanation of this snowy
+silence. Abruptly a robin began to sing from a bough almost overhead;
+and, Guy realizing half-unconsciously that unless he told Margaret now,
+his words would die upon that robin's rathe melody, said:
+
+"Margaret, you'll probably be angry, but I must tell you that I'm in
+love with your sister."
+
+He drove his stick deep into the snow to give his eyes the excuse of
+looking down.
+
+"With Pauline," she said softly.
+
+He congratulated himself upon the cunning with which he had at least
+thrown something on Margaret of the responsibility, as he almost called
+it. Had she said Monica, it would have killed his hope at once.
+
+"Of course I know it must sound ridiculous, but...."
+
+"Is she in love with me?" asked Margaret with tender mockery. "Well, I
+think she may be. Perhaps I'm almost sure she is."
+
+"Margaret," said Guy seizing her hand. "I hope you'll be the happiest
+person in the world always. You know, don't you, that I'm dying for you
+to be happy."
+
+There may have been tears in her eyes as she responded with faintest
+pressure of her hand to his affection.
+
+"And you won't forget all about me and take no more interest in what
+will seem my maddening indecision, when you and Pauline are happy?"
+
+"My dear, as if I could," he exclaimed.
+
+"Lovers can forget very easily," said Margaret. "You see I've thought
+such a lot about being in love that I've got everyone else's conduct
+clearly mapped out in my mind."
+
+Guy stopped dead; and, as he stopped, the robin now far behind them
+ceased his song, and even the flute of the wind sounding on distant
+hollows and horizons cracked in the frost so that the stillness was
+sharp as ice itself.
+
+"Margaret, what makes you think Pauline cares for me? How dare I be so
+fortunate?"
+
+"Because you know you are fortunate," said Margaret, nor could falling
+snow have touched his arm more lightly than she. "Why do you suppose I
+told you about Richard if it was not because I thought you appreciated
+Pauline?"
+
+"Ah, how I shall always love the snow," Guy exclaimed, grinding the
+slippery ball upon his heel to powder.
+
+"But now I've got a disappointment for you," said Margaret. "Pauline and
+Monica are going into Oxford to-day for a week."
+
+"You won't tell anybody what I've told you?" he begged.
+
+"Of course not. Secrets are much too fascinating not to be kept as long
+as possible."
+
+He opened the wicket, and presently they parted in the High Street.
+
+"I shall come in this afternoon," he called after her. "Unless you're
+bored with me."
+
+She invited him with her muff and seemed to float out of sight.
+Suddenly Guy remembered that sometime this morning (it seemed as long
+ago as when Wychford Abbey was alive) Bob had been with him. He was glad
+of an excuse to go back and look for the dog in those now consecrated
+arbours. There the robin still sang his rather pensive tune; and there
+from a high ash-bough a missel-thrush, wearing full ermine of the
+Spring, saluted the vestal day.
+
+
+
+
+_February_
+
+
+Pauline started to Oxford with Monica, feeling rather disappointed she
+had not seen Guy before she went; for Margaret had come home with news
+of having walked with him to Fairfield, and it was tantalizing, indeed a
+little disturbing, to leave him behind with Margaret.
+
+"Nothing is said to Margaret," Pauline protested at lunch, "when _she_
+goes out for a walk with Guy. Father, don't you think it's unfair?"
+
+"Well, darling Pauline," interrupted Mrs. Grey with an anxious glance
+towards her second daughter. "You see, Margaret is in a way engaged."
+
+"I'm not engaged," Margaret declared.
+
+"But I'm asking Father," Pauline persisted. "Father, don't you think
+it's unfair?"
+
+The Rector was turning over the pages of a seed-catalogue and answered
+Pauline's question with that engaging irrelevancy to which his family
+and parish were accustomed.
+
+"It's disgraceful for these people to offer seeds of Incarvillea Olgae.
+My dears, you remember that anaemic magenta brute, the colour of a
+washed-out shirt? Ah," he sighed, "I wish they'd get that yellow
+Incarvillea over. I am tempted to fancy it might be as good as Tecoma
+Smithii, and of course coming from that Yang-tse-kiang country, it would
+be hardy."
+
+"Francis dear!" Pauline cried. "Don't you think it's unfair?"
+
+"Pauline," said her mother. "You must _not_ call your father Francis in
+the dining-room."
+
+The Rector oblivious of everything continued to turn slowly the pages of
+his catalogue.
+
+"Oh, bother going to Oxford," said Monica looking out of the window to
+where Janet with frozen breath listened for the omnibus under gathering
+snow clouds.
+
+"Now, really," Pauline exclaimed, diverted from her complaint of
+Margaret's behaviour by another injustice. "Isn't Monica too bad? She's
+grumbling, though it was she who made the plan to stay with the
+Strettons. And though they're her friends and not mine, I've been made
+to go too."
+
+"Well, I hate staying with people," Monica explained.
+
+"So do I," said Pauline. "And you accepted the invitation for me that
+day you were in Oxford buying Christmas presents, when you forgot to buy
+the patience-cards I wanted to give poor Miss Verney, so that I had to
+give her a horrid little china dog though she hates dogs."
+
+"Now I'm sure it'll be charming, yes, charming, when you get there,"
+Mrs. Grey affirmed hopefully.
+
+"Oh, how glad I am I'm not going," said Margaret.
+
+"I think you ought to go instead of me," Pauline told her.
+
+"They're not my friends," Margaret replied with a shrug.
+
+"No, but they're more your friends than mine," Pauline argued. "Because
+you're nearer to Monica. They're four years off being my friends and
+only two from being yours."
+
+"Miss Monica," said Janet coming into the room. "The bus has come out
+from the King's Head yard, and you'll be late."
+
+There was instantly a confusion of preparation by Mrs. Grey and Pauline,
+while Monica sighed at the trouble of departure and Margaret with
+exasperating indifference sat warm and triumphant by the fire.
+
+"Good gracious," the Rector exclaimed, flinging the catalogue down and
+speaking loud enough to be heard over the feverish search for Pauline's
+left glove. "These people have the impudence to advertize Penstemon
+Lobbii as a novelty when it's really our old friend Breviflorus. What on
+earth is to be done with these scoundrels?"
+
+The horn of the omnibus sounded at the end of Rectory Lane; and the fat
+guard was marching through the snow with the girls' luggage. The
+good-byes were all said; and presently Pauline with her muff held close
+to her cheeks against the North wind was sitting on top of the omnibus
+that was toiling up the Shipcot road. As she caught sight of Plashers
+Mead etched upon the white scene, she wished she had left a message with
+Margaret to say in what deep disgrace Guy was. On they laboured across
+five miles of snow-stilled country with sparse flakes melting upon the
+horses' flanks and never a wayfarer between Wychford and Shipcot to
+pause and stare at them.
+
+On the second night of their stay with the Strettons, Monica, when she
+and Pauline were going to bed, suddenly turned round from the
+dressing-table and demanded in rhetorical dismay why they had come.
+
+"Never mind," said Pauline. "We've only got five more evenings."
+
+"Well, that's nearly a week," Monica sighed. "And I'm tired to death of
+Olive already."
+
+"But I'm much worse off," Pauline declared dolefully. "Because I have to
+sit next to the Professor, who does frighten me so. You see, he will
+include me in the conversation. Last night at dinner, after he'd been
+talking to that don from Balliol who knew Guy and whom I was dying to
+ask ... to talk to myself, I mean, he turned round to me and said, 'I am
+afraid, Miss Pauline, that Aramaic roots are not very interesting to
+you.' Well, of course I got muddled between Aramaic and aromatic, and
+said that Father had just been given a lot which were very poisonous."
+
+Monica laughed that sedate laugh of hers, which always seemed to Pauline
+like a clock striking, so independent was it of anybody's feelings.
+
+"Monica darling, I don't want to be critical," said Pauline. "But you
+know sometimes your laugh sounds just a little--a very little
+self-satisfied."
+
+"I think I am rather self-satisfied," Monica agreed, combing her golden
+hair away from her high pale forehead. "And Margaret is conceited, and
+you're twice as sweet as both of us put together."
+
+"Oh, no I'm not, oh, no, no, Monica dearest, I'm not," Pauline
+contradicted hurriedly. "No, really I'm very horrid. And, you know, when
+I'm bored I'm sure I show it. Oh dear, I hope the Strettons didn't
+notice I was bored. Mrs. Stretton was so touching with the things they
+had brought back from Madeira, and I do hate things people bring back
+from places like Madeira."
+
+"And when you're not bored with anybody," said Monica, "you're rather
+apt to make that too obvious also."
+
+"Monica, why are you saying that?" Pauline asked with wide-open eyes.
+
+"Even supposing Guy is in love with you," said Monica, slowly blowing
+out the candles on the dressing-table as she spoke, so that nothing was
+left but the rosy gas, "I don't think it's necessary to show him quite
+so clearly that you're in love with _him_.
+
+"Monica!"
+
+"Darling little sister, I do so want you ... oh, how can I put it? Well,
+you know, when you break the time in a trio, as you sometimes do...."
+
+"But I'm not in love with Guy," Pauline interrupted. "At least, oh,
+Monica, why do you choose a house like this to tell me such things?" she
+asked with tears and blushes fighting in her countenance.
+
+"Pauline, it's only that I want you to keep in time."
+
+"I can't possibly stay with the Strettons another five days," declared
+Pauline in deepest gloom. "You ought not to say things like that here."
+
+She was looking round this strange bedroom for the comfort of familiar
+pictures, but there was nothing on these pink walls except a view of the
+Matterhorn. Monica was kneeling to say her prayers, and in the stillness
+the frost outside seemed to be pressing against the window-panes.
+Pauline thought it was rather unfair of Monica to fade like this into
+unearthly communications; and she knelt down to pray somewhat vagrant
+prayers into the quilted eiderdown that symbolized the guest-room's
+luxurious chill. She longed to look up in aspiration and behold Saint
+Ursula in that tall bed of hers or cheerful Tobit walking with his dog
+in the angel's company, and in the corner her own desk that was full of
+childish things. She rose from her knees at the same moment as Monica,
+who at once began to talk lightly of the tiresome people at dinner and
+seemed utterly unconscious of having wounded Pauline's thoughts. Yet
+when the room was dark, for a long while these wounded thoughts danced
+upon the wintry air that breathed of Wychford. '_Even supposing Guy is
+in love with you._' It was curious that she could not feel very angry
+with Monica. '_Even supposing Guy is in love with you._' It really
+seemed a pity to fall asleep: it was like falling asleep when music was
+being played.
+
+The subject of Guy was not mentioned again, but during the days that
+remained of the visit, Pauline scarcely felt that she was living in the
+Strettons' house, and was so absent in her demeanour that Monica was
+disturbed into what was for her a positive sociableness to counteract
+Pauline's appearance of inattention. To consummate the vexation of the
+visit there came a sudden thaw two days before they left, and Oxford was
+ankle-deep in slush. Finally Pauline and Monica were dragged through
+the very nadir of depression when on their last night they were taken
+out to dinner in trams and goloshes through such abominable conditions
+of weather.
+
+"Fancy not ordering a cab," whispered Monica with cold disapproval.
+
+"Perhaps they can't afford it," Pauline suggested.
+
+"They can afford to go to Madeira," answered Monica, "and buy all those
+stupid knick-knacks."
+
+"Well, Monica, they are your friends, you know," said Pauline.
+
+However, the first of February arrived next morning, and Oxford was left
+behind. Pauline sighed with relief when they were seated in the train,
+and the twenty miles of country to Shipcot that generally seemed so dull
+were as green and welcome as if they were returning from a Siberian
+exile.
+
+"You know, Monica, I really don't think we ought to stay with people. I
+don't think it's honest to spend such a hateful week as that in being
+pleasant," she declared.
+
+"I didn't notice that you were taking much trouble to hide your
+boredom," said Monica. "It seems to me that I was always in a state of
+trying to steer people round your behaviour."
+
+"Oh, but Professor Stretton loves me," said Pauline.
+
+She was trying not to appear excited as the omnibus swished and slapped
+through the mud towards Wychford. She was determined that in future she
+would lead that enclosed and so serene life which she admired in her
+eldest sister. Nobody could criticize Monica except for her coldness,
+and Pauline knew that herself would never be able to be really as cold
+as that however much she might assume the effect.
+
+"Grand weather after the snow," said the driver.
+
+The roofs of Wychford were sparkling on the hillside, and earth seemed
+to be turning restlessly in the slow winter sleep.
+
+"This mud'll all be gone with a week of fine days like to-day," said the
+driver.
+
+Plashers Mead was in sight now, but it was Monica who pointed to where
+Guy and his dog were wandering across the meadows that were so vividly
+emerald after the snow.
+
+"I think it is," agreed Pauline indifferently.
+
+In the Rectory garden a year might have passed, so great was the
+contrast between now and a week ago. Now the snowdrops were all that was
+left of the snow; and a treasure of aconites as bright as new guineas
+were scattered along the borders. Hatless and entranced the Rector was
+roaming from one cohort of green spears to another, each one of which
+would soon be flying the pennons of Spring. Pauline rushed to embrace
+him, and he without a word led her to see where on a sunny bank Greek
+anemones had opened their deep-blue stars.
+
+"Blanda," he whispered. "And I've never known her so deep in colour.
+Dear me, poor old Ford tells me he hasn't got one left. I warned him she
+must have sun and drainage, but he would mix her with Nemorosa just to
+please his wife, which is ridiculous--particularly as they are never in
+bloom together."
+
+He bent over and with two long fingers held up a flower full in the
+sun's eye, as he might have stooped to chuck under the chin a little
+girl of his parish.
+
+Monica had brought back a new quartet, which they practised all that
+Candlemas Eve. When it was time to go to bed Mrs. Grey observed in a
+satisfied voice that after all it must have been charming at the
+Strettons.
+
+"Oh, no, Mother, it was terribly dull," Pauline protested.
+
+"Now, dear Pauline, how could it have been dull, when you've brought
+back this exquisite Schumann quartet?"
+
+Margaret came to Pauline's room to say good-night, sat with her while
+she undressed and tucked her up so lovingly that Pauline was more than
+ever delighted to be back at home.
+
+"Oh, Margaret, how sweet you are to me. Why? Is it because you really do
+miss me when I go away?"
+
+"Partly," said Margaret.
+
+"Why are you smiling so wisely? Have you put something under my pillow?"
+Pauline began to search.
+
+"There's nothing under your pillow, except all the thoughts I have
+to-night for you."
+
+Once more Margaret leaned over and kissed her, and Pauline faded into
+sleep upon the happiness of being at home again.
+
+Next day after lunch her mother and sisters went to pay a long postponed
+call upon a new family in the neighbourhood, because Margaret insisted
+they must take advantage of this glorious weather which would surely not
+last very long.
+
+Pauline spent the early afternoon with the Rector and Birdwood, writing
+labels while they sowed a lot of new sweet-peas which had been sent to
+the Rector for an opinion upon their merits. The clock was striking four
+when Guy strolled into the garden. Somehow Pauline's labels were not so
+carefully written after his arrival, and at last the Rector advised her
+to take Hazlewood and show him Anemone Blanda. They left the big
+wall-garden and went across the lawn in front of the house to the second
+wall-garden, where most of the Rector's favourites grew as it pleased
+them best.
+
+"Oh, they've all gone to bed," said Pauline.
+
+Guy knelt down, and opened the petals of one.
+
+"They're exactly the colour of your eyes," he said looking up at her.
+
+Pauline was conscious that the simple statement was fraught with a
+significance far greater than anything which had so far happened in her
+life. It was ringing in her ears like a bugle-call that sounded some
+far-flung advance, and involuntarily she drew back and began to talk
+nonsense breathlessly, while Guy did not speak. Nor must she let him
+speak, she told herself, for behind that simple comparison how many
+questions were trembling.
+
+"Oh, I wonder if the others are back yet," she finally exclaimed, and
+forthwith hurried from the garden toward the house. She wished she must
+not look back over her shoulder to see Guy following her so gravely. Of
+course, when they were standing in the hall, the others had not come
+back; and the house in its silence was a hundred times more portentous
+than the garden. And what would Guy be thinking of her for bringing him
+back to this voicelessness in which she could not any longer talk
+nonsense? Here the least movement, the slightest gesture, the most
+ordinary word would be weighted for both of them with an importance that
+seemed unlimited. For the first time the Rectory was strangely
+frightening; and when through the silent passages they were walking
+toward the nursery, it was the exploration of a dream. Yet, however
+undiscoverable the object that was leading them, she was glad to see the
+nursery door, for there within would surely come back to her the ease of
+an immemorial familiarity. Yet in that room of childhood, that room the
+most bound up with the simple progress of her life, she found herself
+counting the birds, berries and daisies upon the walls, as if she were
+beholding them vaguely for the first time. Why was she unpicking
+Margaret's work or folding into this foolish elaboration of triangles
+Monica's music? And why did Guy behave so oddly, taking up all sorts of
+unnatural positions, leaning upon the rickety mantelshelf, balancing
+himself upon the fender, pleating the curtains and threading his way
+with long legs in and out, in and out of the chairs?
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+He had stopped abruptly by the fireplace and was not looking at her when
+he spoke. Oh, he would never succeed in lifting even from the floor that
+match which with one foot he was trying to lift on to the other foot.
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+Now he was looking at her; and she must be looking at him, for there was
+nothing on this settee which would give her a good reason not to look at
+him. The room was so still that beyond the closed door the hoarse tick
+of the cuckoo-clock was audible; and what was that behind her which was
+fretting against the window-pane? And why was she holding with each hand
+to the brocade, as if she feared to be swept altogether out of this
+world?
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+Was it indeed her voice on earth that said 'yes'?
+
+"Pauline, I suppose you know I love you?"
+
+And she was saying 'yes.'
+
+"Pauline, do you love me?"
+
+And again she had said 'yes.'
+
+Outside in the corridor the cuckoo snapped the half-hour: then it seemed
+to tick faster and a thousand times faster. She must turn away from Guy,
+and as she turned she saw that what had been fretting the window-pane
+was a spray of yellow jasmine. Upon the cheek that was turned from him
+the dipping sun shed a warm glow, but the one nearer was a flame of
+fire.
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+He had knelt beside her in that moment; and leaning over to his
+nearness, Pauline looked down at her hand in his, as if she were gazing
+at a flower which had been gathered.
+
+
+
+
+SPRING
+
+
+
+
+_March_
+
+
+The doubts and the joys of the future broke upon Guy with so wide and
+commingled a vision, that before the others got home and even before
+Janet came in with tea he hurried away from that nursery, where over the
+half-stilled echoes of childhood he had heard the sigh of Pauline's
+assent. The practical side of what he had done could be confronted
+to-morrow, and with a presage of hopelessness the word might have lain
+heavily upon his mind, if on the instant of sinking it had not been
+radiantly winged with the realization of the indestructible spirit that
+would henceforth animate all the to-morrows of time. No day could now
+droop for him, whatever the difficulties it brought, whatever the
+hazards, when he had Pauline and Pauline's heart: and like disregarded
+moments the years of their life went tumbling down into eternity, as the
+meaning of that sighed out assent broke upon his conscience with fresh
+glory.
+
+"You'll tell your mother to-night?" he asked. "I think Margaret will
+know when she sees your shining eyes."
+
+"Are my eyes shining?"
+
+"Ah, don't you know they are, when you look into mine?"
+
+Guy could have proclaimed that he and she were stars flashing to one
+another across a stupendous night; but there were no similes that did
+not seem tawdry when he threw them round Pauline.
+
+"Child, child, beloved child," he whispered; and his voice faltered for
+the pitiful inadequacy of anything that he could call her. What words
+existed, with whatever tenderness uttered, with whatever passion
+consecrated by old lovers, that would not still be words, when they were
+used for Pauline? Guy watched for a moment the cheek that was closer to
+his lips write in crimson the story of her love. He wished he could tell
+his love for her with even the hueless apograph of such a signal; and
+yet, since anything he said was only worthy of utterance in so far as
+she by this ebb and flow of response made it worthy, why should he
+trouble that cheek which, sentient now as a rose of the sun, hushed all
+but wonder.
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+He bent over and touched her hand with his lips. Then the Rectory stairs
+had borne him down like a feather: the Rectory door had assumed a kind
+of humanity, so that the handle seemed to relinquish his grasp with an
+affectionate unwillingness. Out in the drive, where the purple trees
+were washed by the February dusk, he stood perplexed at himself because
+in a wild kiss he had not crushed Pauline to his heart. Had it been from
+some scruple of honour in case her father and mother should not
+countenance his love? Had it sprung out of some impulse to postpone for
+a while a joy that must be the sharpest he would ever know? Or was it
+that in the past he had often kissed too lightly so that now, when he
+really loved, he could not imagine the kiss unpassionate and fierce that
+would seal her immortally to love, yet leave her still a child?
+
+As he paused in that golden February dusk, Guy rejoiced he had told his
+love in such an awe of her girlhood; and when from the nursery window
+Pauline blew one kiss and vanished like a fay at mortal trespassing, he
+floated homeward upon the airy salute, weighing no more than a seed of
+dandelion to his own sense of being. Upon his way he observed nothing,
+neither passer-by nor carts in the muddy roads. As he crossed the
+bridge, the roar of the water into the mill-pool was inaudible, nor did
+he hear his melodious garden ways. And when Miss Peasey came to his
+room with the lamp, he could not realize for a moment who she was or
+what she was talking about. The hour or two before dinner went by as one
+tranced minute; in a dream he went down to dinner; in a dream he began
+to carve; in a dream the knife remained motionless in the joint, so that
+Miss Peasey coming to enquire after his appetite thought it was stuck in
+a skewer. Upstairs in the library again, he dreamed the evening away;
+and when the lamp hummed slowly and oilily to extinction he still sat
+on, till at last the fire perished and from complete darkness he roused
+himself and went to bed.
+
+Guy was under the cloud of a reaction when he rang the Rectory bell on
+the morning after. The door looked less amicable, and the dragon-headed
+knocker stared balefully while he was waiting to be let in. He wondered
+for whom of the family he ought to ask, but Mrs. Grey came nervously
+into the hall and invited him into the drawing-room.
+
+"Pauline has gone over to Fairfield," she began in jerky sentences.
+"Charming ... yes, charming, you came this morning."
+
+The sun had not yet reached the oriel of the drawing-room, that with
+shadows and fragrance was welcoming Guy where he sat in a winged
+armchair beside the fire. Time was seeming to celebrate the
+momentousness of his visit by standing still as in a picture, and he
+knew that every word and every gesture of Mrs. Grey would in his memory
+rest always enambered. He was glad, and yet in the captivating quiet a
+little sorry, that she began to speak at once:
+
+"Of course Pauline told me about yesterday. And of course I would sooner
+she were in love with a man she loved than with a man who had a great
+deal of money. But of course you mustn't be engaged at once. At least
+you can be engaged; you are engaged. Oh, yes, of course, if you weren't
+engaged, I shouldn't allow you to see each other, and you shall see
+each other occasionally. Francis has not said anything. The Rector will
+probably be rather doubtful. Of course I told him; only he happened to
+be very busy about something in the garden. But he would want Pauline to
+be happy. Of course she is my favourite--at least I should not say that.
+I love all my daughters, but Pauline is--well, she has the most
+beautiful nature in the world. My darling Pauline!"
+
+Mrs. Grey's eyes were wet, and Guy was so full of affectionate gratitude
+that it was only by blinking very hard at a small picture of Pauline
+hanging beside the mantelpiece he was able to keep his own dry.
+
+"I have a nicer picture than that, which I will give you," Mrs. Grey
+promised. "The one that I am fondest of, the one I keep beside my bed.
+Perhaps you would like a picture of her when she was seventeen? She's
+just the same now, and really I think she'll always be the same."
+
+"You are too good to me, Mrs. Grey," he sighed.
+
+"We are all so fond of you ... even the Rector, though he is not likely
+to show it. Pauline is perhaps more like me. Her impulsiveness comes
+from me."
+
+"Ought I to talk to the Rector about our engagement?" Guy asked.
+
+"Oh, no, no ... it would disturb him, and I don't think he'll admit that
+you are engaged. In fact he said something about children: but I would
+rather ... at least, of course, you are children. But Margaret says you
+can't be quite a child or you would not be in love with Pauline. And now
+if you go along the Fairfield road, you'll meet her. But that is only an
+exception. Not often. I think to-day she might be disappointed if you
+didn't meet her. And come to lunch, of course. Poetry is a little
+precarious, but at any rate for the present we needn't talk about the
+future. I wish your mother were still alive. I think she would have
+loved Pauline."
+
+"She would have adored her," said Guy fervently.
+
+"And your father? Of course you'll bring him to tea, when he comes to
+stay with you. That will be charming ... yes, charming. Now hurry, or
+you'll miss her."
+
+Guy had no words to tell Mrs. Grey of the devotion she had inspired; but
+all the way down the Fairfield road he blessed her and hoped that
+somehow the benediction would make itself manifest. Then, far away,
+coming over the brow of a hill he saw Pauline. It was one of those hills
+with a suggestion of the sea behind them, so sharply are they cut
+against the sky. This was one of those hills that in childhood had
+thrilled him with promise of the faintly imaginable; and even now he
+always approached such a hill with a dream and surmise of new beauty.
+Yet more wonderful than any dream was the reality of Pauline coming
+towards him over the glistening road. She was shy when he met her, and
+the answers she gave to his eager questions were so softly spoken that
+Guy was half afraid of having exacted too much from her yesterday. Did
+she regret already the untroublous time before she knew him? Yet it was
+better that she should walk beside him in still unbroken enchantment,
+that the declaration of his love should not have damaged the wings
+seeming always unfolded for flight from earth: so would he wish to keep
+her always, that never this Psyche should be made a prisoner by him. The
+elusive quality of Pauline which was shared in a slighter degree by her
+sisters kept him eternally breathless, for she was immaterial as a cloud
+that flushes for an instant far away from the sunset. And yet she was
+made with too much of earth's simple beauty to be compared with clouds.
+Her sisters had the ghostly serenity and remoteness that might more
+appropriately be called elusive. Pauline gave more the effect of an
+earthly thing that transcends by the perfection of its substance even
+spirit; and rather was she seeming, though poised for airy regions,
+still sweetly content with earth. She had not been more elusive than
+eglantine overarching a deep lane at Midsummer, for he had pulled down
+the spray, and it was the fear of a petal falling too soon from the
+tremulous flowers that gave him this sense of awe as he walked beside
+her.
+
+Yet once again Guy found his comparisons poor enough when he looked at
+Pauline, and he exclaimed despairingly:
+
+"There _are_ no words for you. I wanted to say to your mother what I
+thought about you. Oh, she was so charming."
+
+"She is a darling," said Pauline. "And so is Father."
+
+They were come to the stile where he and Margaret had watched their
+footprints on the snow.
+
+"And Margaret was very sympathetic, you know," he went on. "Really, if
+it hadn't been for her, I should never have dared to tell you I loved
+you. We talked about her and Richard...."
+
+"Margaret does love him. She does," Pauline declared. "Only she will ask
+herself questions all the time."
+
+How she changed when she was speaking of Richard, thought Guy a little
+jealously. Why could she not say out clearly like that her love for him?
+
+"You do love me this morning?" he asked. She was standing on the step of
+the stile, and he offered his hand to help her down. "Won't you say 'I
+love you'?"
+
+But only with her eyes could she tell him, and as, her finger-tips on
+his, she jumped from the step, she was imponderable as the blush upon
+her cheeks.
+
+"In the summer," said Guy, "you and I will be on the river together.
+Will you be shy when Summer comes?"
+
+"Monica says I'm not nearly shy enough."
+
+"What on earth does Monica expect?"
+
+They were under the trees of Wychford Abbey, and Guy told her of the
+days he had spent here, thinking of her and of the hopelessness of her
+loving him.
+
+"I could not imagine you would love me. Why do you?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"One day we'll explore the inside of the house together, shall we?"
+
+"Oh, no, I hate that place. Oh, no, Guy, we'll never go there. Come
+quickly, I hate that house. Margaret loves it and says I'm morbid to be
+afraid. But I shudder when I see it."
+
+They hurried through the dark plantation; and Guy under the influence of
+Pauline's positive terror felt strangely as if, were he to look behind,
+he would behold the house leering at them sardonically.
+
+People too eyed them, as they went down High Street and turned into
+Rectory Lane. Guy had a sensation of all the inhabitants hurrying from
+their business in the depths of their old houses to peer through the
+casements at Pauline and him; and he was glad when they reached the
+Rectory drive and escaped the silent commentary.
+
+When she was at home again Pauline's spirits rose amazingly; and all
+through lunch she was so excited, that her mother and sisters were
+continually repressing her noisiness. Guy on the contrary felt woefully
+self-conscious and was wondering all the while with how deep a dislike
+the Rector was regarding him and if after lunch he would not call him
+aside and solemnly expel him from the house. As they got up from the
+table, the Rector asked if Guy were doing anything particular that
+afternoon and on receiving an assurance that he was not, the Rector
+asked if he would help with the sweet-peas that still wanted sorting.
+Guy in a bodeful gloom said he would be delighted.
+
+"I shall be in the garden at two," said the Rector.
+
+"Shall I come as well and help?" Pauline offered.
+
+"No, I want you to take some things into the town for me," said the
+Rector.
+
+Guy's heart sank at this confirmation of his fears. Out in the hall
+Margaret took him aside.
+
+"Well, are you happy?"
+
+"Margaret, you've been beyond words good to me."
+
+"Always be happy," she said.
+
+Even Monica whispered to him that he was lucky, and Guy was so deeply
+impressed at being whispered to by Monica that it gave him a little
+courage for his interview. He joined the Rector in the garden punctually
+at two, and worked hard with labels and classifications.
+
+"_A7,_" the Rector read out. "_A lavender twice as big as Lady Grizel
+Hamilton._ _D21_. _An orange that will not burn._ Humph! I don't believe
+it. Do you believe that, Birdwood?"
+
+The gardener shook his head.
+
+"There never was an orange as didn't burn like a house on fire the
+moment the sun set eyes on it."
+
+"Of course it'll burn, and anyhow there's no such thing as an orange
+sweet-pea. If there is, it's Henry Eckford."
+
+"Henry isn't orange," said Birdwood. "Leastways not an orange like you
+get at Christmas."
+
+"More buff?"
+
+"Buff as he can be," said Birdwood. "What do you think, Mr. Hazlenut?"
+he went on, turning to Guy and winking very hard.
+
+"I really don't know him ... it...." said Guy.
+
+"_O5,_" the Rector began again. "_A cream and rose picotee Spenser._
+Yes, I daresay," he commented. "And with about as much smell as
+distilled water."
+
+So the business went on, with Guy on tenterhooks all the while for his
+own summing-up by the Rector. He thought the moment was arrived when
+Birdwood was sent off on an errand and when the Rector getting up from
+his kneeler began to shake the trowel at him impressively. But all he
+said was:
+
+"Tingitana's plumping up magnificently. And we'll have some flowers in
+three weeks--the first I shall have had since the Diamond Jubilee. Sun!
+Sun!"
+
+Guy jumped at the apostrophe, so nearly did it approximate to
+'son-in-law.' But of this relation nothing was said, and now Pauline was
+calling out that tea was ready.
+
+"Go in, my dear fellow," said the Rector. "I've still a few things to do
+in the garden. By the way was your father at Trinity, Oxford?"
+
+"No, he was at Exeter."
+
+"Ah, then, I didn't know him. I knew a Hazlewood at Trinity."
+
+The Rector turned away to business elsewhere, and Guy was left to puzzle
+over his casual allusion. Perhaps he ought to have raised the subject of
+being in love with Pauline, for which purpose the Rector may have given
+him an opening. Or did this enquiry about his father portend a letter to
+him from the Rector about his son's prospects? He certainly ought to
+have said something to make the Rector realize how much tact would be
+necessary in approaching his father. Pauline called again from the
+nursery window, and Guy hurried off to join the rest of the family at
+tea.
+
+In the drawing-room Mrs. Grey, Monica and Margaret all seemed anxious to
+show their pleasure in Pauline's happiness; and Guy in the assurance
+this old house gave him of a smooth course for his love ceased to worry
+any longer about parental problems and was content to live in the merry
+and intimate present. He realized how far he was advanced in his
+relation to the family when Brydone, the doctor's son, came in to call.
+Guy took a malicious delight in his stilted talk, as for half-an-hour he
+tried to explain to Monica, a grave and abstracted listener, how the
+pike would in March go up the ditches and the shallow backwaters and
+what great sport it was to snare them with a copper noose suspended from
+a long pole. There was, too, that triumphant moment he had long
+desired, when Brydone, rising to take his leave, asked if Guy were
+coming and when he was able to reply casually that he was not coming
+just yet.
+
+After tea Guy and Pauline, as if by an impulse that occurred to both of
+them simultaneously, begged Margaret to come and talk in the nursery.
+She seemed pleased that they wanted her; and the three of them spent the
+time till dinner in looking at the old familiar things of childhood; at
+photographs of Monica and Margaret and Pauline in short frocks; at
+tattered volumes scrawled in by the fingers of little girls.
+
+"I wish I'd known you when you were small," sighed Guy. "How wasted all
+these years seem."
+
+The gong went suddenly, and Margaret said that of course to-night he
+would stay to dinner.
+
+So once again he was staying to dinner and now on such terms as would
+make this an occasion difficult to forget. As he waited alone in the
+lamplit nursery, while Margaret and Pauline were dressing, he kissed
+Pauline in each faded picture stuck in those gay scrap-books of Varese.
+Nor did he feel the least ashamed of himself, although at Oxford his
+cynicism had been the admiration even of Balliol, where there had been
+no one like him for tearing sentiment into dishonoured rags. When the
+Rector came in to dinner, carrying with him a dusty botanical folio that
+swept all the glass and silver from his end of the table to huddle in
+the centre, Guy tried to make out if he were very much depressed by his
+not having yet gone home.
+
+"Dear me," said the Rector. "I was sure I had seen it in here."
+
+"Seen what, Francis?" asked his wife.
+
+"A plant you wouldn't know. A Cilician crocus."
+
+"Isn't Father sweet?" said Pauline. "Because of course Mother never
+knows any plant."
+
+"What nonsense, Pauline. Of course I know a crocus."
+
+Toward the end of dinner Mrs. Grey said rather nervously:
+
+"Francis dear, wouldn't you like to drink Pauline's health?"
+
+"Why, with pleasure," said the Rector. "Though she looks very well."
+
+Pauline jumped in her chair with delight at this, but Mrs. Grey waved
+her into silence and said:
+
+"And Guy's health too?"
+
+The Rector courteously saluted him; but the guest feared there was an
+undernote of irony in the bow.
+
+After dinner when Monica, Margaret and Pauline were preparing for a
+trio, Mrs. Grey said confidentially to Guy:
+
+"You mustn't expect Francis--the Rector to realize at once that you and
+Pauline are engaged. And of course it isn't exactly an engagement yet.
+You mustn't see her too often. You're both so young. Indeed, as Francis
+said, children really."
+
+Then the trio began, and Guy in the tall Caroline chair lived every note
+that Pauline played on her violin, demanding of himself what he had done
+to deserve her love. He looked round once at Mrs. Grey in the other
+chair, and marked her beating time while like his own her thoughts were
+all for Pauline. In the heart of that music Guy was able to say anything
+and he could not resist leaning over and whispering to Mrs. Grey:
+
+"I adore her."
+
+"So do I," said the mother, breaking not a bar in her beat and gazing
+with soft eyes at that beloved player.
+
+When the music stopped, Guy felt a little embarrassed by the remembrance
+of his unreserved avowal; yet evidently it had seemed natural to Mrs.
+Grey, for when he was saying good-bye in the hall, she whispered to
+Pauline that she could walk with Guy a short way along the drive. His
+heart leapt to the knowledge that here at last was the final sanction of
+his love for her. Pauline flung round her shoulders that white frieze
+coat in which he had first beheld her under the moon, misty, autumnal, a
+dream within a dream; and now they were actually walking together. He
+touched her arm half-timidly, as if even so light a gesture could
+destroy this moment.
+
+"Pauline, Pauline!"
+
+He saw her clear eyes in the February starshine and folding her close he
+kissed her mouth. When he woke, he was at home; and for hours he sat
+entranced, knowing that never again for as long as he lived would he
+feel upon his lips as now the freshness of Pauline's first kiss.
+
+The rest of that February went by with lengthening eves that died on the
+dusky riot of blackbirds in the rhododendrons. Here and there in mossy
+corners primroses were come too soon, seeming all aghast and wan to
+behold themselves out of the cloistral earth, while the buds of the
+daffodils were still upright and would not hang their heads till driven
+by the wooing of the windy March sun.
+
+The grey-eyed virginal month, that is of no season and must as often
+bear the malice of Winter's retreat as the ruffianly onset of Spring,
+had now that very seriousness which suited Guy's troth.
+
+Rules had been made with which neither he nor Pauline were discontented,
+and so through all that February Guy went twice a week to the Rectory
+and counted himself rich in Mrs. Grey's promise that he and Pauline
+should sometimes be allowed, when the season was full-fledged, to go for
+walks together. At present, however, the Rectory garden must be a
+territory large enough for their love.
+
+These first encounters were endowed with perhaps not much more than the
+excitement of what were in a way superficial observations, since
+neither of them was yet attempting to sound any deeps in the other's
+character. Guy was engaged with driving a wedge into that past of the
+Rectory whose least events he now envied, and he was never tired of the
+talks about Pauline's childhood, so much of a fairy-tale she still
+seemed and fit for endless repetition. And if Guy was never tired of
+being told, her family was never tired of telling. Never, he thought,
+was lover so fortunate in an audience as he in the willingness with
+which he was accorded a confirmation of all his praises. Sometimes,
+indeed, he had to look reproachfully at Monica or Margaret when Pauline
+seemed hurt at being checked for some piece of demonstrativeness. If he
+did so, the sisters would always take an opportunity to draw him aside
+and explain that it was only Pauline's perfection which made them so
+anxious for its security. Indeed they guarded her perpetually and with
+such a high sense of the privilege of wardship that Guy always had to
+forgive them at once. Moreover, he was so conscious of their magnanimity
+in considering him as a lover that he was almost afraid to claim his
+right.
+
+"Margaret," he said one day. "I don't know how you can bear to
+contemplate Pauline married. Why, when I think of myself, I'm simply
+dumb before the--what word is there--audacity is much too pale and, oh,
+what word is there?"
+
+"I don't think I could contemplate her married to anybody but you," said
+Margaret.
+
+"But why me?"
+
+"Why, because you are young enough to make love beautiful and right,"
+Margaret told him. "And yet you seem old enough to realize Pauline's
+exquisite nature. So that one isn't afraid of her being squandered for a
+young man's experience."
+
+"But I'm not rich," said Guy, deliberately leading Margaret on to
+discuss for the hundredth time this topic of himself and Pauline.
+
+"Pauline wouldn't be happy with riches. They would oppress her. She
+isn't luxurious like me."
+
+So round and round, backward and forward, on and on the debate would go,
+until Margaret had arranged for Guy and Pauline a life so idyllic that
+Shelley would scarcely have found a flaw in her conception.
+
+Pauline, however demonstrative in the presence of her family, was still
+shy when she was alone with her lover. Her mirth was turned to a
+whisper, and her greatest eloquence was a speech of drooping silences
+and of blushes rising and falling. Guy never tired of watching these
+flowery motions that were the response of her cheeks to his love. Each
+word he murmured was a wind to stir her countenance or ruffle her eyes,
+so that they too responded with cloudy deeps and shadows and sudden
+veilings.
+
+Nothing more was mentioned of the practical side of the engagement, for
+Mrs. Grey, Monica and Margaret were all too delightfully enthralled with
+the progress of an idyll that was to each of them her own secret poem of
+Pauline in love; while as for the Rector he remained outwardly oblivious
+of the whole matter.
+
+March came crashing into this peace without disturbing the simple
+pattern into which the existence of Guy and Pauline had now resolved
+itself--a pattern, moreover, that belonged to Pauline's mother and
+sisters for their own pleasure in embroidery, so that the lovers were,
+as it might be, carried about from room to room. Sometimes indeed, when
+Guy came to the Rectory, there was a pretence of leaving him and Pauline
+alone; but mostly they were in the company of the others, and Guy was
+now as deep in the family life as if he were a son of the house. Since
+he and Pauline never went for walks together, perhaps Wychford
+speculation had died down--at any rate there was no gossip to disturb
+Mrs. Grey; although, as she had by now given up the theory of a sort of
+engagement, yet without consenting to anything in the shape of a final
+announcement, it might not have mattered much.
+
+Meanwhile, it began to dawn on Guy that the time was coming when he
+would have to make up his mind to do something definite, and on these
+bleak mornings of early March, as he watched the scanty snowflakes
+withering against the panes, he asked himself if there was any
+justification for staying on at Plashers Mead in the new circumstances
+of his life there. At night, however, when the wind piped and whistled
+round the house, he used to dream upon the firelight and shrink from the
+idea of abandoning all that Plashers Mead had stood for and all that now
+still more it must stand for in the future. If only a plan could be
+devised by which the house were secured against sacrilege; and
+half-fantastically he began to imagine a monastic academy for poets, of
+which he would be Warden. Perhaps Michael Fane would like this idea, and
+since he had money he might come forward with an offer of endowment.
+Then he and Pauline could be married; for £150 a year would be an ample
+income, if there were no rent to pay and no wages. He of course would
+earn his living as superintendent of the academic discipline; and
+really, as he dreamed over his plan, such an establishment would be an
+admirable corollary to Oxford. It might gain even a sort of official
+recognition from the University. Plainly some sort of institution was
+wanted where in these commercial days young writers could retreat to
+learn their craft less suicidally than by journalism. What should he
+call his academy? With marriage as the reason for inventing this economy
+he could hardly give it too monastic a complexion. The louder the wind
+beat against the house, the more feasibly in the lamplit quiet within
+did the scheme present itself; and Michael Fane, who was always
+searching for an object in life, would be the very person to involve in
+the materialization. He would say nothing to anybody else; not even
+would he mention the idea to Pauline herself. These sanguine dreams
+occupied his evenings prosperously enough, while March swept past with
+searing winds from Muscovy that skimmed the rich earth of the
+ploughlands with a dusty pallor, tarnished the daffodils and seemed to
+crack the very bird-song. Guy, however, with every day either a day
+nearer to seeing Pauline again or the day itself, did not care about the
+wind that blew, and he was as happy walking on the uplands as the
+spindleshanked hares that sported among the turfy mounds.
+
+Later, the shrilling wind from the East surrendered to the booming of
+the equinox. Louder than before the weather beat against Guy's house
+from the opposite quarter. Chimneys groaned like broken horns, and after
+a desperate gale even deaf Miss Peasey complained that she had heard the
+wind once or twice in the night and that her bedroom had seemed a bit
+draughty. Guy discovered that several tiles had been blown from the
+roof, so that through the lath and plaster above her head there was a
+sound of demoniac fife-playing. Then the wind dropped: the rain poured
+down: but at last on Lady Day morning Guy woke up to see a rich sky
+between white magnificent clouds, a gentle breeze, and a letter from his
+father.
+
+     Fox Hall,
+
+     Galton,
+
+     Hants.
+
+     _March 24._
+
+     _Dear Guy_,
+
+     _I send you this with the third instalment of the £150. Please let
+     me have a prompter acknowledgement than last time when, I remember,
+     you kept me waiting nearly three weeks. I am glad to have news of
+     successful experiments in verse-making, but I should be much more
+     glad to hear that you had made up your mind to make them as an
+     accessory to a regular profession. You will notice that I do not
+     attempt to influence your choice in this matter, and so I hope you
+     will not retort with invidious comparisons between literature and
+     the teaching of small boys._
+
+     _No, I do not remember a man called Grey in my time at Oxford, but I
+     do remember a man of the same name as ours at Trinity. He came to
+     grief, I believe, later on. You must assure your friend that this
+     was not myself. I am glad you find the Rector and his wife such
+     pleasant people. Have they any children? I wish I could say as much
+     for the new Vicar of Galton, who is a pompous nincompoop and has
+     introduced a lot of this High Church frippery which so annoys some
+     of the parents. Your friend is lucky to be able to afford so much
+     leisure for gardening. I am of course far too busy to think about
+     anything like that except in the summer holidays, when flowers
+     would scarcely give me the change of air I want. This year I hope
+     to come and see you for a week or two, and we shall be able to
+     discuss the future. Don't work too hard and please oblige me by
+     acknowledging the enclosed cheque._
+
+     _Your affectionate father
+
+     John Hazlewood._
+
+Guy went out in the orchard to meditate upon the advisableness of
+telling his father at once about Pauline. If he were coming to stay here
+next August, he ought to know beforehand, for it would be horrid to have
+the atmosphere of Plashers Mead ruined by acrimonious argument. August,
+however, was still a long way off, and now there was going to be fine
+weather for a while, which must not be spoilt. Besides, perhaps in the
+end his father would not come, and anyway himself would be having to
+decide presently upon a more definite step. He would tell Pauline, when
+he saw her to-morrow, that he ought to go up to London and get some
+journalistic work so as to bring the time of their marriage nearer. Or
+should he wait until he had sounded Michael about that academy? Plashers
+Mead enlarged itself for Guy's vision until the orchard was a quadrangle
+framed with grey cloisters, along which Parnassian aspirants walked in
+meditation. Would any of them be married except himself and Pauline? On
+the whole he decided that they would not, though of course, if Michael
+were to find the capital he must be allowed to marry. How the Balliol
+people would laugh at these fantastic plans, thought Guy, and he stopped
+for a moment from the architectonics of his academy to laugh at himself.
+Certainly it would be better not to publish his plans even to Pauline
+until they showed a hint of conceivable maturity. Guy fell back into the
+comfort of spacious dreams, wandering up and down the orchard; and round
+about him the starlings pranked in metallic plumage of green and bronze
+quarrelled over the holes in the apple-trees they coveted for their
+nests.
+
+Suddenly Guy heard his name called and looking up he saw across the
+mill-stream Margaret and Pauline standing in the churchyard.
+
+"We've been to church," said Pauline. "And a dead bat fell down nearly
+on to Father's head when he was giving the Blessing. So he and the
+sacristan have gone up in the tower to see what can be done about it."
+
+"Shall I come and help?" Guy suggested.
+
+"You won't be able to do any more than they will," said Margaret
+laughing. "But if you want to come and help, you'd better. Hasn't your
+canoe arrived yet?"
+
+Guy shook his head.
+
+"It's such a glorious morning that I could almost swim the river," he
+declared.
+
+"Oh, Margaret, don't let him," Pauline exclaimed.
+
+Guy said he would be in the churchyard before they were back in Rectory
+Lane to meet him, and with Bob barking at his heels he ran at full speed
+through the orchard, through the garden, over the bridge and down
+Rectory Lane just as the two girls reached the lych-gate. They all went
+into the big church, even Bob, though he slunk at their heels as
+modestly as might the Devil. High up over the chancel they could see the
+Rector and the shiny-pated sacristan leaning from the windows of the
+bell-ringers' chamber and scratching with wands at some blind arches
+where bats might most improbably lurk.
+
+"Let's go to the top of the tower," Guy proposed.
+
+"Father isn't on the top of the tower," said Margaret. "But you go up
+with Pauline. I'll wait for you."
+
+So Guy and Pauline went through a low door beaked by Normans centuries
+ago, and climbed the stone stairs until they reached the bell-ringers'
+chamber where they paused to greet the Rector, who waved a vague arm in
+greeting. The stairs grew more narrow and musty as they went higher; but
+all the way at intervals there were deep slits in the walls, framing
+thin pictures of the outspread country below the tower. Still up they
+went past the bell-ropes, past the great bells themselves that hung like
+a cluster of mighty fruit, until finally they came out through a small
+turret to meet the March sky. The spire, that rose as high again as they
+had already come, occupied nearly all the space and left only a yard of
+leaded roof on which to walk; but even so, up here where the breeze blew
+strongly, they seemed to stand in the very course of the clouds with the
+world at their feet. Northward they looked across the brown mill-stream;
+across Guy's green orchard; across the flashing tributary beyond; across
+the meadows, to where the Shipcot road climbed the side of the wold.
+Westward they looked to Plashers Mead and Miss Peasey flapping a
+table-cloth; to Guy's mazy garden and the grey wall under the limes;
+and farther to the tree-tops of Wychford Abbey; to the twining waters of
+the valley and the rounded hills. Southward they looked to Wychford town
+in tier on tier of shining roofs; and above the translucent smoke to
+where the telegraph-poles of the long highway went rocketing into
+Gloucestershire. And lastly Eastward they looked through a flight of
+snowy pigeons to the Rectory asleep in gardens that already were painted
+with the simple flowers of Spring.
+
+Guy took Pauline's hand where it rested on the parapet.
+
+"Dearest, Spring is here," he said. "And this is our world that you and
+I are looking at to-day."
+
+
+
+
+_April_
+
+
+Pauline in the happiness which had come to her lately had forgotten Miss
+Verney; and when one morning she met that solitary spinster, whose pale
+and watery eyes were uttering such reproach, she promised impulsively to
+come to tea that very afternoon and bring with her a friend.
+
+"You've certainly quite deserted me lately," said Miss Verney in that
+wavering falsetto of hers through which the echoes maybe of a once
+admired soprano could still be distinctly heard.
+
+"Oh, but I've been so busy, Miss Verney."
+
+"Yes, I daresay. Well, I used to be busy once myself. Here's lovely
+weather for the first of April. Quite a treat to be out of doors. Now,
+don't make an April fool of your poor old Miss Verney by forgetting to
+come this afternoon. Who's the friend you are anxious to bring?"
+
+"Mr. Hazlewood. He's living at Plashers Mead, you know."
+
+"Dear me, a gentleman? Then he won't enjoy coming to see me."
+
+"But he will, Miss Verney, because he writes poetry, and you know you
+told me once that you used to write poetry."
+
+"Ah, well, dear me, that's a secret I should never have let out. Well,
+good-bye, my dear, and pray don't forget to come, for I shall be having
+cakes, you know."
+
+Miss Verney, whose unhappy love-affair in a dim past had been Pauline's
+cherished secret since the afternoon of her seventeenth birthday, bowed
+with much dignity; and Pauline, lest she should offend her again, had to
+turn round several times to smile and wave farewells before Miss Verney
+disappeared into the confectioner's shop.
+
+When she got home, Pauline asked her mother if she thought it mattered
+taking Guy to tea with Miss Verney.
+
+"Because, of course, she's sure to guess that we're engaged."
+
+"But, my dear child, you're not really engaged, at least not publicly.
+You must remember that."
+
+"But I could tell Miss Verney as a great secret. And I know she won't
+tell anyone because once she told me a great secret about herself.
+Besides, she's gone to buy cakes for tea, and if I don't take Guy she'll
+be so dreadfully disappointed."
+
+"Why can't you take Guy without saying anything about being engaged?"
+asked Mrs. Grey.
+
+"Oh, because Miss Verney is so frightfully sharp, especially in matters
+of love. I think you don't like her much, Mother darling, but really,
+you know, she _is_ sympathetic."
+
+Mrs. Grey looked hopelessly round for advice, but as neither Margaret
+nor Monica were in the room, she had to give way to Pauline's entreaty,
+and the leave was granted.
+
+When Guy arrived at the Rectory about three o'clock, he seemed delighted
+at the notion of going out to tea with Pauline, though he looked a
+little doubtfully at the others, as if he wondered at the permission's
+being accorded. However, they set out in an atmosphere of good-will, and
+Pauline was happy to have him beside her walking up Wychford High
+Street. Miss Verney's house was at the very top of the hill, which meant
+that the eyes of the whole population had to be encountered before they
+reached it. They could see Miss Verney watching for them, as they walked
+across the slip of grass that with white posts and a festoon of white
+chains warded off general traffic. The moment they reached the gate, her
+head vanished from the window; and they had scarcely rung the bell,
+when the maid had opened the door. And they were scarcely inside the
+hall, when Miss Verney came grandly out of the drawing-room (which was
+not the front room) to greet them.
+
+"How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Miss Grey will have told you that I rarely
+have visitors. And therefore this is a great pleasure."
+
+Pauline threw sparkling blue glances at Guy for the Miss Grey, while
+they followed her into the drawing-room full of cats and ornaments. The
+cats all marched round Guy in a sort of solemn quadrille, so that what
+with the embarrassment they caused to his legs and the difficulty that
+the rest of him found with the ornaments, Pauline really had to lead him
+safely to a chair.
+
+"Have you been long in Wychford, Mr. Hazlewood?" enquired Miss Verney.
+"I fear you'll find the valley very damp. We who live at the top of the
+hill consider the air up here so much more bracing. But then, you see,
+my father was a sailor."
+
+So the conversation progressed, conversation that was cut as thinly and
+nicely as the lozenges of bread and butter, fragments of which on
+various parts of the rug the cats were eating with that apparent
+difficulty cats always find in mastication.
+
+"I sadly spoil my pets," said Miss Verney. "For really, you see, they
+are my best friends, as I always say to people who look surprized at my
+indulgence of them.... Would you mind telling Bellerophon he's left a
+piece of butter just by your foot, that you might otherwise tread into
+the carpet. You'll forgive my fussiness, but then, you see, my father
+was a sailor."
+
+Pauline was longing to know what Miss Verney thought of Guy, and
+presently when tea was over she suggested that he should be shown the
+garden, the green oblong of which looked so inviting from the low
+windows.
+
+"Dear me, the garden," said Miss Verney. "Rather early in the year,
+don't you think, for the garden? My shoes. For though my father was a
+sailor, I do not, alas, inherit his constitution. I really think,
+Pauline, we must wait for the garden. But perhaps Mr. Hazlewood would
+care...."
+
+"Guy, you must see the garden," Pauline declared.
+
+So Guy rose and, having listened to Miss Verney's instructions about the
+key in the garden-door, went out followed by several cats. A moment
+later they saw him still with two cats in attendance bending with an
+appearance of profound interest over the narrow flower-beds that fringed
+the grass.
+
+"I declare that Pegasus and dear Bellerophon have taken quite a fancy to
+him. Most remarkable and gratifying," said Miss Verney, watching from
+the window through which the western sun flaming upon her thin hair
+kindled a few golden strands from the ashes that seemed before entirely
+to have quenched them.
+
+"Miss Verney, can you keep a secret?" asked Pauline breathlessly.
+
+"My dear, you forget my father was a sailor," replied Miss Verney
+supporting with each arm a martial elbow.
+
+"He and I are engaged," Pauline whispered through a blush.
+
+"Pauline, you amaze me," the old maid exclaimed. "My dear child, I hope
+you'll let me wish you happiness." She came to Pauline and kissed with
+cold lips her cheek. "You have always been so kind and considerate to
+me. Yes, I am sure, without irreverence I can say you have been to me as
+welcome as the sun. I pray that you will always be happy. Ah, the dear
+fellow," exclaimed Miss Verney, looking with the utmost affection to
+where Guy was now completing the circuit of her borders. "The dear
+fellow, how droll he must have thought it when I referred to you as Miss
+Grey. Though to this flinging about of Christian names without regard
+for the sacredness of real intimacy, which is so common nowadays, I
+shall never submit."
+
+Miss Verney tapped upon the window to summon Guy within again. When he
+was back in the drawing-room, she fluttered toward him and took his
+hand.
+
+"My dear Mr. Hazlewood, for my father having been a sailor I must always
+be rather blunter than most people, I have to congratulate you. This
+dear child! My greatest friend in Wychford, and indeed really, so
+scattered now are all the people I have known, I might almost say, my
+greatest friend anywhere! You are a most enviable young man. But the
+secret is safe with me. No one shall know."
+
+"I had to tell Miss Verney," Pauline explained.
+
+"I'm delighted for Miss Verney to know," said Guy. "I only wish the time
+were come when everybody could know."
+
+Miss Verney was in a state of the greatest excitement, and made so many
+references to her nautical paternity that Pauline half expected her to
+hitch up her skirt and dance a triumphant hornpipe in the middle of the
+cats' slow waltzing.
+
+"This dear child," Miss Verney went on, clasping rapturous hands. "I
+have known her since she was twelve. The dearest little thing! I really
+wish you had known her; you would have fallen in love with her then, I
+do declare." And Miss Verney laughed in a high treble at her joke.
+"Lately I have been rather worried because I had an idea I was being
+deserted. But now I understand the reason. Oh, the secret is perfectly
+safe. In me you have a true sympathizer. Pauline will tell you that with
+the people she loves, there is no one so sympathetic as I am." Suddenly
+Miss Verney stopped and looked very suspicious. "You're not making an
+April fool of me?" she asked.
+
+"Miss Verney!" Pauline gasped. "How could you think I would joke about
+love?"
+
+The old maid's forehead cleared.
+
+"Of course you wouldn't, my dear, but really this morning I have been so
+pestered by some of the boys ringing the bell and saying my chimney is
+on fire that ... ah, but, I am ashamed of myself. You must forgive me,
+Pauline. And is it not the thing to drink the health of lovers? There is
+a bottle of sherry, I feel sure. I brought several bottles that were
+left from my father's cellar, when I first came to Wychford eight years
+ago, and they have not all been drunk yet."
+
+She rang the bell, and when the maid came in said:
+
+"Mabel, if you take my keys and open the store-cupboard, you will find
+some bottles of wine on the top shelf. Pray open one, and having
+carefully decanted it, bring it as carefully in with three glasses on
+the silver tray."
+
+Mabel naturally looked very much astonished at this order, and while she
+was gone Miss Verney thought one after another of all the reasons that
+Mabel could possibly ascribe to her request for wine.
+
+"But she will never guess the real one," said Miss Verney.
+
+The wine was brought in and poured out. Miss Verney coughed a great deal
+over her glass, and two small pink spots appeared on her cheeks.
+
+"I am sure," she said, "that when my dear father brought this wine back
+from Portugal, he would have been happy to know that some of it would be
+drunk to the health of two young people in love. For he was, if I may
+say so without impropriety, a great lady's man."
+
+Pauline and Guy drank Miss Verney's health in turn and thanked her for
+the good omens she had wished for their love.
+
+"My dear Pauline," said Miss Verney. "Do you think? I wonder if I dare.
+You know what I mean? Do you think I could show it to Mr. Hazlewood?"
+
+"Do you mean the miniature?" whispered Pauline.
+
+Miss Verney nodded.
+
+"Oh, do, Miss Verney, do! Guy would so appreciate it," Pauline declared.
+
+The old maid went to her bureau and from a small locked drawer took out
+a leather case which she handed to Guy.
+
+"The spring is broken. It opens very easily," she said in a gentle
+voice.
+
+Pauline forgot her shyness of Guy and leant over his shoulder, while he
+looked at the picture of a young man rosy with that too blooming youth
+which miniatures always portray.
+
+"We were engaged to be married," said Miss Verney. "But circumstances
+alter cases; and we were never married."
+
+Pauline looked down at Guy with tears in her eyes and felt miserable to
+be so happy when poor Miss Verney had been so sad.
+
+"Thank you very much for showing me that," said Guy.
+
+Soon it was time to say good-bye to Miss Verney and, having made many
+promises to come quickly again, they left her and went down the steep
+High Street, where in many of the windows of the houses there were
+hyacinths and on the old walls plum-trees in bloom.
+
+"Pauline," said Guy. "Let's go for a walk to-morrow morning and see if
+the gorse is in bloom on Wychford down. There are so many things I want
+to tell you."
+
+"Do you think Mother will let us?"
+
+"If we can go to tea with Miss Verney," said Guy, "we shall be able to
+go for a walk. And I never see you alone in the Rectory."
+
+"I'll ask Mother," said Pauline.
+
+"You want to come?"
+
+"Of course. Of course."
+
+"You see," said Guy. "It's one of the places where I nearly told you I
+loved you. And it wouldn't be fair not to tell you there, as soon as I
+can."
+
+In the Rectory everybody was anxious to know how Guy liked Pauline's
+Miss Verney.
+
+"Margaret, you are really unkind to laugh at her," protested Pauline.
+"Guy understands, if you don't, how frightfully sympathetic she is. She
+is one of the people who really understands about being in love."
+
+Margaret laughed.
+
+"Don't I?" she said.
+
+"No, indeed, Margaret, sometimes I don't think you do," said Pauline.
+
+"Nor I?" asked Monica.
+
+"You don't at all!" Pauline declared.
+
+"Well, if it means being like Miss Verney, I hope I never shall," said
+Monica.
+
+"Now, children, children," interrupted Mrs. Grey. "You must not be cross
+with one another."
+
+"Well, Mother, Margaret and Monica are not to laugh at Miss Verney,"
+Pauline insisted. "And to-morrow Guy and I want as a great exception to
+go for a walk to Wychford down. May we?"
+
+"Well, as a great exception, yes," said Mrs. Grey; and Guy with
+apparently an access of grateful industry said he must go home and work.
+
+Pauline wondered what Guy would have to tell her to-morrow, and she fell
+asleep that night, hoping she would not be shy to-morrow; for, since Guy
+was still no more to Pauline than the personification of a vague and
+happy love just as Miss Verney's miniature was the personification of
+one that was not happy, she always was a little alarmed when the
+personification became real.
+
+Wychford down seemed to rest on billowy clouds next morning, so light
+was Pauline's heart, so light was the earth on which she walked; and
+when Guy kissed her the larks in their blue world were not far away, so
+near did she soar upon his kiss to the rays of their glittering plumes.
+
+"Every time I see you," said Guy, "the world seems to offer itself to us
+more completely. I never kissed you before under the sky like this."
+
+She wished he would not say the actual word, for it made her realize
+herself in his arms, and brought back in a flood all her shyness.
+
+"I think it's dry enough to sit on this stone," said Guy.
+
+So they sat on one of the outcrops of Wychford freestone that all around
+were thrusting themselves up from the grass like old grey animals.
+
+"Now tell me more about Miss Verney," he went on. "Why was her
+love-affair unhappy?"
+
+"Oh, she never told me much," said Pauline.
+
+"You and I haven't very long," said Guy. "Love travels by so fast. You
+and I mustn't have secrets."
+
+"I haven't any secrets," said Pauline. "I had one about Richard, but you
+know about him. And that was Margaret's secret really. Why do you say
+that, Guy?"
+
+"I was thinking of myself," he answered. "I was thinking how little you
+know about me--really not much more than you know of Miss Verney's
+miniature."
+
+"Guy, how strange," she said. "Last night I thought that."
+
+Then he began to talk in halting sentences, turned away from her all the
+time and digging his stick deep down in the turf, while Bob looked on
+with anxious curiosity for what these excavations would produce.
+
+"Pauline, I so adore you that it clouds everything to realize that
+before I loved you, I should have had love-affairs with other girls. Of
+course they meant nothing, but now they make me miserable. Shall I tell
+you about them or shall I ... can I blot them for ever out of my mind?"
+
+"Oh, don't tell me about them, don't tell me about them," Pauline
+murmured in a low hurried voice. She felt that if Guy said another word
+she would run from him in a wild terror that would never let her rest,
+that would urge her out over the down's edge in desperate descent.
+
+"I don't want to tell you about them," said Guy. "But, they've stood so
+at the back of my thoughts whenever I have been with you; and yesterday
+at Miss Verney's, I had a sense of guilt as if I were responsible in
+some way for her unhappiness. I had to tell you, Pauline."
+
+She sat silent under the song of the larks that in streams of melodious
+light poured through their wings.
+
+"Why do you say nothing?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, don't let's talk about it any more. Promise me never to talk about
+it. Oh, Guy, why 'of course'? Why 'of course'?"
+
+"Of course?" he repeated.
+
+"'Of course they meant nothing.' That seems so dreadful to me. Perhaps
+you won't understand."
+
+"Dear Pauline, isn't that 'of course' the reason they torment me?" he
+said. "It isn't kind of you to assume anything else."
+
+She forgave him in that instant; and before she knew what she had done
+had put her hand impulsively on his. To the Pauline who made that
+gesture he was no more the unapproachable lover but someone whom she had
+wounded involuntarily.
+
+"My heart of hearts, my adored Pauline."
+
+With a sigh she faded to him: with a sigh the dog sat down by his
+master's neglected stick: with a sigh the April wind stole through the
+thickets of gorse and out over the down. And always more and more
+dauntlessly the larks flung before them their fountainous notes to
+pierce those blue spaces that burned between the clouds. No more was
+said of the past that morning, and with April come they were happy
+sitting up there, although, as Guy said, such weather could hardly be
+expected to last. And since this walk was a great exception to the rule
+of their life, they were back at the Rectory very punctually, so that by
+propitiating everybody with good behaviour they might soon demand
+another exception.
+
+That night there recurred to Pauline when she was in her room a sudden
+memory of what Guy had said to her about girls with whom he had had
+love-affairs; and with the stark forms of shadows they made a procession
+across her walls in the candlelight. She wished now she had let Guy tell
+her more, so that she could give distinguishing lineaments of humanity
+to each of these maddening figures. What were they like and why, taken
+unaware, was she set on fire with rage to know them? For a long while
+Pauline tossed sleeplessly on that bed to which usually morning came so
+soon; and even when the candle was put out, she seemed to feel these
+forms of Guy's confession all about her. To-morrow she must see him
+again; she could no longer bear to think of him alone. These shapes that
+from his past vaguely jeered at her were to him endowed, each, with what
+memories. Oh, she could cry out with exasperation even in this silent
+house where she had lived so long unvexed.
+
+"What is happening to me? What is happening to me?" asked Pauline, as
+the darkness drew nearer to her. "Why doesn't Margaret come?"
+
+She jumped out of bed and ran trembling to her sister's room.
+
+"Pauline, what is it?" asked Margaret starting up.
+
+"I'm frightened, Margaret. I'm frightened. My room seemed full of
+people."
+
+"You goose. What people?"
+
+"Oh, Margaret, I do love you."
+
+She kissed her sister passionately; and Margaret, who was usually so
+lazy, got out of bed and came back with her to her room; where she read
+aloud Alice in Wonderland, sitting by the bed with her dark hair fallen
+about her slim shoulders.
+
+In the morning the impression of the night's alarm remained sharply
+enough with Pauline to make her anxious to see Guy, without waiting for
+the ordained interval to which they should submit; and all that day,
+when he did not come, for the first time she felt definitely the
+clamorous and persistent desire for his company, the absence of which
+the old perfection of her home was no longer able to counteract. For the
+first time in her life the Rectory had a sort of emptiness; and there
+was not a room on this tediously beautiful day, nor any nook in the
+garden, which could calm her with the familiar assurance of home. When
+the time for music came round, that night, it seemed to Pauline not at
+all worth while to play quartets in celebration of a day that had been
+so barren of events.
+
+"Don't you want to play?" they asked her in surprize.
+
+"Why should we play?" she countered. "But I'll listen to you, if you
+like."
+
+Of course she was persuaded into taking her part, and never had she been
+so often out of tune and never had her strings snapped so continuously.
+Always until to-night the performance of music had brought to her the
+peaceful irresponsibleness of being herself in a pattern: now this sense
+of design was irritating her with an arduous repression, until at last
+she put down her violin and refused to play any more. Pauline felt that
+the others knew the cause of her ill-temper, but none of them said
+anything about Guy and, with her for audience in one of the Caroline
+chairs, they played trios instead.
+
+Next day when Guy did come, it was wet; and Pauline wished Margaret
+would leave them together, so that they could talk: but Margaret stayed
+all the afternoon in the nursery, and Pauline made up her mind that
+somehow she must go for another walk with Guy.
+
+She found her mother alone in the drawing-room before dinner.
+
+"Mother, don't you think, Guy and I might go for a walk to-morrow?"
+
+"Oh, Pauline, you only went for a walk together the day before
+yesterday. And you really must remember you're not engaged. The Wychford
+people will gossip so, and that will make your father angry."
+
+"Well, why can't we be engaged openly?"
+
+"No, not yet. Now, please don't ask me. Pauline, I beg you will say no
+more about it."
+
+"Then I can go to-morrow," said Pauline. "Oh, Mother, you are so sweet
+to me."
+
+Mrs. Grey looked rather perplexed and as if she were vainly trying to
+determine what she had said to make Pauline suppose that leave for walks
+had been given. However, she evidently supposed it had; and when next
+Guy came to the Rectory, Pauline whispered to him they could go for a
+walk if they did not have to go through Wychford. She could not
+understand herself when she found it so difficult to tell Guy this
+delightful news, for it was she who had managed it; and yet here she was
+blushing in the revelation.
+
+The fact that Wychford was out of bounds really made their walk more
+magical, for Pauline and Guy went past the lily-pond and the lawn in
+front of the house and slipped through the little wicket in the high
+grey wall, as it were, in the very eye of the nursery-window. They
+dallied for a while in the paddock, peering for fritillary buds; then
+they crossed the rickety bridge to the water-meadows, a territory not
+spied upon, silver-rosed with lady-smocks. To-day they would visit the
+peninsula where under the moon they first had met.
+
+Pauline, as they walked over the meads, no longer had the desire to ask
+Guy more about his tale of old loves. His presence beside her had
+rested her fears; and she made up her mind that the disquiet of the
+other evening had been mere fatigue after the excitement of the day.
+This secluded world from which they were now approaching the even
+greater seclusion of their peninsula gave itself all to her and Guy.
+
+"How often have I been here without you," said Guy. "How often have I
+wished you were beside me, and now you are beside me."
+
+They were standing in a wreath of snowy blackthorn, that almost veiled
+even the narrow entrance to this demesne they held in fief of April.
+
+"What did you think about me that night we met?" Guy asked.
+
+And for perhaps the hundredth time she whispered how she had liked him
+very much.
+
+"Why don't you ask me what I thought about you?"
+
+"What did you?" she whispered again.
+
+"I went to sleep thinking of you," he said. "I did not know your name. I
+loved you then, I think. Pauline, when next September comes, we'll pick
+mushrooms together, shall we? And I shall never gather any mushrooms,
+because I shall always be gathering your hands. And the September
+afterward. Pauline! Shall we be married? Pauline Hazlewood! Say that."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Whisper it."
+
+But she could not, and yet in her heart the foolish names were singing
+together.
+
+"How can I leave you?" Guy demanded.
+
+"Leave me?" she echoed.
+
+"I ought. I ought. You see, if I don't, I shall never persuade my father
+that we must be married next year. I must go to London and show that I'm
+in earnest."
+
+"But when will you go?" said Pauline in deep dismay.
+
+"Is your voice sad?" he asked. "Pauline, don't you want me to go?"
+
+"Of course I don't," she replied, turning up to his a face so miserable
+that he held her to him and vowed he would not go.
+
+"My dearest, I only thought it was my duty, but if you will believe in
+me, then let me stay in Wychford. After all, you are young. I am young.
+Why, you won't be twenty till May morning. And I shan't be twenty-three
+till next August. Even if we wait three years to be married, we shall be
+always together, and it won't seem so long."
+
+So with her arm in his Pauline walked on through the lady-smocks,
+thinking that never had anyone a lover so wonderful as this long-legged
+lover beside her.
+
+Holy Week was at hand, and in the variety of functions that Monica
+insisted her father should hold and her family attend Pauline saw little
+of Guy, although he came very often to church, sitting as stiff and
+awkward, she thought, as a brass knight on a tomb. However, it pleased
+her greatly Guy should come to church, since it pleased her family. Yet
+that was least of all the true reason, and Pauline used to send the
+angels that came to visit her down through the church to visit Guy; her
+simple faith glowed with richer illumination when she thought of him in
+church, and while her mother and Monica tried to pull the Wychford choir
+through the notation of Solesmes, and while Margaret knelt apart in
+carved abstraction, Pauline prayed that Guy would all his life wish to
+keep Holy Week with her like this.
+
+Pauline hurried through a shower to church on Easter Morning, and shook
+mingled tears and raindrops from herself when she saw that Guy was come
+to Communion. So then that angel had travelled from her bedside last
+night to hover over Guy and bid him wake early next morning, because it
+was Easter Day. With never so holy a calm had she knelt in the jewelled
+shadows of that chancel or retired from the altar to find her pew
+imparadised. When the people came out of church the sun was shining, and
+on the trees and on the tombstones a multitude of birds were singing.
+Never had Pauline felt the spirit of Eastertide uplift her with such a
+joy, joy for her lover beside her, joy for Summer close at hand, joy for
+all the joy that Easter could bring to the soul.
+
+There were Easter eggs at breakfast dyed yellow, blue and purple. There
+were new white trumpet daffodils for the Rector to gaze at. There was
+satisfaction for Monica in having defeated for ever Anglican chants, and
+for Margaret a letter from Richard, though, to be sure, she did not seem
+so glad of this as Pauline would have wished. There was all that happy
+scene and a new quartet for her mother; and for Guy and herself there
+was a long walk this afternoon to wherever they wanted to go.
+
+At the beginning of the week Monica and Margaret went away on a visit,
+to which they set out with the usual lamentations now redoubled because
+they suddenly realized it was universal holiday time. With her two
+eldest daughters away from the Rectory, Mrs. Grey was no match for
+Pauline; so she and Guy had a week of freedom, wandering over the
+country where they willed.
+
+Wychford down saw them, and the water-meadows of the western valley. The
+road to Fairfield knew their footsteps, and they even went to tea with
+Mr. and Mrs. Ford, who talked of Richard out in India and bemoaned the
+inferiority of their garden to the Rector's. They wandered by treeless
+roads that led to the hills, and to the grassy solitudes that seemed
+made to be walked over hand in hand. Once they went as far as the forest
+of Wych, a wild woodland that lay remote from any village and where
+along the glades myriads of primroses stared at them. Yet, though that
+day had seemed to Pauline almost more delicately fair than any of their
+days, it ended dismally with April in black misfeature, and before they
+reached home they were wet through.
+
+By ill luck her mother met her just as she was hurrying up to her room.
+
+"Pauline," she said with a good deal of agitation. "I must forbid these
+walks with Guy every day. Wet to the skin! Oh dear, how careless of him
+to take you so far. You must be reasonable and unselfish. It's so
+difficult for me. Father asked where you were this afternoon, and I had
+to pretend to be deaf. He notices more than you think. Now really Guy
+must not come for a week, and there must be no more walks."
+
+Guy however came the next afternoon, and not only was he reproved by
+Mrs. Grey for yesterday's disaster, but actually he and Pauline were
+only allowed a quarter of an hour together in the garden.
+
+"I'll go into Oxford for a week," said Guy with inspiration. "And then
+we shan't be tempted to see each other this week, and if we don't see
+each other this week, perhaps next week we shall be able to go out
+again. Besides, I want to make arrangements about bringing the canoe
+down. My friend Fane has wired to me to go and stay with him. He's up
+for the Easter vac, working. Shall I go?"
+
+Pauline wanted to say no, but she was even after all these walks still
+too shy to bid him stay.
+
+"Perhaps you'd better go," she agreed. "But Guy, come back for my
+birthday."
+
+"As if I should stay away for that! Pauline, will you write to me? At
+least in letters you won't be shy to say you love me."
+
+"Oh, no, Guy, no. My writing is so horrid."
+
+"But you must write. Pauline, if you want to know why I'm really going
+away, it's simply to have a letter from you."
+
+"You must write to me first then," she whispered.
+
+In truth Pauline felt terrified to think how she would even begin a
+letter to Guy. He would cease to love her any more after she had written
+to him. He would hate her stupid letters.
+
+"I shall be glad to see Michael again," said Guy. "But I suppose I must
+not say anything about you. No, I won't talk about you. Oxford will be
+wonderfully quiet without undergraduates, and I shall have letters from
+you."
+
+Mrs. Grey came out into the garden.
+
+"Now, Guy, I think you ought to go. Because really the Rector is getting
+worried about you and Pauline."
+
+"I'm going into Oxford, Mrs. Grey."
+
+"Well, that is a charming idea--charming, yes."
+
+"But I'll be back for Pauline's birthday."
+
+"Charming--charming," Mrs. Grey still declared. "The Rector will have
+forgotten all about it by then."
+
+So Guy left Pauline for a week, and perhaps for more than a week.
+Margaret and Monica came home next day, and really, she thought, it was
+upsetting all the old ways of her life, when she found herself not very
+much interested in what they had been doing. Miss Verney with her
+ecstatic praise of Guy was better company; but next morning her first
+love-letter arrived, and she could not resist peeping into it at
+breakfast.
+
+     99 ST. GILES
+
+     OXFORD
+
+     _April 18_.
+
+     _My adored Pauline,_
+
+     _It's really all I can do to stay in Oxford. Even Fane seems dull
+     and though his rooms are jolly, I long for you._
+
+     _Have I told you what you are to me? Have I once been able to tell
+     you...._
+
+Ah, there were pages crammed full and full of words that she must read
+alone. She could not read them here with her mother and sisters looking
+at her over the table. She must read them high in her white fastness at
+the top of the house. There all the morning she sat, and when she had
+read of his love once, she read of it again and then again, and once
+again. How foolish her answering letter would be: how disappointed Guy
+would be; but since she had promised, she must write to him: and,
+sitting at her desk that was full of childish things, she curled herself
+over the note paper.
+
+
+
+
+_May_
+
+
+A pleasant company of thoughts travelled with Guy and his bicycle on the
+road to Oxford. In this easy progress the material hindrances to
+marriage were not seeming very important, and as he thought of his love
+for Pauline it spread before him, untroublous like the road down which
+he was spinning before a light breeze. With so much to compensate for
+their brief parting it was impossible to feel depressed; and as Guy drew
+near the city he felt he was an undergraduate again; and when he greeted
+Michael Fane in St. Giles he could positively hear his own Oxford drawl
+again. It was really delightful to be sitting here in view of his old
+college; and when after lunch he and Michael started for Wytham woods,
+more and more Guy was in an Oxford dream and carrying off the fantastic
+notion of the Parnassian academy with all the debonair confidence of his
+second year. Yet Guy knew that the scheme was absurd and when Michael
+argued against it in his solemn way he found himself taking the other
+side from a mere undergraduate pleasure in argument. Indeed, Michael
+declared he had become a freshman since he went down, which made Guy
+stop dead, ankle-deep in kingcups, and laugh aloud for his youth, with
+hidden thoughts of Pauline to make him rejoice that he was young. He
+laughed again at Michael's seriousness and flung his scheme to the broad
+clouds, for on this generous day he and Pauline were enough, and neither
+anybody else's opinion nor anybody else's help was worth a second
+thought. The heartening warmth, however, did not last; and when toward
+evening the sun faded in a blanche of watery clouds with a cold wind
+for aftermath, Guy felt Michael might have been more sympathetic. Rather
+silently they walked back from Godstow, with Pauline between them; so
+that after all, Guy thought, Michael was still an undergraduate, whereas
+he had embarked upon life.
+
+That night, however, when the curtains were drawn across Michael's
+bay-window that overhung the whispering and ancient thoroughfare; when
+the fire burned high and the tobacco-smoke clouded the glimmer of the
+books on the walls; when his chair creaked with that old Oxford
+creaking, Guy forgave Michael for any lack in his reception of the great
+plan. After all, he was writing to Pauline, while his host was reading
+the Constitutional History of England at a table littered with heavy
+volumes, on which he brooded like a melancholy spectator of ruins. He
+must not be hard on Michael, who had not yet touched life, when for
+himself the vision of Pauline was wreathing this old room with starry
+blooms of wild rose. The letter was finished, and Guy went out to drop
+it in the pillar-box. His old college brooded at him across the road;
+to-morrow he must go and look up some of the dons; to-morrow Pauline
+would get his letter; to-night there would be rain; to-morrow Pauline
+would get his letter! The envelope, as it shuffled down into the
+letter-box, seemed to say 'yes'.
+
+When Guy was back in the fumy St. Giles room, he decided there was
+something rather finely ascetic about Michael seated there and reading
+imperturbably in the lamp-light. His courteously fatigued manner was
+merely that of the idealist who had overreached himself; there was
+nothing bilious about him, not even so much cynicism as had slightly
+chilled Guy's own career at Oxford; rather did there emanate from
+Michael a kind of mediaeval steadfastness comparable only to those stone
+faces that look calmly down upon the transitory congregations of their
+church. Michael had this solemn presence that demanded an upward look,
+and once again an upward look, until without conversation the solemnity
+became a little disquieting. Guy felt bound to interrupt with
+light-hearted talk of his own that slow still gaze across the lampshine.
+
+"Dash it, Michael, don't brood there like a Memento Mori. Put away Magna
+Charta and talk to me. You used to talk."
+
+"You talk, Guy. You've been living alone all this time. You must have a
+great deal to say."
+
+So Guy flung theories of rhyme and metre to overwhelm Magna Charta; and,
+next day, he and Michael walked all over Oxford in the rain, he himself
+still talking. The day after, there came with the sun a letter from
+Pauline which he took away with him to read in the garden of St. John's,
+leaving Michael to Magna Charta.
+
+There was nobody on the lawn, and Guy sat down on a wooden seat in air
+that was faintly perfumed by the precocious blooms of a lilac breaking
+to this unusual warmth of April. Unopened the letter rested in his hand:
+for his name written in this girlish charactery took on the romantic
+look of a name in an old tale. A breathlessness was in the air, such as
+had brooded upon Pauline's first kiss; and Guy sat marmoreal and rapt in
+an ecstasy of anticipation that he would never have from any other
+letter; so still he was, that an alighting blackbird slipt over the
+grass almost to his feet before it realized the mistake and shrilled
+away on startled wings into the bushes behind. The trance of expectation
+was spoilt, and Guy with a sigh broke the envelope.
+
+     WYCHFORD RECTORY
+
+     OXON.
+
+     _Wednesday._
+
+     _I am writing to you at my desk. I began this morning but it was
+     time to go out when I began. Now it's after tea. Margaret came in
+     just now and said I looked all crinkled up like a shell: it's
+     because I simply don't know how to write to you. I have read your
+     letter over and over and over again. I never thought there could be
+     such a wonderful letter in the world. But I feel very sorry for
+     poor Richard who can't write letters as exquisite as yours. I
+     really feel miserable about him. And this letter to you makes me
+     feel miserable because I can't write letters even as well as
+     Richard. Mother was glad you thought of going to Oxford because she
+     says we are a great responsibility to her. Isn't she sweet? She
+     really is you know. So I talked to Father myself very seriously. I
+     explained to him that I was quite old enough to know my own mind,
+     and he listened to all the things I told him about you. He said he
+     supposed it was innevvitable, which looks very funny somehow. Are
+     you laughing at my spelling? And then he said it was nothing to do
+     with him. So of course I rushed off to Mother and told her and when
+     you come back we are to be allowed to go out twice a week and in
+     three more months we can be engaged properly. Are you happy? Only,
+     dear Guy, Mother doesn't want you to come back till my birthday.
+     She thinks the idea of you and me will be better when Father has
+     got an Iris Lorti or some name like that. He has never had a flower
+     of it before and he's so excited about it's coming out just when my
+     birthday is. Every day he goes down and pinches the stalk of it. He
+     says it's the loveliest flower in the world and grows on Mount
+     Lebanon. So if it comes out on my birthday, you and I can certainly
+     be engaged in August. Guy, I do hate my handwriting._
+
+     _Your loving
+
+     Pauline._
+
+It was a letter of gloriously good news, thought Guy, though he was a
+little disappointed not to have had the thrill of Pauline's endearment.
+Then, on the blank outside page, he saw scrawled in writing that went
+tumbling head over heels down the paper: _My darling Guy, I love you
+and underneath I have kissed the letter for you._
+
+The sentence died out in faint ink that seemed to show forth the whisper
+in which it had been written. For Guy the tumbledown letters were
+written in fire; and with the treasure in his heart of that small
+sentence, read a hundred times, he did not know how he should endure ten
+long days without Pauline, and in this old college garden, on this
+sedate and academic lawn, he cried out that he adored her as if indeed
+she were beside him in this laylocked air. At the sound of his voice the
+birds close at hand were all silent: they might have stopped to listen.
+Then a green-finch called 'sweet! sweet!', whose gentle and persistent
+proclamation was presently echoed by all the other birds twittering
+together again in the confused raptures of their Spring.
+
+The days with Michael at St. Giles went by slowly enough, and their
+fairness was a wasted boon. Guy wrote many long letters to Pauline and
+received from her another letter in which she began with '_My dearest_'
+as he had begged her. Yet when he read the herald vocative, he wished he
+had not tried to alter that old abrupt opening, for never again would
+she write in the faint ink of shyness such a sentence as had tumbled
+down the back of her first letter.
+
+Michael seemed to divine that he was in love, and Guy wondered why he
+could not tell him about it. Once or twice he nearly brought himself to
+the point, but the thought of describing Pauline kept him mute: Michael
+must see her first. The canoe would be ready at the end of the week, and
+Guy announced he should paddle it up to Wychford, travelling from the
+Isis to the upper Thames and from the upper Thames turning aside at
+Oldbridge to follow the romantic course of the Greenrush even to his own
+windows.
+
+"Rather fun," said Michael. "If the weather stays all right."
+
+"By Jove," Guy exclaimed, "I believe it was at Oldbridge Inn that I
+first met you."
+
+"On May Day three years ago," Michael agreed.
+
+And, thought Guy with a compassionate feeling for mere friendship, what
+a much more wonderful May Day should be this when Pauline was twenty.
+There was now her birthday present to buy, and Guy set out on the quest
+of it with as much exaltation as Percival may have sought the Holy
+Grail. He wished it were a ring he could buy for her; and indeed
+ultimately he could not resist a crystal set on a thin gold circlet that
+she, his rose of girls, would wear like a dewdrop. This ring, however,
+could not be his formal gift, but it would have to be offered when they
+were alone, and it must be worn nowhere but in the secret country they
+haunted with their love. The ring, uncostly as it was, took nearly all
+Guy's spare money, and he decided to buy a book for her, because in
+Oxford bookshops he still had accounts running. The April afternoon wore
+away while in his own particular bookshop kept by Mr. Brough, an ancient
+man with a white beard, he took down from the shelves volume after
+volume. At last he found a small copy of Blake's Lyrics bound in faded
+apple-green calf and tooled in a golden design of birds, berries and
+daisies. This must be for Pauline, he decided, since someone must have
+known the pattern of that nursery wall-paper and, loving it, have wished
+it to be recorded more endurably. What more exquisite coincidence could
+assure him that this book was meant for Pauline? Yet he was half-jealous
+of the unknown designer who had thought of something of which himself
+might have thought. Oh, yes, this must be for Pauline; and, as Guy
+rescued it from the dust and darkness of the old shop, he ascribed to
+the green volume an emotion of relief and was half-aware of promising to
+it a new and dearer owner who with cherishing would atone for whatever
+misfortune had brought it to these gloomy shelves.
+
+Next morning, when Guy was ready to start, Michael presented him with a
+glazier's diamond pencil.
+
+"When you fall in love, Guy, this will serve to scribble sonnets to your
+lady on the lattices of Plashers Mead. I shall probably come there
+myself when term's over."
+
+"I wish you'd come and live there with me," said Guy in a last effort to
+persuade Michael. "You see, if you shared the house, it wouldn't cost so
+much."
+
+"Perhaps I will," said Michael. "Who knows? I wonder what your Rectory
+people would think of me."
+
+"Oh, Pauline would like you. Pauline's the youngest, you know," added
+Guy. "And I'm pretty certain you'd like Monica."
+
+Michael laughed.
+
+"Really, Guy, I must tell them in Balliol that, since you went down,
+you've become an idle matchmaker. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye. You're sure you won't mind the fag of forwarding my bicycle?
+I'll send you a postcard from Oldbridge."
+
+Guy, although there was still more than a week before he would see
+Pauline, felt, as he hurried towards the boat-builder's moorings, that
+he would see her within an hour, such airy freedom did the realization
+of being on his way give to his limbs.
+
+The journey to Wychford seemed effortless, for whatever the arduousness
+of a course steadily upstream, it was nullified by the knowledge that
+every time the paddle was dipped into the water it brought him by his
+own action nearer to Pauline. A railway journey would have given him
+none of this endless anticipation, travelling through what at this time
+of the year before the season of boating was a delicious solitude. Guy
+could sing all the way if he wished, for there was nothing but
+buttercups and daisies, lambs and meadows and greening willows to
+overlook his progress. He glided beneath ancient bridges and rested at
+ancient inns, nearer every night to Pauline. Scarcely had such days a
+perceptible flight, and were not May Morning marked in flame on his
+mind's calendar, he could have forgotten time in this slow undated
+diminution.
+
+    O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
+    O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
+      That can sing both high and low:
+    Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
+    Journeys end in lovers meeting,
+      Every wise man's son doth know.
+
+This was the song Guy flung before his prow to the vision of Pauline
+leading him.
+
+    What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
+    Present mirth hath present laughter;
+      What's to come is still unsure:
+    In delay there lies no plenty;
+    Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
+      Youth's a stuff will not endure.
+
+This was the song that Guy felt Shakespeare might have written to suit
+his journey now, as he paddled higher and higher up the stream that
+flowed toward Shakespeare's own country.
+
+The banks of the Greenrush were narrower than the banks of the Thames:
+and all the way they were becoming narrower, and all the way the stream
+was running more swiftly against him. It was Sunday evening when he
+reached Plashers Mead; and so massively welded was the sago on his
+Sheraton table that Guy wondered if Miss Peasey to be ready for his
+arrival had not cooked it a week ago. But what did sago matter, when in
+his place there was laid a note from Pauline?
+
+     _My dearest,_
+
+     _I've had all your letters and I've been very frightened you'd be
+     drowned. To-morrow you've got to come to breakfast because I always
+     have breakfast in the garden on my birthday unless it pours. I'm
+     going to church at eight. I love you a thousand times more and I
+     will tell you so to-morrow and give you twenty kisses._
+
+     _Your own
+
+     Pauline._
+
+     _Do you like 'your own' better than 'your loving'?_
+
+Guy went to bed very early and resolved to wake at dawn that he might
+have the hours of the morning for thoughts of Pauline on her birthday.
+
+It was after dawn when Guy woke, for he had fallen asleep very tired
+after his week on the river; still it was scarcely six when he came down
+into the orchard, and the birds were singing as Guy thought he had never
+heard them sing before. The apple trees were already frilled with a foam
+of blossom; and on quivering boughs linnets with breasts rose-burnt by
+the winds of March throbbed out their carol. Chaffinches with flashing
+prelude of silver wings flourished a burst of song that broke as with
+too intolerable a triumph: then sought another tree and poured forth the
+triumphant song again. Thrushes, blackbirds and warblers quired
+deep-throated melodies against the multitudinous trebles of those
+undistinguished myriads that with choric paean saluted May; and on
+sudden diminuendoes could be heard the rustling canzonets of the
+goldfinches, rising and falling with reedy cadences.
+
+Guy launched his canoe, which crushed the dewy young grass in its track
+and laded the morning with one more fragrance. He paddled down the
+mill-stream and, landing presently in the Rectory paddock now in full
+blow with white and purple irises, he went through the wicket into the
+garden. When he reached the lily-pond the birds on the lawn flew away
+and left it green and empty. He stood entranced, for the hush of the
+morning lay on the house, and in the wistaria Pauline's window dreamed,
+wide open. Deep in the shrubberies the birds still twittered
+incessantly. Why was he not one of these birds, that he might light upon
+her sill? Upon Guy's senses stole the imagination of a new fragrance,
+that was being shed upon the day by that wide-open window; a fragrance
+that might be of flowers growing by the walks of her dreams. And surely
+in those flowery dreams he was beside her, since he had lost all sense
+of being still on earth. A bee flew out from Pauline's room, an enviable
+bee which had been booming with indefinite motion for how long round and
+round the white tulips on her sill. Presently another bee flew in; and
+Guy's fancy, catching hold of its wings hovered above Pauline where she
+lay sleeping. So sharp was the emotion he had of entering with the bee,
+that he was aware of brushing back her light brown hair to lean down and
+kiss her forehead; and when the belfry-clock clanged he was startled to
+find himself back upon this green and empty lawn. He must not stay here
+in front of her window, because if she woke and came in her white
+nightgown to greet the day, she would be shy to see him standing here.
+Reluctantly Guy turned away and would have gone out again by the wicket
+in the wall, if he had not come face to face with Birdwood.
+
+"I think I'm a bit early," he said in some embarrassment.
+
+"Yes, I think you are a bit early, sir," the gardener agreed.
+
+"Breakfast won't be till about half past eight?" Guy suggested.
+
+"And it's just gone the half of six," said Birdwood.
+
+"Would you like to see my canoe?" Guy asked.
+
+Birdwood looked round the lawn, seeming to imply that, such was Guy's
+liberty of behaviour, he half expected to see it floating on the
+lily-pond.
+
+"Where is it then?" he asked.
+
+Guy took him through the paddock to where the canoe lay on the
+mill-stream.
+
+"Handy little weapon," Birdwood commented.
+
+"Well, I'll see you later, I expect," said Guy embarking again. "I'm
+coming to breakfast at the Rectory."
+
+"Yes, sir," the gardener answered cheerfully. "In about another hour and
+a half I shall be looking for the eggs."
+
+Guy waved his hand and shot out into midstream where he drifted idly.
+Should he go to church this morning? Pauline must have wanted him to
+come, or she would not have told him in her note that she was going.
+They had never discussed the question of religion. Tacitly he had let it
+be supposed he believed in her simple creed, and he knew his appearance
+of faith had given pleasure to the family as well as to Pauline herself.
+Was he being very honest with her or with them? Certainly when he knelt
+at the back of the church and saw Pauline as he had seen her on Easter
+Day, it was not hard to believe in divinity. But he did not carry away
+Pauline's faith to cheer his own secret hours. The thought of herself
+was always with him, but her faith remained as a kind of vision upon
+which he was privileged to gaze on those occasions when, as it were, she
+made of it a public confession. Had he really any right to intrude upon
+such sanctities as hers would be to-day? No doubt every birthday morning
+she went to church, and the strangeness of his presence seemed almost an
+unhallowing of such rites. Even to attend her birthday breakfast began
+to appear unjustifiable, as he thought of all the birthday breakfasts
+that for so many years had passed by without him and without any idea
+of there ever being any necessity for him. No doubt this morning he,
+miserable and unworthy sceptic, would be dowered with the half of her
+prayers, and in that consciousness could he bear to accept them,
+kneeling at the back of the church, unless he believed utterly they were
+sanctified by something more than her own maidenhood? Yet if he did not
+go to church, Pauline would be disappointed, because she would surely
+expect him. She would be like the blessed damozel leaning out from the
+gold bar of Heaven and weeping because he did not come. There was no
+gain from honesty, if she were made miserable by it. It were better a
+thousand times he should kneel humbly at the back of the church and pray
+for the faith that was hers. And why could he not believe as she
+believed? If her faith were true, he suffered from injustice by having
+no grace accorded to him. Or did there indeed lie between him and her
+the impassable golden bar of Heaven? A cloud swept across the morning
+sun, and Guy shivered. Then the church-bell began to clang and, urging
+his canoe towards the churchyard, he jumped ashore and knelt at the back
+of the church.
+
+Guy had been aware during the service of the saintly pageant along the
+windows of the clerestory slowly dimming, and he was not surprized, when
+he came out, to see that clouds were dusking the first brilliance of the
+day. Mrs. Grey, Monica and Margaret had prayed each in a different part
+of the church; but now in the porch they fluttered about Pauline with an
+intimate and happy awareness of her birthday, almost seeming to wrap her
+in it, so that she in flushed responsiveness wore all her twenty years
+like a bunch of roses. Guy was sensitive to the faint reluctance with
+which her mother and sisters resigned her to him on this birthday
+morning; but yet to follow them back from church with Pauline beside him
+in a trepidation of blushes and sparkles was too dear a joy for him in
+turn to resign. Half-way to the house Pauline remembered that her
+father had been left alone. This was too wide a breach in her birthday's
+accustomed ceremony, and much dismayed she begged Guy to go back with
+her. At that moment the rest of the family had disappeared round a curve
+in the walk, and Guy caught Pauline to him, complaining she had not
+kissed him since he was home.
+
+"Oh, but Father!" she said breathlessly tugging. "He'll be so hurt if
+we've gone on without him."
+
+Guy felt a stab of jealousy that even a father should intrude upon his
+birthday kiss for her.
+
+"Oh, very well," he said half coldly. "If to see me again after a
+fortnight means so little...."
+
+"Guy," said Pauline, "you're not cross with me? And Father was so sweet
+about you. He said, 'Is Guy coming to breakfast?' Guy, you mustn't mind
+if I think a lot about everybody to-day. You see, this is my first
+birthday when there has been you."
+
+"Oh, don't remind me of the years before we met," said Guy. "I hate them
+all. No, I don't," he exclaimed in swift penitence. "I love them all.
+Hurry, darling girl, or we shall miss him."
+
+Pauline's eyes were troubled by a question, behind which lurked a
+fleeting alarm.
+
+"Kiss me," she murmured. "I was horrid."
+
+A kind of austerity informed their kiss of reconciliation, an austerity
+that suited the sky of impending rain under which they were standing in
+the light of the last wan sunbeam. Then they hurried to the churchyard
+where in the porch the Rector was looking vaguely round for the company
+he expected.
+
+"Lucky my friend Lorteti came out yesterday. This rain will ruin him.
+You must take Guy to see that iris, my dear. Fancy, twenty-one to-day,
+dear me! dear me! most remarkable!"
+
+Pauline danced with delight behind the Rector's back.
+
+"He thinks I'm twenty-one," she whispered. "Oh, Guy, isn't he sweet? And
+he called you Guy. Oh, Francis," she cried. "Do let me kiss you."
+
+There was a short debate on the probability of the rain's coming before
+breakfast was done, but it was decided, thanks to Birdwood's optimism,
+to accept the risk of interruption by sitting down outside. The table
+was on the lawn, Pauline's presents lying in a heap at the head. As one
+by one she opened the packets, everybody stood round her, not merely her
+mother and father and sisters and Guy, but also Birdwood and elderly
+Janet and Mrs. Unger the cook and Polly who helped Mrs. Unger.
+
+"Oh, I'm so excited," said Pauline. "Oh, I do hope it won't rain. Oh,
+thank you, Mrs. Unger. What a beautiful frame!"
+
+"I hope yaw'll find someone to put in it, miss," said Mrs. Unger with a
+glance of stately admiration toward her present and a triumphant side
+look at Janet, who after many years' superintendence of Pauline's white
+fastness had brought her bunches of lavender and woodruff tied up with
+ribbons. All the presents were now undone, among them Guy's green
+volume, a paste buckle from Margaret, a piece of old embroidery from
+Monica and from Richard in India a pair of carved bellows, at the
+prodigal ingenuity of whose pattern Margaret looked a little peevish.
+When all the other presents had been examined, Birdwood stepped forward
+and with the air of a conjuror produced from under his coat a pot of
+rose-coloured sweet-peas that exactly matched the frail hue of Pauline's
+cheeks.
+
+Breakfast was eaten, with everybody's eyes watching the now completely
+grey sky. How many such birthday breakfasts had been eaten on this cool
+lawn by these people who in their simplicity were akin to the birds in
+their shrubberies and the flowers in their borders; and Guy thought of
+an old photograph taken by an uncle of Pauline's tenth birthday
+breakfast, when the table was heaped high with dolls and toys and
+Pauline in the middle of them, while Monica and Margaret with legs as
+thin as thrushes' stood shy and graceful in the background. He sighed to
+himself with amazement at the fortune which like a genie had whisked him
+into this dear assemblage.
+
+Breakfast was over just as the rain began to fall with the tinkling
+whisper that forebodes determination. There was not a leaf in the garden
+that was not ringing like an elfin bell to these silver drops; but,
+alas, the unrelenting windless rain gave no hope to Guy and Pauline of
+that long walk together they had expected all a fortnight. There was
+nothing to do but sit in the nursery and wonder if it would ever stop.
+
+"I used to love rain when it kept me here," said Guy. "Now it has become
+our enemy."
+
+Worse was to come, for it rained every day faster and faster, and there
+were no journeys for Guy's new canoe. He and Pauline scarcely had ten
+minutes to themselves, since when they were kept in the house all the
+family treated them with that old proprietary manner. The unending rain
+began to fret them more sharply because Spring's greenery was in such
+weather of the vividest hue and was reproaching them perpetually for the
+waste of this lovely month of May.
+
+The river was rising. Already Guy's garden was sheened with standing
+moisture, and the apple-blossom lay ruined. People vowed there had never
+been such rain in May, and still it rained. The river was running
+swiftly, level with the top of its banks, and many of the meadows were
+become glassy firmaments. Very beautiful was this green and silver
+landscape, but oh, the rain was endless. Guy grew much depressed and
+Miss Peasey got rheumatism in her ankles. Then in the middle of the
+month, when Guy was feeling desperate and when even Pauline seemed sad
+for the hours that were being robbed from them, it cleared up.
+
+Guy had been to tea, and after tea he and Pauline had sat watching the
+weather. Margaret had stayed with them all the afternoon, but had left
+them alone now, when it was half-past six and nearly time for Guy to go.
+The clouds, which all day had spread their pearly despair over the
+world, suddenly melted in a wild transplendency of gold.
+
+"Oh, do let's go for a walk before dinner," said Guy. "Don't let's tell
+anybody, but let's escape."
+
+"Where shall we go?"
+
+"Anywhere. Anywhere. Out in the meadows by the edge of the water. Let's
+get sopping wet. Dearest, do come. We're never free. We're never alone."
+
+So Pauline got ready; and they slipped away from the house, hoping that
+nobody would call them back and hurrying through the wicket into the
+paddock where the irises hung all sodden. They walked along the banks of
+a river twice as wide as it should be, and found they could not cross
+the bridge. But it did not matter, for the field where they were walking
+was not flooded, and they went on toward the mill. Here they crossed the
+river and, hurrying always as if they were pursued, such was their sense
+of a sudden freedom that could not last, they made a circuit of the
+wettest meadows and came to the hill on the other side. Everywhere above
+them the clouds were breaking, and all the West was a fiery mist of rose
+and gold.
+
+The meadow they had found was crimsoned over with ragged robins that in
+this strange light glowered angrily like rubies. Pauline bent down and
+gathered bunches of them until her arms were full. Her skirt was wet,
+but still she plucked the crimson flowers; and Guy was gathering them
+too, knee-deep in soaking grass. What fever was in the sunset to-night?
+
+"Pauline," he cried flinging high his bunch of ragged robins to scatter
+upon the incarnadined air. "I have never loved you, as I love you now."
+
+Guy caught her to him; and into that kiss the fiery sky entered, so that
+Pauline let fall her ragged robins and they lay limp in the grass and
+were trodden under foot.
+
+"Pauline, I have a ring for you," he whispered. "Will you wear it when
+we are alone?"
+
+She took the thin circlet set with a crystal, and put it on her finger.
+Then with passionate arms she held him to her heart: the caress burned
+his lips like a flaming torch: the crystal flashed with hectic gleams, a
+basilisk, a perilous orient gem.
+
+"We must go home," she whispered. "Oh, Guy, I feel frightened of this
+evening."
+
+"Pauline, my burning rose," he whispered.
+
+And all the way back into the crimson sunset they talked still in
+whispers, and of those rain-drenched ragged robins there was not one
+they carried home.
+
+_'La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!'_
+
+_'La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!'_
+
+_'La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!'_
+
+The words did not cool Guy's pillow that night, but they led him by
+strange ways into a fevered sleep.
+
+
+
+
+SUMMER
+
+
+
+
+_June_
+
+
+When Pauline reached the Rectory dinner had already begun in the mixture
+of candlelight and rosy dusk that seemed there more than anything to
+mark Summer's instant approach, and as with flushed cheeks she took her
+place at table, she was conscious of an atmosphere that was half
+disapproval, half anxiety; or was it that she disapproving of herself
+expected criticism? Positively there was an emotion of being on her
+defence; she felt propitiatory and apologetic; and for the first time
+she was sharply aware of herself and her family as two distinct facts.
+It was to dispel this uneasy sense of potential division that she took
+up her violin with a faintly exaggerated willingness and that, instead
+of dreaming of Guy in a corner of the room, she played all the evening
+in the same spirit of wanting to please.
+
+Her mother asked if she had enjoyed her walk, and Pauline had positively
+to fight with herself before she could answer lightly enough that the
+walk had been perfect. Why was her heart beating like this, and why did
+her sisters regard her so gravely? It must be her fancy, and almost
+defiantly she continued:
+
+"There was no harm in my going out with Guy, was there? We've not been
+together at all lately."
+
+"Why should there be any particular harm this evening?" Monica enquired.
+
+"Of course not, Monica," and again her heart was beating furiously. "I
+only asked because I thought you all seemed angry with me for being a
+little late for dinner."
+
+"I don't know why we should suddenly be sensitive about punctuality in
+this house," said Margaret.
+
+Pauline had never thought her own white fastness offered such relief and
+shelter as to-night; and yet, she assured herself, nobody had really
+been criticizing her. It must have been entirely her fancy, that air of
+reproach, those insinuations of cold surprize. People in this house did
+not understand what it meant to be as much in love as she. It was all
+very well for Margaret and Monica to lay down laws for behaviour,
+Margaret who did not know whether she loved or not, Monica who
+disapproved of anything more directly emotional than a Gregorian chant.
+Yet they had not theorized to-night, nor had they propounded one rule of
+behaviour; it was she who was rushing to meet their postulates and
+observations, arming herself with weapons of offence before the attack
+had begun. Yet why had neither Monica nor Margaret, nor even her mother,
+come to say good-night to her? They did not understand about love, not
+one of them, not one of them.
+
+"Pauline?"
+
+It was her mother's voice outside her door, who coming in seemed
+perfectly herself.
+
+"Not undressed yet? What's the matter, darling Pauline? You look quite
+worried, sitting there in your chair."
+
+"I'm not worried, Mother. Really, darling, I'm not worried. I thought
+you were cross with me."
+
+Now she was crying and being petted.
+
+"I don't know why I'm crying. Oh, I'm so foolish. Why am I crying? Are
+you cross with me?"
+
+"Pauline, what is the matter? Have you had a quarrel with Guy?"
+
+"Good gracious, no! What makes you ask that? We had an exquisite walk,
+and the sunset was wonderful, oh, so wonderful! And we picked ragged
+robins--great bunches of them. Only I forgot to bring them home. How
+stupid of me. Monica and Margaret aren't angry with me, are they? They
+were so cold at dinner. Why were they? Mother, I do love you so. You do
+understand me, don't you? You do sympathize with love? Mother, I do love
+you so."
+
+When Pauline was in bed her mother fetched Margaret and Monica, who both
+came and kissed her good-night and asked what could have given her the
+idea that they were angry with her.
+
+"You foolish little thing, go to sleep," said Monica.
+
+"You mustn't let your being in love with Guy spoil the Rectory," said
+Margaret. "Because, you know, the Rectory is so much, much better than
+anything else in the world."
+
+Her mother and sisters left her, going gently from the room as if she
+were already asleep.
+
+Pauline read for awhile from Guy's green volume of Blake; then taking
+from under her pillow the crystal ring, she put it on her third finger
+and blew out the light.
+
+Was he thinking of her at this moment? He must be, and how near they
+brought him to her, these nights of thoughts, for then she seemed to be
+floating out of her window to meet him half-way upon the May air. How
+she loved him; and he had given her this ring of which no one knew
+except themselves. It was strange to have been suddenly frightened in
+that sunset, for now, as she lay here looking back upon it, this evening
+was surely the most wonderful of her life. He had called her his burning
+rose. His burning rose ... his burning rose? Why had she not brought
+back a few of those ragged robins to sit like confidantes beside her
+bed? Flowers were such companions; the beautiful and silent flowers. How
+far away sleep was still standing from her: and Pauline got out of bed
+and leaned from the window with a sensation of resting upon the buoyant
+darkness. The young May moon had already set, and not a sound could be
+heard; so still indeed was the night that it seemed as if the stars
+ought to be audible upon their twinkling. If now a nightingale would but
+sing to say what she was wanting to say to the darkness! Nightingales,
+however, were rare in the trees round Wychford, and the garden stayed
+silent. Perhaps Guy was leaning from his window like this, and it was a
+pity their lights could not shine across, each candle fluttering to the
+other. If only Plashers Mead were within view, they would be able to sit
+at their windows in the dark hours and sometimes signal to one another.
+Or would that be what Margaret called 'cheapening' herself? Had she
+cheapened herself this evening, when she had kissed him for the gift of
+this ring? Yet could she cheapen herself to Guy? He loved her as much as
+she loved him; and always she and he must be equal in their love. She
+could never be very much reserved with Guy: she did not want to be. She
+loved him, and this evening for the first time she had kissed him in the
+way that often in solitude she had longed to kiss him.
+
+"I only want to live for love," she whispered.
+
+Naturally Margaret did not know what love like hers meant; and perhaps
+it was as well, for it was sad enough to be parted from Guy for two
+days, when there was always the chance of seeing him in the hours
+between; but to be separated from him by oceans for two years, as
+Richard and Margaret were separated, that would be unbearable.
+
+"I suppose Margaret would call it 'cheapening' myself to be standing at
+my window like this. Good-night, dearest Guy, good-night. Your Pauline
+is thinking of you to the very last moment of being the smallest bit
+awake."
+
+Her voice set out to Plashers Mead, no louder than a moth's wing; and,
+turning away from the warm May night, Pauline went back to bed and fell
+asleep on the happy contemplation of a love that between them was
+exactly equal.
+
+The floods went down rapidly during the week; green Summer flung her
+wreaths before her: the cuckoo sang out of tune and other birds more
+rarely: chestnut-blossom powdered the grass: and the pinks were breaking
+all along the Rectory borders. These were days when not to idle down the
+river would have been a slight upon the season. So Pauline and Guy, with
+their two afternoons a week, which were not long in becoming four, spent
+all their time in the canoe. The Rectory punt could only be used on the
+mill-stream; and Pauline rejoiced, if somewhat guiltily, that they could
+not invite either of her sisters to accompany them. She and Guy had now
+so much to say to each other, every day more it seemed, that it was
+impossible any longer not to wish to be alone.
+
+"Margaret says we are becoming selfish, are we?" she asked, dragging her
+fingers through the water and perceiving the world through ranks of
+fleurs-de-lys.
+
+Guy from where in the stern he sat hunched over his paddle asked in what
+way they were supposed to be selfish.
+
+"Well, it is true that I'm dreadfully absent-minded all the time. You
+know, I can't think about anything but you. Then, you see, we used
+always to invite Margaret to be with us, and now we hurry away in the
+canoe from everybody."
+
+"One would think we spent all our time together," said Guy. "Instead of
+barely four hours a week."
+
+"Oh, Guy darling, it's more than that. This is the fourth afternoon
+running that we've been together; and we weren't back yesterday till
+dinner-time."
+
+Guy put a finger to his mouth.
+
+"Hush! We're coming to the bend in the river that flows round the place
+we first met," he whispered. "Hush! if we talk about other people, it
+will be disenchanted."
+
+He swung the canoe under the bushes, tied it to a hawthorn bough and
+declared triumphantly, as they climbed ashore up the steep bank, that
+here was practically a desert island. Then they went to the narrow
+entrance and gazed over the meadows which in this sacred time of growing
+grass really were impassable as the sea.
+
+"Not even a cow in sight," Guy commented in well satisfied tones. "I
+shall be sorry when the hay is cut, and people and cattle can come here
+again."
+
+"People and cattle! How naughty you are, Guy. As if they were just the
+same!"
+
+"Well, practically you know, as far as we're concerned, there isn't very
+much difference."
+
+For a long while they sat by the edge of the stream in their fragrant
+seclusion.
+
+"Dearest," Pauline sighed. "Why can I listen to you all day, and yet
+whenever anybody else talks to me, why do I feel as if I were only half
+awake?"
+
+"Because even when you're not with me," said Guy, "you're still really
+with me. That's why. You see you're still listening to me."
+
+This was a pleasant explanation; but Pauline was anxious to be reassured
+about what Margaret had hinted was a deterioration in her character
+lately.
+
+"Perhaps we are a little selfish. But we won't be, when we're married."
+
+Guy had been scribbling on an envelope which he now handed to her; and
+she read:
+
+     _Mrs. Guy Hazlewood
+      Plashers Mead
+      Wychford
+      Oxon._
+
+"Oh, Guy, you know I love to see it written: but isn't it unlucky to
+write it?"
+
+"I don't think you ought to be so superstitious," he scoffed.
+
+She wished he were not obviously despising the weakness of her beliefs.
+This was the mood in which she seemed farthest away from him; when she
+felt afraid of his cleverness; and when what had been simple became
+maddeningly twisted up like an object in a nightmare.
+
+Yet worries that were so faint as scarcely to have a definite shape
+could still be bought off with kisses; and always when she kissed Guy
+they receded out of sight again, temporarily appeased.
+
+June, which had come upon them unawares, drifted on toward Midsummer,
+and the indolent and lovely month mirrored herself in the stream with
+lush growth of sedges and grasses, with yellow water-lilies budding,
+with starry crowfoot and with spongy reeds and weeds that kept the canoe
+to a slow progress in accord with the season. At this time, mostly, they
+launched their craft in the mill-stream, whence they glided under
+Wychford bridge to the pool of an abandoned mill on the farther side.
+Here they would float immotionable on the black water, surrounded by
+tumbledown buildings that rose from the vivid and exuberant growth of
+the thick-leaved vegetation flourishing against these cold and decayed
+foundations. Pauline was always relieved when Guy with soundless paddle
+steered the canoe away from these deeps. The mill-pool affected her with
+the merely physical fear of being overturned and plunged into those
+glooms haunted by shadowy fish, there far down to be strangled by weeds
+the upper tentacles of which could be seen undulating finely to the
+least quiver upon the face of the water. Yet more subtly than by
+physical terrors did these deeps affect her, for the fathomless
+mill-pool always seemed, as they hung upon it, to ask a question. With
+such an air of horrible invitation it asked her where she was going with
+Guy, that no amount of self-reproach for a morbid fancy could drive
+away the fact of the question's being always asked, however firmly she
+might fortify herself against paying attention. The moment they passed
+out of reach of that smooth and cruel countenance, Pauline was always
+ashamed of the terror and never confided in Guy what a mixture of
+emotions the mill-pool could conjure for her. Their journey across it
+was in this sunny weather the prelude to a cool time on the stream that
+flowed along the foot of the Abbey grounds. During May they had been
+wont to paddle directly up the smaller main stream, exploring far along
+the Western valley; but on these June afternoons such a course involved
+too much energy. So they used to disembark from the canoe, pulling it
+over a narrow strip of grass to be launched again on the Abbey stream,
+which had been dammed up to flow with the greater width and solemnity
+that suited the grand house shimmering in eternal ghostliness at the top
+of the dark plantation. Pauline had no dread of Wychford Abbey at this
+distance, and she was fond of gliding down this stream into which the
+great beeches dipped their tresses, shading it from the heat of the sun.
+
+Every hour they spent on the river made them long to spend more hours
+together, and Pauline began to tell herself she was more deeply in love
+than anyone she had ever known. Everything except love was floating away
+from her like the landscape astern of the canoe. She began to neglect
+various people in Wychford over whom she had hitherto watched with
+maternal solicitude: even Miss Verney was not often visited, because she
+and Guy could not go together, the one original rule to which Mrs. Grey
+still clung being a prohibition of walking together through the town.
+And with the people went her music. She did not entirely give up playing
+but she always played so badly that Monica declared once she would
+rather such playing were given up. In years gone by Pauline had kept
+white fantail pigeons: but now they no longer interested her and she
+gave them away in pairs. Birdwood declared that the small bee-garden
+which from earliest childhood had belonged to her guardianship was a
+'proper disgrace.' Her tambour-frame showed nothing but half-fledged
+birds from which since Winter had hung unkempt shreds of blue and red
+wool. And even her mother's vague talks about the poor people in
+Wychford had no longer an audience, because Margaret and Monica never
+had listened, and now Pauline was as inattentive as her sisters. Nothing
+was worth while except to be with Guy. Not one moment of this June must
+be wasted, and Pauline managed to set up a precedent for going out on
+the river with him after tea, when in the cool afternoon they would
+float down behind Guy's house under willows, under hawthorns, past the
+golden fleurs-de-lys, past the scented flags, past the early meadowsweet
+and the flowering rush, past comfrey and watermint, figwort,
+forget-me-not and blue cranesbill that shimmered in the sun like steely
+mail.
+
+On Midsummer Day about five o'clock Pauline and Guy set out on one of
+these expeditions that they had stolen from regularity, and found all
+their favourite fields occupied by haymakers whose labour they resented
+as an intrusion upon the country they had come to regard as their own.
+
+"Oh, I wish I had money," Guy exclaimed. "I'd like to buy all this land
+and keep it for you and me. Why must all these wretched people come and
+disturb the peace of it?"
+
+"I used to love haymaking," said Pauline, feeling a little wistful for
+some of those simple joys that now seemed uncapturable again.
+
+"Yes. I should like haymaking," Guy assented, "if we were married. It's
+the fact that haymakers are at this moment preventing us being alone
+which makes me cry out against them. How can I kiss you here?"
+
+A wain loaded high with hay and laughing children was actually standing
+close against the ingress to their own peninsula. The mellow sun of
+afternoon was lending a richer quality of colour to nutbrown cheeks and
+arms; was throwing long shadows across the shorn grass; was gilding the
+pitchforks and sparkling the gnats that danced above the patient horses.
+It was a scene that should have made Pauline dream with joy of her
+England: yet, with Guy's discontent brooding over it, she did not care
+for these jocund haymakers who were working through the lustred
+afternoon.
+
+"Hopeless," Guy protested. "It's like Piccadilly Circus."
+
+"Oh, Guy dear, you are absurd. It's not a bit like Piccadilly Circus."
+
+"I don't see the use of living in the country if it's always going to be
+alive with people," Guy went on. "We may as well turn round. The
+afternoon is ruined."
+
+When they reached the confines of Plashers Mead, he exclaimed in deeper
+despair:
+
+"Pauline! I must kiss you; and, look, actually the churchyard now is
+crammed with people, all hovering about over the graves like ghouls. Why
+does everybody want to come out this afternoon?"
+
+They landed in the orchard behind the house, and Pauline was getting
+ready to help Guy push the canoe across to the mill-stream, when he
+vowed she must come and kiss him good-night indoors.
+
+"Of course I will; though I mustn't stay more than a minute, because I
+promised Mother to be back by seven."
+
+"I don't deserve you," said Guy, standing still and looking down at her.
+"I've done nothing but grumble all the afternoon, and you've been an
+angel. Ah, but it's only because I long to kiss you."
+
+"I long to kiss you," she murmured.
+
+"Do you? Do you?" he whispered. "Oh, with those ghouls in the churchyard
+I can't even take your hand."
+
+They crossed the bridge from the orchard and came round to the front of
+the house into full sunlight, and thence out of the dazzle into Guy's
+hall that was filled with watery melodies and the green light of their
+own pastoral world. Close they kissed, close and closer in the coolness
+and stillness.
+
+"Pauline! I shall go mad for love of you."
+
+"I love you. I love you," she sighed, nestling to his arms' enclosure.
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+"Guy!"
+
+Each called to the other as if over an abyss of years and time.
+
+Then Pauline said she must go back, but Guy reminded her of a book she
+had promised to read, and begged her just to come with him to the
+library.
+
+"I do want to talk to you once alone in my own room," he said. "The
+evenings won't seem so empty when I can think of you there."
+
+She could not disappoint him, and they went upstairs and into his green
+room that smelt of tobacco-smoke and meadowsweet. They stood by the
+window looking out over their territory, and Guy told for the hundredth
+time how, as it were, straight from this window he had plunged to meet
+her that September night.
+
+"Hullo," he exclaimed suddenly, reading on the pane that was scrabbled
+with mottoes cut by himself in idle moments with the glazier's pencil:
+
+     _The fresh green lap of fair King Richard's land.
+
+     Michael Fane. June 24._
+
+"That's to-day! Then Michael must be here. What an extraordinary
+thing!"
+
+Guy looked round the room for any sign of his friend; but there was
+nothing except the Shakesperean record of his presence. Pauline felt
+hurt that he should be so much interested in a friend, when but a moment
+ago he had brought her here as if her presence were the only thing that
+counted for his evening's pleasure.
+
+"I must find out where he is," exclaimed Guy.
+
+Now he wanted to be rid of her, thought Pauline, and for the first time,
+when he had kissed her, she kissed him coldly in response. More bitter
+still was the thought that he did not remonstrate: he had not noticed.
+Pauline said she must hurry away, and Guy did not persuade her to stop.
+Oh, how she hated this friend of his; she had no one in whom she would
+be even mildly interested when she was with Guy. He took her home in the
+canoe, speculating all the way about Michael Fane's whereabouts; and as
+Pauline went across the Rectory paddock there were tears of
+mortification in her eyes that sometimes burnt as hotly even as with
+jealousy's rage.
+
+Her mother was on the lawn, when she got back, and Pauline blinked her
+eyes a good deal to throw the blame of tears upon the sun.
+
+"Ah, you're back. Let's take a little walk round the garden," said Mrs.
+Grey in the nervous manner that told of something on her mind.
+
+They went into the larger wall-garden and walked along the wide
+herbaceous borders through a blaze of snapdragons that here all day had
+been swallowing the sunshine.
+
+"Where did you go with Guy?" her mother asked.
+
+"We went down the river, and they're cutting the grass in the big meadow
+and then afterwards...."
+
+"Oh, Pauline, afterwards you went into Guy's house with him?"
+
+Pauline nodded.
+
+"I know. I was just going to tell you."
+
+"Pauline, how could you do such a thing?"
+
+"I only went to say good-night. I wasn't there five minutes."
+
+Why should an action so simple be vexing her mother?
+
+"Are you angry with me for going?"
+
+"You must never do such a thing again," said Mrs. Grey more crossly than
+Pauline had ever heard her. "Monica saw you go in as she was walking
+down Shipcot hill, and she has just this moment come and told me."
+
+"But why shouldn't I go in and say good-night?" Pauline asked. "There
+were people in the churchyard. I thought it was better to say good-night
+in the house."
+
+Her mother was tremulously pink with vexation, and Pauline looked at her
+in surprize. It was really unaccountable that such a trifling incident
+as going into Guy's house could have made her as angry as this. She must
+have offended her in some other way.
+
+"Mother, what have I done to annoy you?"
+
+"I can't think what made you do anything so stupid as that. I can't
+think. I can't think. So many people may have seen you go in."
+
+"Well, Mother darling, surely by this time," said Pauline, "everybody
+must know we are really engaged."
+
+Her mother stood in an access of irritation.
+
+"And don't you understand how that makes it all the worse? Please never
+do such an inconsiderate thing again. You can imagine how much it upset
+Monica, when she ran back to tell me."
+
+"Why didn't she come in and fetch me?" asked Pauline. "That would have
+been much easier. I think she thoroughly enjoyed making a great fuss
+about nothing. Everybody has been criticizing me lately. I know you all
+disapprove of anybody's being in love."
+
+"Pauline, when you are to blame, you shouldn't say such unkind things
+about Monica."
+
+"I have to say what I think sometimes," Pauline replied rebelliously.
+
+"And as for Guy," Mrs. Grey went on, "I am astonished at his
+thoughtlessness. I can't understand how he could dream of letting you
+come into his house. I can't understand it."
+
+"Yes, but why shouldn't I go in?" Pauline persisted. "Darling Mother,
+you go on being angry with me, but you don't tell me why I shouldn't go
+in."
+
+"Can't you understand what the Wychford people might think?"
+
+Pauline shook her head.
+
+"Well, I shan't say any more about it," Mrs. Grey decided. "But you must
+promise me never never to do such a foolish thing again."
+
+"I'll promise you never to go to Guy's house," said Pauline. "But I
+can't promise never to do foolish things, when such perfectly ordinary
+things are called foolish."
+
+Mrs. Grey looked helplessly round her, but as neither of her two elder
+daughters was present she had nothing to say; and Pauline, who thought
+that all the fuss was due to nothing but Monica's unwarranted
+interference, had nothing to say either; so they walked along the
+herbaceous borders each with a demeanour of reproach for the other's
+failure to understand. The snapdragons lolled upon the sun with
+gold-bloomed anthers, and drank more and still more colour until they
+were drenched beyond the deepest dyes of crimson, extinguishing the
+paler hues of rose and chrome which yet at moth-time would show like
+lamps when the others had dulled in the discouragement of twilight.
+
+"You mustn't think anything more about it," said her mother after a long
+silence. "I'm sure it was only heedlessness. I don't think you can say
+I'm too strict with you and Guy. Really, you know, you ought to have had
+a very happy June. You've been together nearly all the time."
+
+"Darling," said Pauline utterly penitent for the least look that could
+have wounded her mother's feelings. "You're sweet to us. And Guy loves
+you nearly as much as I do."
+
+The gong sounded upon the luteous air of the evening; and Pauline with
+her arm closely tucked into her mother's arm walked with her across the
+lawn toward the house.
+
+"It's no good looking crossly at me," she said when like a beautiful
+ghost Monica came into the dining-room. "I've explained everything to
+Mother."
+
+"I'm very glad you have," Monica answered austerely; and because she
+would not fall in with her own forgiving mood, Pauline took the gentle
+revenge of not expostulating with her that evening when there was an
+opportunity. Nor would she let Margaret refer to the subject. Her
+sisters were very adorable, but they knew nothing about love and it
+would only make them more anxious to lay down laws if she showed that
+she was aware of their disapproval. She would be particularly charming
+to them both this evening, but her revenge must be never to mention the
+incident to either.
+
+The principal result of her mother's rebuke had been to drive away
+Pauline's anger with Guy and the jealousy of his friend. All she thought
+now was of the time when next they would meet and when she would be able
+to laugh with him over the absurdity of other people pretending to know
+anything about the ways of love or of lovers like themselves. She
+decided also that, as a penance for having been angry with Guy, she
+would take care to enquire the very first thing about the mystery of the
+inscription on the window. Oh, but how she hoped his friend had not come
+to stay at Plashers Mead, for that would surely spoil this Summer of
+theirs.
+
+The next afternoon, when Pauline went into the paddock, Guy was waiting
+for her on the mill-stream, her place in the canoe all ready as usual.
+
+"Have you found your friend?" she asked, faithful to her resolution.
+
+"Not a sign of him," said Guy. "What on earth he came for, I can't
+think. Miss Peasey never saw him and of course she never heard him. He
+must have been bicycling. However, don't let's waste time in talking
+about Michael Fane."
+
+Pauline smiled at him with all her heart. How wonderful Guy was to
+reward her so richly for the little effort it had cost to enquire about
+his friend.
+
+"I've been prospecting this morning," he announced as they shot along in
+the direction of the bridge. "They haven't started to make hay on the
+other side, so I'm going to paddle you furiously upstream until we find
+some secret and magical meadow where we can hide and forget about
+yesterday's fiasco."
+
+They glided underneath the bridge and left it quivering in the empty
+sunlight behind them; they swept silently over the mill-pool while
+Pauline held her breath. Then the banks closed in upon their canoe and
+Guy fought his way against the swifter running of the river, on and on,
+on and on between the long grasses of the uncut meadows, on and on, on
+and on past the waterfall where the Abbey stream joined the main stream
+and gave it a wider and easier course.
+
+"Phew, it's hot," Guy exclaimed. "Sprinkle me with water."
+
+She splashed him laughing; and he seized her hand to kiss her dabbled
+fingers.
+
+"Laugh, my sweet sweet heart," he said. "It was your laugh I heard
+before I ever heard your voice, that night when I stood and looked at
+you and Margaret as if you were two silver people who had fallen down
+from the moon."
+
+Again she sprinkled him laughing, and again he seized her hand and
+kissed her dabbled fingers.
+
+"They're as cool as coral," he said. "Why are you wrinkling your nose at
+me? Pauline, your eyes have vanished away!"
+
+He plucked speedwell flowers and threw them into her lap.
+
+"When I haven't got you with me," he said, "I have to pretend that the
+speedwells are your eyes, and that the dog-roses are your cheeks."
+
+"And what is my nose?" she asked, clapping her hands because she was
+sure he would not be able to think of any likeness.
+
+"Your nose is incomparable," he told her: and then he bent to his paddle
+and made the canoe fly along so that the water fluted to right and left
+of the bows. Ultimately they came to an island where all the afternoon
+they sat under a willow that was pluming with scanty shade a thousand
+forget-me-nots.
+
+Problems faded out upon the languid air, for Pauline was too well
+content with Guy's company to spoil the June peace. At last, however,
+she disengaged herself from his caressing arm and turned to him a
+serious and puzzled face. And when she was asking her question she knew
+how all the afternoon it had been fretting the back of her mind.
+
+"Why was Mother angry with me yesterday because I came into Plashers
+Mead to say good-night to you?"
+
+"Was she angry?" asked Guy.
+
+"Well, Monica saw us and got home before me and told her, and she was
+worried at what people would think. What would they think?"
+
+Guy looked at her: then he shook his fist at the sky.
+
+"Oh, God, why must people try...."
+
+She touched his arm.
+
+"Guy, don't swear. At least not ... you'll call me superstitious and
+foolish," she murmured dismayfully, "but really it hurts me to hear you
+say that."
+
+"I don't think you anything but the most lovely and perfect thing on
+earth," he vowed passionately. "And it drives me mad that people should
+try to spoil your naturalness ... but still ... it was thoughtless of
+me."
+
+"But why, why?" she asked. "That's the word Mother used about you. Only,
+why, why? Why shouldn't I go and say good-night?"
+
+"Dear, there was no harm in that. But you see, village people might say
+horrid things.... I was dreadfully to blame. Yes, of course I was."
+
+She flushed like a carnation at dawn; and when Guy put his arms round
+her, she drew away.
+
+"Oh, Guy," she said brokenly. "I can't bear to think of being alone
+to-night. I shall be asking questions all the night long, I know I
+shall. It's like that horrid mill-pool."
+
+"Mill-pool?" he echoed, looking at her in perplexity.
+
+She sighed and stared sadly down at the forget-me-nots.
+
+"You wouldn't understand: you'd think I was hysterical and stupid."
+
+Silently they left the island, and silently for some time they floated
+down the stream: then Pauline tossed her head bravely.
+
+"Love's rather cruel in a way."
+
+Guy looked aghast.
+
+"Pauline, you don't regret falling in love with me?"
+
+"No, of course not, of course not. Oh, I love you more than I can say."
+
+When Guy's arms were round her again, Pauline thought that love could be
+as cruel as he chose; she did not care for his cruelty.
+
+
+
+
+_July_
+
+Guy had been conscious ever since that rose-gold evening of the ragged
+robins of new elements having entered into his and Pauline's love for
+each other. All this month, however, June creeping upon them with
+verdurous and muffled steps had plotted to foil the least attempt on
+Guy's part to face the situation. Now the casual indiscretion of
+yesterday brought him sharply against it, and, as in the melancholy of
+the long Summer evening he contemplated the prospect, it appeared
+disquieting enough. In nine months he had done nothing: no quibbling
+could circumvent that deadly fact. For nine months he had lived in a
+house of his own, had accepted paternal help, had betrothed himself; and
+with every passing month he had done less to justify any single one of
+the steps. What were the remedies? The house might be sub-let: at any
+rate his father's bounty came to an end this quarter: engaging himself
+formally to Pauline, he could throttle the Muse and become a
+schoolmaster, and in two years perhaps they could be married. It would
+be a wrench to abandon poetry and the hope of fame, indeed it would
+stagger the very foundations of his pride; but rather than lose Pauline
+he would be content to remain the obscurest creature on earth.
+Literature might blazon his name: but her love blazoned his soul. Poetry
+was only the flame of life made visible, and if he were to sacrifice
+Pauline what gasping and ignoble rushlight of his own would he offer to
+the world?
+
+Yet could he bear to leave Pauline herself? The truth was he should have
+gone in March when she was in a way still remote and when like a star
+she would have shone as brightly upon him absent or present. Now that
+star was burning in his heart with passionate fires and fevers and with
+quenchless ardours. It would be like death to leave her now; were she
+absent from him her very name would be as a draught of liquid fire. More
+implacable, too, than his own torment of love might be hers. If he had
+gone in March, she would have been gently sad, but in those first months
+she still had other interests; now if he parted from her she would
+merely all the time be growing older and they would have between them
+and their separation the intolerable wastage of their youth. Pauline had
+surrendered to love all the simple joys which had hitherto occupied her
+daily life; and if she were divided from him, he feared for the fire
+that might consume her. It was he who had kindled it upon that
+rosaureate evening of mid-May, and it was he who was charged with her
+ultimate happiness. The accident of yesterday had reminded him sharply
+how far this was so, and a sense of the tremendous responsibility
+created by his love for her lay heavily upon Guy. He must never again
+give her family an occasion to remonstrate with her: he had been the one
+to blame, and he wished Mrs. Grey had spoken to him without saying
+anything to Pauline. How sad this long evening was, with reluctant day
+even now at half-past-nine o'clock still luminous in the West.
+
+Next morning there was a letter for Guy from his father.
+
+     FOX HALL,
+
+     GALTON,
+
+     HANTS.
+
+     _June 25._
+
+     _My dear Guy,_
+
+     _I enclose the balance of the sum I gave you, and I hope it will
+     have been enough to pay all the debts at which you hinted in your
+     last letter. I do not think it would be fair to you to hamper you
+     with any more money. In fact, I trust you have already made up your
+     mind not to ask for any._
+
+     _You'll be sorry to hear that Wilkinson has fallen ill and must go
+     abroad at once. This makes it imperative for me to know at once if
+     you are coming to help me next September. If you are, I'm afraid I
+     must ask you to come here immediately and take Wilkinson's place
+     this term. I'm sorry to drag you away from your country estate, but
+     I cannot go to the bother of getting a temporary master and then
+     begin again with you in September. It unsettles the boys too much.
+     So if you want to come in September, you must come now. You will
+     only miss a month of your house and I hope that during the seven
+     weeks of the summer holidays you will be able to transfer yourself
+     comfortably and abandon it for ever._
+
+     _Take a day to think over my proposal and telegraph your answer
+     to-morrow._
+
+     _Your affectionate father,
+
+     John Hazlewood._
+
+It seemed fateful, the arrival of this letter on top of the doubts of
+last night. A day was not long in which to make up his mind. And yet,
+after all, a moment was enough. He ought to go: he ought to telegraph
+immediately before he could vacillate: he must not see Pauline first: he
+ought to accept this offer: farewell, fame!
+
+Guy opened the front-door and walked into Birdwood come with a note from
+the Rectory.
+
+"Miss Pauline took me away from my work to give you this most particular
+and important and wait for the answer," said the gardener.
+
+Guy asked him to step inside and see Miss Peasey, while he went upstairs
+to write the reply.
+
+"Miss Peasey doesn't think much of your variety, Birdwood. She says the
+garden is entirely blue."
+
+"What, all those dellyphiniums the Rector raised with his own hand and
+she don't like blue!"
+
+Birdwood shook his head to express another defeat at the hands of
+incomprehensible woman. A moment later, as Guy went up to his room with
+Pauline's note, he heard him bellow in the kitchen:
+
+"What's this I hear, mum, about the garden being too blue?"
+
+Then Guy closed the door of the library and shut out everything but the
+sound of the stream.
+
+     _My darling,_
+
+     _I've got such exciting news. Mr. Delamere who's a friend of ours
+     has asked us to stay in his barge--I mean he's lent us the barge
+     for us to stay in. It's called the Naiad and it's on the Thames at
+     Ladingford and when we've finished with it we're going to have it
+     towed down to Oxford and come back from there by train. Mother
+     asked if you would like to come and stay with us for a fortnight.
+     Think of it, a fortnight! Margaret is coming and Monica is going to
+     stay with Father, who can't leave the garden. Oh, Guy, I'm wild
+     with happiness. We're to start on the first of July about. Do send
+     me a little note by Birdwood. Of course I know there's no need. But
+     I would love to have a little note especially as we shan't see each
+     other till after lunch._
+
+     _Your own adoring
+
+     Pauline._
+
+Guy wrote the little note to Pauline and to his father he wrote a long
+letter explaining that it was impossible to give up what he was doing to
+be a schoolmaster.
+
+It was peerless weather when they set out in Godbold's wagonette on the
+nine miles to Ladingford. Guy was thrilled to be travelling like this
+with Mrs. Grey, Margaret and Pauline. The girls were in flowered muslin
+dresses, seeming more airy than he had ever thought them: and the
+luggage piled up beside Godbold had the same exquisite lightness, so
+that it appeared less like luggage than a store of birds' feathers. The
+thought of nearly having missed this summery pilgrimage made Guy catch
+his breath.
+
+They arrived at Ladingford toward tea-time and found the barge lying by
+an old stone bridge about a mile away from the village. Apart from the
+spire of Ladingford church nothing conspicuously broke the horizon of
+that flat green country stretching for miles to a shadowy range of
+hills. Whichever way they looked, these meads extended with here and
+there willows and elms; close at hand was the quiet by-road that crossed
+the bridge and meandered over the low lands, as still and traffickless
+as the young Thames itself.
+
+The Naiad was painted peacock blue; owing to the turreted poops the
+owner had superimposed and the balustrade with rail of gilt gadroons, it
+almost had the look of a dismasted Elizabethan ship.
+
+"Anything more you'll want?" Godbold enquired.
+
+"Nothing more, thank you, Mr. Godbold," said Mrs. Grey. "Charming ...
+charming ... such a pleasant drive. Good afternoon, Mr. Godbold."
+
+The carrier turned his horse; and when the sound of the wagonette had
+died away, there was silence except where the stream lapped against the
+barge and where very far off some rooks were cawing.
+
+Guy and Pauline had resolved that they would give Margaret no chance of
+calling them selfish during this fortnight; and since they were together
+all the time, it was much easier now not to wish to escape from
+everybody. The first week went by in such a perfection of delight as Guy
+had scarcely thought was possible. Indeed it remained ultimately
+unimaginable, this dream life on the Naiad. A pleasant woman in a
+sunbonnet came to cook breakfast and dinner; and Pauline and Margaret
+went to Ladingford and bought sunbonnets, a pink one for Pauline and for
+Margaret one of watchet blue. In the fresh mornings Guy and the sisters
+wandered idly over the meads; but in the afternoon Margaret generally
+read a book in the shade while Guy and Pauline went for walks, walks
+that ended always in sitting by the river's edge and telling each other
+the tale of their love. The nights with a clear moon waxing to the full
+were entrancing. There was a small piano on the barge, the notes of
+which had been brought by damp almost to the timbre of an exhausted
+spinet. It served however for Mrs. Grey to accompany Pauline while she
+played on a violin simple tunes. Guy used to lie back on deck and count
+the stars above Pauline's pavans and galliards: then from the silence
+that followed he would see her coming, shadowy, light as the dewfall, to
+sit close beside him, to sit, her hand in his, for an hour while the
+moon climbed the sky and the fern-owls croaked in their hunting. And as
+the romantic climax of the day, it was wonderful to fall asleep with the
+knowledge that Pauline slept nearer to him than she had ever slept
+before.
+
+"Guy ought to go and see the Lamberts at the Manor," Mrs. Grey announced
+at the end of the second week. "I've written to Mrs. Lambert. It will be
+interesting for him."
+
+Guy was thrilled by the notion of visiting Ladingford Manor, which had
+been one of the great fortresses of romance held against the devastating
+commercial morality of the Victorian prime with its science and
+sciolism, and which possessed already some of the fabulous appeal of the
+mediaeval songs and tapestries John Lambert had created there. An
+invitation came presently to walk over any afternoon. Margaret said at
+first she would not go; but Guy who was in a condition of excited
+reverence declared she must come; and so the three of them set out
+across a path in the meads that Guy populated with romantic figures of
+the mid-Victorian days. On this stile Swinburne may have sat; here
+Burne-Jones may have looked back at the sky; and surely it were
+reasonable to suppose that Rossetti might have tied up his shoe on this
+big stone by this brook, even as Guy was tying up his shoe now. Soon
+they saw a group of elms and the smoke of clustered chimneys; there
+golden-grey in front of them stood Ladingford Manor.
+
+"There's the sort of stillness of fame about it," Guy whispered.
+
+He wondered if Mrs. Lambert would now resemble at all the famous
+pictures of her he had seen. And would she talk familiarly of the famous
+people she had known? They came to the gate, entering the garden along a
+flagged path on either side of which runnels flowed between borders of
+trim box. Mrs. Lambert was sitting in a yew parlour under a blue silk
+umbrella that was almost a pavilion, and she received them with many
+comments upon the energy of walking so far on this hot afternoon.
+
+"You would like some beer, I'm sure. There is a bell in that mulberry
+tree. If you toll the bell, Charlotte will bring you beer."
+
+Guy tolled the bell, and Charlotte arrived with a pewter tray and pewter
+mugs of beer. Margaret would not be thirsty, but Pauline was afraid of
+hurting Mrs. Lambert's feelings, and she pretended to drink, lancing
+blue eyes at Guy over the rim of her mug.
+
+"It's home-brewed beer," said Mrs. Lambert placidly, and then she leaned
+back and sighed at the dome of her blue silk umbrella. She was still
+very beautiful, and Guy had a sensation that he was sitting at the feet
+of Helen or Lady Flora the lovely Roman. She was old now, but she wore
+about her like an aureole the dignity of all those inspirations of
+famous dead painters.
+
+"Home-brewed beer," Mrs. Lambert repeated dreamily, and seemed to fall
+asleep in the past; while in the bee-drowsed yew parlour Pauline,
+Margaret and Guy sat watching her. The throat of Sidonia the sorceress
+was hers; the heavy lids of Hipparchia were hers; the wrist of
+Ermengarde or Queen Blanche was hers; and the pewter tray on the grass
+at her feet held Circe's wine.
+
+Then Mrs. Lambert woke up and asked if they would like to see the house.
+
+"Toll the bell in the mulberry-tree, and Charlotte will come. You must
+excuse my getting up."
+
+They followed Charlotte round the rooms of Ladingford Manor. There on
+the walls were the tapestries that had inspired John Lambert, and there
+were the tapestries even more beautiful that he himself had woven. On
+the tables were the books John Lambert had printed, which gave
+positively the aspect of being treasures by the discretion of their
+external appearance. In other rooms hung the original pictures of
+hackneyed mezzotints; and how rare they looked now with their velvety
+pigments of emerald and purple, of orange, cinnabar and scarlet glowing
+in the tempered sunlight. Margaret, as she moved from room to room,
+seemed with her weight of dusky hair and fastidious remoteness to belong
+to the company of lovely women whose romances filled these splendid
+scenes; but Pauline was life, irradiating with her joy each picture and
+giving to it the complement of its own still beauty.
+
+"Mrs. Lambert keeps very well, miss," said Charlotte as they came out
+again from the house. "But of course she doesn't get about much now. Yet
+we can't really complain, especially with this fine weather."
+
+"Would you like some more beer?" Mrs. Lambert asked, when they joined
+her again in the yew parlour.
+
+They said they were no longer thirsty; and, having thanked her for the
+pleasures of the visit, they left her in the past, returning by the
+pale green path across the meadows to where the Naiad lay by the old
+bridge.
+
+"Oh, I did want some tea," sighed Margaret.
+
+"I love Mrs. Lambert," cried Pauline, dancing through the meads. "Wasn't
+it touching of her to offer Margaret beer? Oh, Guy, when we're married
+and when you die and I receive young poets at Plashers Mead, shall I
+offer their future sisters-in-law home-brewed beer? Oh, but I'm sure I
+shall forget to offer them anything."
+
+Was there any reason, thought Guy, why Plashers Mead should not become a
+second Ladingford Manor? Friends long ago took that house together:
+perhaps Michael Fane would after all see the necessity of a second
+Ladingford Manor and share Plashers Mead with himself and Pauline. After
+this visit it was impossible to contemplate the prospect of being a
+schoolmaster: it was impossible to imagine Pauline as a schoolmaster's
+wife. At all costs their love must be sustained on the pinnacle of
+romance where now it stood. Margaret would sympathize with his desire to
+set Pauline in beauty; she, dreading the idea of marrying an Indian
+engineer, would understand how impossible it was to make Pauline the
+wife of a schoolmaster. Such a declension must somehow be avoided. It
+were better they should wait three years for marriage, five years,
+fourteen years as Tennyson had waited, rather than that he should make
+the monstrous surrender he had been so near to making. At least he would
+put himself and his work to the test and in a year he would be able to
+publish his first volume of poems. Perhaps his father would realize then
+that he deserved to marry Pauline. After all they were together: there
+were maddening restrictions of course, but they were together. This
+visit to Ladingford Manor must be accepted as an omen to persevere in
+his original intention; for he had been granted the vision of a
+perfected beauty, which he knew, by reading the lives of the men who
+made it, had only been achieved after desperate struggles and
+disappointments. This enchanted time on the Naiad must be the
+anticipated reward of a tremendous industry when he got back to
+Wychford. He would no more break the rules and fret at the restrictions
+made for him and Pauline. Every hour when they were together should
+henceforth be doubled in the intensity of its capacity for being
+enjoyed. One thing only he would demand, that in August they should be
+formally and openly engaged. Otherwise when Autumn came and made it
+impossible to go on the river, they would be kept to the Rectory; and
+the few hours of her company he would have must at least be free. He
+would talk to Margaret about it, so that she might use her influence to
+procure this favour. Then he would write and tell his father. All would
+be easy; Ladingford had inspired him. He beheld the visit in retrospect
+more and more clearly as an exhortation to endure against whatever the
+world should offer him to betray his ambition. Yet was Pauline the
+world? No, certainly Pauline had no kinship with the world, and
+therefore he was the more straightly bound to disregard the voice of
+material prosperity. She had joked about herself as a Mrs. Lambert of
+the future; but behind the lightness of her jest had stood confidence in
+himself and in his fame. Should he imprison that spirit of mirth and
+fire in the husk of a schoolmaster's wife?
+
+The second week passed: the time at Ladingford was over, and early in
+the morning they must start for the journey of thirty miles down to
+Oxford. The dapple-grey horse that would tow the barge was already
+arrived and now stood munching the long grass in the shade of the
+bridge: the swallows were high in the golden air of the afternoon: the
+long-purples on the banks of the young river seemed to await
+reproachfully the disturbance of their tranquillity. To-morrow came: the
+dapple-grey horse was harnessed to the rope: and then slowly, slowly
+the Naiad glided forward, leaving astern the grey bridge, the
+long-purples on the bank and the swallows high in the silver air of the
+morning. There was not yet any poignancy of parting; for the spire of
+Ladingford church remained so long in sight that scarcely did they
+notice the slow recession; and often, when they thought it was gone, the
+winding river would show it to them again; and in the end, when really
+it seemed to have vanished, by standing on the poop they could still
+make out where now it pierced thinly the huge sky. Moreover the
+contentment of that imperceptible evanescence and of their dreaming
+progress down the young Thames was plenary, lulling all regrets for a
+peace that seemed not yet truly to be lost. The hay in the meadows along
+the banks was mostly carried, and the cattle were magically fused with
+the July sunlight, curiously dematerialized like the creatures of a
+mirage. If a human voice was audible, it was audible deep in the green
+distance and belonged to the landscape as gently as the murmurous water
+scalloping the bows. Sometimes indeed they would pass late mowers who
+leaned upon their scythes and waved good fortune to the journey, but
+mostly it was all an emptiness of air and grass.
+
+"If only this young Thames flowed on for ever," said Guy.
+
+He and Pauline were leaning over the rail of the barge, and Guy felt a
+sudden impulse to snatch at the bank rich in that moment with yellow
+loosestrife, and by his action arrest for ever the progress of the
+barge, so that for ever they would stay like the lovers on a Grecian
+urn.
+
+"And really," Guy went on, as already the banks of yellow loosestrife
+were become banks of long-purples, "there is no reason why for us in a
+way this river should not flow on for ever. Dear, everything had seemed
+so perishable before I found you. Pauline, you don't think I ought to
+surrender my intention, do you? I mean, you don't think I ought to go
+away from Plashers Mead?"
+
+Guy went on to tell her about the decision he had taken on the day the
+visit to Ladingford was arranged.
+
+"But it would have been dreadful to miss this time," Pauline declared.
+
+"Oh, I felt it would be impossible," he agreed. "But even if our
+marriage is postponed for another year, you do think I ought to stick it
+out here, don't you? And really, you know, few lovers can have such
+wonderful hours as the hours we do have."
+
+Easily she reassured him with her confidence in the rightness of his
+decision: easily she assuaged the ache of any lingering doubt with the
+proclamation of that inevitable triumph in the end.
+
+"But we must be engaged openly," said Guy. "You know, I shall be
+twenty-three next month. Do you think we can be engaged properly in
+August?"
+
+"Mother promised in Spring," said Pauline. "Why don't you talk to her
+about it? Why don't you talk to her about it now? She loves you to talk
+to her."
+
+He looked round to where Mrs. Grey was sitting in a deck-chair;
+evidently by the rhythmic motion of her fingers she was restating to
+herself a tune which had formerly pleased her, as the barge glided on
+past a scene that changed perceptibly only in details of flowers and
+trees, while the great sky and the green hollow land and the blue
+distances rested immutable. Guy came and sat beside her.
+
+"I've never enjoyed a fortnight so much in my life," he said.
+
+She smiled at him, but did not speak, for whatever quartet she was
+restating had to be finished first. Soon the last noiseless bars played
+themselves and she turned round to his conversation.
+
+"Mrs. Grey, do you think that Pauline and I can be engaged openly next
+month? It won't mean, if we are, that I shall be worrying to see her
+more often. In fact I'm sure I shall worry less. But I want to tell my
+father, so that when he comes here he'll be able to see Pauline. He's a
+conventional sort of man, and I don't think he'd grasp an engagement
+such as ours is at present. Besides, I want to talk to the Rector,
+because I feel that now he regards the whole thing as a childish game.
+So can it be formal next month?"
+
+Mrs. Grey sat back, so silent that Guy wondered if she had listened to a
+word he had been saying. He paused for a moment, and then as she did not
+reply, he went on:
+
+"I also want to say how sorry I am that I asked Pauline to come into
+Plashers Mead to say good-night to me last month. I didn't realize,
+until she told me you were angry about it, what a foolish thing I'd
+done. I don't want you to think that, if we are formally engaged, I
+shall be doing stupid things like that all the time. Really, Mrs. Grey,
+I would always be very thoughtful."
+
+"Oh, yes," she answered in her nervous way. "Oh, yes. I understood it to
+have been a kind of carelessness. But I had to speak to Pauline about
+it, because she is so very impulsive. It's the sort of thing I might
+have done myself when I was a girl. At least of course I shouldn't
+because the Rector ... yes ... charming ... charming ... yes.... I
+really think you might be engaged next month. It's your birthday next
+month, isn't it?"
+
+"Thank you more than I can thank you," said Guy.
+
+Mrs. Grey waved to Pauline, who drew close.
+
+"Pauline darling, I've thought of such a nice birthday present for Guy
+... yes ... charming, charming birthday present ... yes ... for you two
+to be engaged."
+
+Pauline threw her arms round her mother's neck; and Guy in his happiness
+noticed at that moment how Margaret was sitting by herself on the poop
+in the stern. He was wrenched by a sudden compunction, and asked Pauline
+if he should not go and tell Margaret.
+
+"Charming of Guy ... yes ... charming," Mrs. Grey enthusiastically
+exclaimed. "Now I call that really charming, and Pauline stays with me."
+
+Guy went up the companion and asked Margaret if she were particularly
+anxious to be alone. She seemed to pull herself from a day-dream, as she
+turned to assure him she did not at all particularly want to be alone.
+Guy announced his good news, and Margaret offered him her slim hand with
+a kind of pathetic grace that moved him very much.
+
+"I think you deserve it," she said. "For you've both been so sweet to me
+all this fortnight. I expect you think I don't notice, but I do ...
+always."
+
+"Margaret," said Guy. "If this summer Pauline and I have seemed to run
+away from people...."
+
+"Oh, but you have," Margaret interrupted. "I don't think I should find
+excuses, if I were you, for perhaps it's natural."
+
+"I've fancied very often," he said, "that you've thought we were
+behaving selfishly."
+
+"I think all lovers are selfish," she answered. "Only in your case you
+began in such an idyllic way that I thought you were going to be a
+wonderful exception. Guy, I do most dreadfully want you not to spoil in
+any way the perfectly beautiful thing that Pauline and you in love is.
+You won't, will you?"
+
+"Have I yet?" asked Guy in rather a dismayed voice.
+
+"Do you want me to be frank? Yes, of course you do, and anyway I must be
+frank," said Margaret. "Well, sometimes you have--I don't mean in
+wanting always to be alone or in asking her in to Plashers Mead to say
+good-night. No, I don't mean in those ways so much. Of course they make
+me feel a little sad, but smaller things than that make me more uneasy."
+
+"You mean," said Guy as she paused, "my staying on here and apparently
+doing nothing? But, Margaret, really I can't leave Pauline to be a
+schoolmaster, and surely you of all people can understand that?"
+
+"Oh, no, I wasn't thinking of that," said Margaret. "I think in fact
+you're right to stay here and keep at what you're trying to do. If it
+was ever worth doing, it must be doubly worth doing now. Oh, no, the
+only criticism I shall make is of something so small that you'll wonder
+how I can think it even worth mentioning. Guy, you know the photograph
+of Pauline which Mother used to have and which she gave you?"
+
+Guy nodded.
+
+"Well, I happened to see it on the table by your bunk, and I wonder why
+you've taken it out of its simple little wooden frame and put it in a
+silver one?"
+
+Guy was taken aback, and when he asked himself why he had done this, he
+could not find a reason. Now that Margaret had spoken of it, the
+consciousness of the exchange flooded him with shame as for an
+unforgivable piece of vandalism. Why indeed had he bought that silver
+frame and put the old wooden frame away, and where was the old wooden
+frame? In one of the drawers in his desk, he thought; resolving this
+very night to restore it to the photograph and fling the usurper into
+the river.
+
+"I can't think why I did," he stammered to Margaret.
+
+"You've no idea how much this has worried me," she said. "I never had
+any doubts about your appreciation of Pauline."
+
+"And now you have," said Guy, biting his lip with mortification.
+
+The landscape fading from the stern of the barge oppressed him with the
+sadness of irreparable acts that are committed heedlessly, but after
+which nothing is ever quite the same. He wished he could tear to pieces
+that silver frame.
+
+"No, I won't have any doubts," said Margaret, offering him her hand
+again and smiling. "You've taken my criticism so sweetly that the change
+can't symbolize so much as I feared."
+
+It was very well to be forgiven like this, Guy thought, but the memory
+of his blunder was still hot upon his cheek and he felt a deep
+humiliation at the treachery of his taste. He had meant, when he came
+here to talk to Margaret, to ask her about herself and Richard, to
+display a captivating sympathy and restore to their pristine affection
+her relations with him, which latterly had seemed to diverge somewhat
+from one another. Now haunted by that silver frame, which with every
+moment of thought appeared more and more insistently the vile
+stationer's gewgaw that it was, Guy did not dare to approach Margaret in
+the security of an old intimacy.
+
+It was she, however, with her grace who healed the wound.
+
+"You're not hurt with me for speaking about that little thing?" she
+asked. "You see, you are in a way my brother."
+
+"Margaret, you are a dear!"
+
+And then recurred to him as if from Ladingford Manor the lines of
+Christina Rossetti, which he half whispered to her:
+
+    _For there is no friend like a sister_
+    _In calm or stormy weather;_
+    _To cheer one if one goes astray,_
+    _To lift one if one totters down,_
+    _To strengthen whilst one stands._
+
+They had the sharper emotion for Guy because he had neither brothers nor
+sisters of his own; and that this lovely girl beside him on this
+dreaming barge should be his sister gave to the landscape one more
+incommunicable beauty.
+
+And so all day they glided down the young Thames; and when Guy had sat
+long enough with Margaret in the stern, he sat with Pauline at the prow;
+and about twilight they reached Oxford, whence they came to Shipcot by
+train and drove through five miles of moonlight back to Wychford.
+
+
+
+
+_August_
+
+
+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 shan'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 me."
+
+Yet, though she resented them at the time, Margaret 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 £507,106 14s. 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 surprize 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--£280 a year."
+
+"And Guy has some money--£150 or £115 or it may be only £50."
+
+"Let us call it a hundred pounds," said Miss Verney. "For it would be
+more prudent not to exaggerate. £380 a year. And I've no doubt the
+Rector on his side would be able to manage twenty pounds. £400 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 spelt 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 spelt with an E, I daresay 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 cornfields, 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 cornfields 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 grey. 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 learnt 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 anyone, 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 surprized 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 colour 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 toward 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 armchair 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 surprize 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 mouldering
+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 candlelight 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.
+
+
+
+
+ANOTHER AUTUMN
+
+
+
+
+_September_
+
+
+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
+spilt 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 humoured 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 pretences: 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 favourable 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 behaviour of a
+     thoughtless and wilful young man. I was most anxious, as I clearly
+     showed (i) by my gift of £150 (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 favour 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 £150, 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 savour 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? £4 16s. and
+there was a blank counter-foil which Guy vaguely thought represented a
+cheque for £2. 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. £2 16s. 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 wobbled 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 revelling, 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 handshake 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 toward 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 shan'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 prevision 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 humour 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.
+Surprizingly, 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 defence 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 spoilt by that wet May, but there's not such a
+bad crop considering. I like this salmon-coloured 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? Hulloa, 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
+thoughts 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 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 £150. 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 owe 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 formulae 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 favourable or unfavourable did not matter, his suspense was
+sharp and the inexpression of his father's demeanour, 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 mother's 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 toward 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 learnt 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 enquiry.
+
+"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 liked 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 £150 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 commonsense 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-bye 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 favourite."
+
+"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
+behaviour, 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 deadlock.
+
+"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 toward 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.
+
+
+
+
+_October_
+
+
+"MY dears, he frightened me to death," Pauline declared to her family
+when Mr. Hazlewood had left the Rectory. "Only I expect, you know, that
+really he's rather sweet."
+
+"I don't think he approved of us very much," said Margaret.
+
+"I didn't approve of him very much," said Monica.
+
+"And where was Francis?" asked Mrs. Grey.
+
+"Francis was a naughty boy," said Pauline.
+
+Since they were sitting in the nursery, her mother allowed the Christian
+name to pass without reproof.
+
+"He was so exactly like Guy," said Margaret.
+
+"Like Guy?" Pauline echoed incredulously.
+
+"Yes, of course, didn't you notice that?" Margaret laughed.
+
+"You're quite right, Margaret," said Mrs. Grey. "How clever of you to
+see. Now of course I realize how much alike they were ... how clever you
+are!"
+
+"Without Pauline," Margaret went on, "Guy might easily become his father
+all over again."
+
+"But, my dears," said Pauline, "that would be terrible. I remember how
+frightened I was of Guy the first day he came to the Rectory, and if he
+grows more like his father, I don't think I shall ever be anything else
+but frightened of him, even if we live for ever. For, though I'm sure
+he's really very sweet, I don't believe one would ever get quite used to
+Mr. Hazlewood."
+
+Yet when Pauline was alone and had an opportunity to look back upon the
+visit, its effect was rather encouraging than otherwise. For one thing
+it curiously made Guy more actual, because until the personality of his
+father projected itself upon the scene of their love he had always
+possessed for Pauline a kind of romantic unreality. In the Spring days
+and Summer days which had seemed to dedicate themselves to the service
+of intimacy, Guy had talked a great deal of his life before they met,
+but the more he had told her, the more was she in the state of being
+unable to realize that the central figure of these old tales was not a
+dream. When he was with her, she was often in a daze of wonder at the
+credibility of being loved like this; and there was never an occasion of
+seeing him even after the briefest absence that did not hold in the
+heart of its pleasure a surprize at his return. The appearance of Mr.
+Hazlewood was a phenomenon that gave the pledge of prosaic authority to
+her love, like a statement in print that however absurd or uncomfortable
+has a value so far beyond mere talk. She had often been made rather
+miserable by Guy's tales of the ladies he had loved with airy
+heedlessness, but these heroines had all faded out in the unreality of
+his life apart from her, and they took their place with days of
+adventure described in Macedonia or with the old diversions of Oxford.
+The visit of Mr. Hazlewood with the chilly disapproval it had shed was
+more authentic than, for instance, the idea of Guy's dark-eyed mother,
+who had seemed in his narrations almost to threaten Pauline with her
+son's fairy ancestry, as if from the grave she might at any moment
+summon him away. Mr. Hazlewood had carried with him a wonderful
+assurance of ordinariness. The merely external resemblance between him
+and his son proved that Guy could grow old; and the sense of his
+opposition was a trifling discomfort in comparison with the assurance he
+offered of an imaginable future. She remembered that her first idea of
+Guy had been that of someone dry and cynical; and no doubt this first
+impression of his father was equally wrong. She who had been so shy and
+speechless was no doubt much to blame, and the family had done nothing
+to help out the situation. It had been unkind of her father to hide
+himself, since to Mr. Hazlewood, who could not have understood that it
+was the sort of thing her father would be sure to do, such behaviour
+must have presented itself very oddly.
+
+The Rector on Pauline's remonstrating with him was not at all penitent.
+
+"When your marriage, my dear, comes on the horizon--I don't mind how
+faint a horizon--of the probable, then it will be time to discuss
+matters in the practical way I suppose Mr. Hazlewood would like them to
+be discussed. Moreover in any case I forgot that the worthy gentleman
+was coming."
+
+Pauline was anxious to make excuses for the Rector to Guy, but Guy when
+he came round next day was only apologetic for his own father's
+behaviour; and he and she came to a conclusion in the end that parents
+must be forgiven on account of their age.
+
+"At the same time," Guy added, "I blame my father for his conventional
+outlook. He doesn't seem able to realize the extraordinary help that you
+are to my work. In fact he doesn't realize that my work _is_ work. He's
+been teaching for so many years that now he can no longer learn
+anything. Your father's behaviour is reasonable. He doesn't take us
+quite seriously, but he leaves the situation to our disentanglement.
+Well, we shall convince him that nothing in the world is so simple as a
+love like ours; but the worst of my father is that even if he were
+convinced he would be more annoying than ever."
+
+"You must make allowances, Guy. For one thing how few people, even when
+they're young, understand about love. Besides, he's anxious about your
+career."
+
+"What right has he to be anxious?" Guy burst out. "If I fail, I pay the
+penalty, not he."
+
+"But he would be so hurt if you failed," she urged.
+
+"Pauline, if you can say that, you can imagine that I will fail. Even
+you are beginning to have doubts."
+
+"I haven't any doubts," she whispered. "I know you will be famous. And
+yet I have doubts of another sort. I sometimes wonder if I shall be
+enough when you are famous."
+
+The question she had raised launched Guy upon a sea of eloquence. He
+worried no more about his father, but only protested his dependence upon
+Pauline's love for everything that he would ever have accomplished.
+
+"Yes, but I think I shall seem dull one day," she persisted with a shake
+of the head.
+
+"No, no. How could you seem dull to me?"
+
+"But I'm not clever...."
+
+"Avoid that wretched word," he cried. "It can only be applied to
+thieves, politicians and lawyers. I have told you a thousand times what
+you are to me, and I will not tell you again because I don't want to be
+an egotist. I don't want to represent you to myself as a creature that
+exists _for_ me. You are a being to whom I aspire. If we live for ever I
+shall have still to aspire to you and never be nearer than the hope of
+deserving you."
+
+"But your poetry, Guy, are you sure I appreciate it? Are you sure I'm
+not just a silly little thing lost in admiration of whatever you do?"
+
+Guy brushed her doubts aside.
+
+"Poetry is life trembling on the edge of human expression," he declared.
+"You are my life, and my poor verse faints in its powerlessness to say
+so. I always must be alone to blame if the treasure that you are is not
+proved to the world."
+
+How was she to convince him of her unworthiness, how was she to persuade
+this lover of hers that she was too simple a creature for his splendid
+enthronement? Suddenly one day he would see her in all her dulness and
+ordinariness, and turning from her in disillusion, he would hold her
+culpable for anything in his work that might seem to have betrayed his
+ambition.
+
+"Guy," she called into the future. "You will always love me?"
+
+"Will there ever be another Pauline?"
+
+"Oh, there might be so easily."
+
+"Never! Never! Every hour, every moment cries 'never!'"
+
+In her heart she told herself that at least none but she could ever love
+him so well; and in the strange confidence his father's visit had given
+to her she told him in her turn how every hour and every moment made her
+more dependent upon his love.
+
+"I want nothing but you, nothing, nothing. I've given up everything for
+you."
+
+"What have you given up?" he demanded at once, jealously and
+triumphantly regarding her.
+
+"Oh, nothing really; but all the foolish little interests. Nothing, my
+dearest; only pigeons and music and working woollen birds and visiting
+poor people. Such foolish little things ... and yet things that were
+once upon a time frightfully important."
+
+"You mustn't give up your music and your pigeons."
+
+They both laughed at the absurd conjunction.
+
+"How can I play when I'm thinking of you always, every second? Why, when
+I do anything but think of you, every object and every word floats away
+as it does when I'm tired and trying to keep awake in a big room."
+
+"You can play to me," he argued, "even when I'm not there."
+
+"Guy darling, I do, I do; but you've no idea how hopelessly playing to
+an absent lover destroys the time."
+
+The memory of Mr. Hazlewood's visit was soon lost in the celebration of
+their anniversary month. As they had promised themselves in Summer, they
+went on moonlit expeditions to gather mushrooms; and at the waning of
+the moon they rose early on many milkwhite dawns instead, when the
+mushrooms at such an hour were veritably the spoil of dew, gleaming in
+their baskets under veils of gossamer. On these serene mornings the
+sound of autumnal birdsong came to them out of misted trees, so that
+they used to talk of the woods in the next Springtime, themselves moving
+about the wan vapours with that very air of people who scarcely live in
+the present. There was in this plaintive music of robins and thrushes a
+regret for the days of Summer spent together that were now passed away,
+and yet a more robust melody might have affronted the wistful air of
+these milkwhite dawns. The frail notes of the birds hinted at silence
+beyond, and through the opalescent and transuming landscape Guy and
+Pauline floated in fancy once more down the young Thames from
+Ladingford. The sad stillness of the year's surrender to decline
+admonished them to garner these hours, making a ghost even of the sun as
+if to warn them of the fleeting world, the covetous and furtive world.
+They wonderfully enjoyed these hours, but Pauline when at breakfast the
+mushrooms came fizzling to the table could never believe that she had
+been with Guy, and she used often to be discontented on being reminded
+by her mother of how much of the day she had already spent in his
+company. Looking back at these immaterial mornings of autumnal mist, she
+saw them upon the confines of sleep: silvery spaces they seemed that
+were not robbed from any familiar time.
+
+There was during all this month a certain amount of congratulation which
+had to be endured, and Margaret was angry one day because Mr. and Mrs.
+Ford came over from Little Fairfield and alluded at tea to their hope of
+Richard and her soon being engaged. Pauline was naturally subject to
+the inquisitiveness of everybody, but as she could not without being
+absent-minded talk about anything except Guy, she found the general
+curiosity not very troublesome. Guy, however, resented this atmosphere
+of enquiry and was always more and more anxious to carry her out of
+reach of Wychford gossip.
+
+One day in mid-October they had set out together with the intention of
+taking a long walk to the open upland country on the other side of the
+town, when, as they were going up High Street, they saw two of the local
+chatterboxes.
+
+"I will not stop and talk to Mrs. Brydone and Mrs. Willsher," Guy
+grumbled. "Let's cut up Abbey Lane."
+
+They turned aside and were making their way to the path that led under
+the Abbey wall to the high road, when they saw Dr. Brydone and his son
+coming from that direction.
+
+"Really, there's a conspiracy of Brydones to waylay us this afternoon,"
+Guy exclaimed petulantly. "We shall have to go through the Abbey
+grounds."
+
+Pauline had passed the wicket, which he had impulsively flung open,
+before she realized the violation of one of her agelong rules.
+
+"It's really rather jolly in here to-day," said Guy. "I think we're
+duffers not to come more often, you know."
+
+The autumn wind was booming round the plantation, and sweeping up the
+broad path down the hillside with a skelter of leaves that gave a wild
+gaiety to the usually tristful scene.
+
+"Why shouldn't we explore inside?" suggested Guy. "There's something so
+exhilarating about this great West wind. Almost one could fancy it might
+blow away that ghost of a house."
+
+Pauline hesitated: since earliest childhood the Abbey had oppressed her
+with ill omen, and she could not overcome her prejudice in a moment.
+
+"You're not really afraid when you're with me?" he persisted.
+
+Pauline surrendered, and they went across the etiolated lawn toward the
+entrance. The wind was roaring through every crevice, and the ivy was
+scratching restlessly at the panes or shivering where through the gaps
+it had crept in with furry tendrils.
+
+"It's rather fun to be walking up this staircase as if this were our own
+house," said Guy.
+
+Pauline had an impulse to go back, and she made a quick step to descend.
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"Guy, I think I feel afraid."
+
+"Afraid of what?"
+
+"Oh, not of anything. Just afraid."
+
+"Come, foolish one," he whispered gently.
+
+And she, though it was against her will, followed him up the echoing
+empty stairs.
+
+They went into every room, and Guy declared how they with their love
+were restoring to each of them the life it had known in the past. Here
+was a pleasant fancy, and Pauline hoped it might be true. In the thought
+that their presence was in a way the bestowal of charity on these
+maltreated halls she lost much of her alarm and began to enjoy the
+solitude spent with Guy. Whether they looked out at the wilderness that
+once was a garden or at the rank lawn in front, the thunderous wind
+surging round the house brought them closer together in the
+consciousness of their own shelter and their own peace in this deserted
+habitation.
+
+"Now, confess," said Guy. "Haven't we been rather stupid to neglect such
+a refuge?"
+
+"But, Guy, we haven't needed a refuge very often," objected Pauline, who
+for all that she was losing some of her dread of the Abbey was by no
+means inclined to set up a precedent for going there too often.
+
+"Not yet," he admitted. "But with winter coming on and the wet days that
+will either keep us indoors or else prevent us from doing anything but
+walk perpetually along splashy roads, we shan't be sorry to have a place
+like this to which we can retreat in comparative comfort."
+
+"Oh, Guy," Pauline asked anxiously. "I suppose we ought to come here?"
+
+"Why on earth not?"
+
+"Don't be angry. But the idea just flashed through my mind that perhaps
+Mother wouldn't like us to come here very often."
+
+He sighed deeply.
+
+"Really, sometimes I wonder what is the good of being engaged. Are we
+for ever to be hemmed in by the conventions of a place like Wychford?"
+
+"Oh, but I expect Mother wouldn't mind really," said Pauline, reassuring
+herself and him. "I'm always liable to these fits of doubt. Sometimes I
+feel quite weighed down by the responsibility of being grown up."
+
+She laughed at herself, and the laughter ringing through the hollow
+house seemed to return and mock her with a mirthless echo.
+
+"Oh, Guy," she exclaimed. "Oh, Guy, I wish I hadn't laughed then. Did
+you hear how strangely it seemed as if the house laughed back at me?"
+
+She had gripped his arm, and Guy startled by her gesture exclaimed
+rather irritably that she ought to control her nerves.
+
+"Well, don't let's stay in this room. I don't like the green light that
+the ivy is giving your face."
+
+"What next?" he grumbled. "Well, let's go out on the balcony."
+
+They went half way downstairs to the door that opened on a large
+balustraded terrace with steps leading from either end into the ruined
+garden. The wind beat against them with such force here that very soon
+they went back into the house, and Guy found a small room looking out on
+the terrace, in which he persuaded Pauline to come and sit for a while.
+All the other rooms in the house had been so dreadfully decayed, so much
+battered by every humiliation time could inflict upon them that this
+small parlour was in contrast positively habitable. It gave the
+impression of being perhaps the last place to which the long vanished
+owners had desperately held. There was a rusty hob-grate and in the
+window a deep wooden seat; while the walls were still painted with
+courtly scenes, and the inlaid wooden floor gave a decency which
+everywhere else had been destroyed by the mouldering boards.
+
+"I say, it would be fun to light a fire some time," said Guy. "This is
+just the room for us."
+
+"It's rather a frightening room," said Pauline doubtfully.
+
+"Dearest, you insist on being frightened by everything this afternoon,"
+he answered.
+
+"No, but this room is frightening, Guy," she persisted. "This seems so
+near to being lived in by dead people."
+
+"And what can dead people do to you and me?" he asked with that sidelong
+mocking smile which she half disliked, half loved.
+
+Pauline looked back over her shoulder once: then she came across to
+where he invited her to sit in the window-bay.
+
+"I ought to have brought my diamond pencil," he said. "This is such a
+window for mottoes. Why, I declare! Somebody has scrawled one. Look,
+Pauline. Pauline, look! _1770. R.G. P.F._ inside a heart. Oh, what a
+pity it wasn't _P.G._ for Pauline Grey. Still the _G_ can stand for Guy.
+Oh, really, I think it's an extraordinary coincidence! _P.F.?_ We can
+find out which of the Fentons that was. We'll look up in the history of
+the family. Darling, I am so glad we came to this little room. Think of
+those lovers who sat here once like us. Pauline, it makes me cherish,
+you so."
+
+She sat upon his knee, because the window seat was dusty and because in
+this place of fled lovers she wanted to be held closely to his heart.
+
+The wind boomed and moaned, and the sun breaking through the clouds lit
+up the walls with a wild yellow light.
+
+Suddenly Pauline drew away from his arms.
+
+"Shadows went by the window," she cried. "Guy, I feel afraid. I feel
+afraid. There's a footstep."
+
+She was lily-white, whose cheeks had but now been burning so fiercely.
+
+"Nonsense," he replied half-roughly. "It was that burst of sunshine."
+
+"Guy, there were shadows. Hark!"
+
+She nearly screamed, because footsteps were going down the stairs of the
+empty house.
+
+"It must have been the caretaker," said Guy.
+
+"I saw a white person. Guy, never never let us come here again."
+
+"You don't seriously think you saw a ghost?" he asked.
+
+"Guy, how do I know? Come away, into the air. We should never have come
+here. Oh, this room! I feel as if I should faint."
+
+"I'll see who it was," said Guy springing up.
+
+"No, don't leave me. Wait for me. I'll come with you."
+
+They hurried down the stairs and when they reached the pallid lawn they
+saw Margaret and Monica in their white coats disappearing among the yew
+trees by the entrance.
+
+"There are your ghosts," said Guy laughing.
+
+Yet, though Guy scoffed at her fears, Pauline was not sure that she
+would not have preferred a ghost to that disquieting passage of her
+sisters without hail or comment. Yet perhaps after all they had not
+seen her and Guy in that sinister small parlour.
+
+"Shall we catch them up?" he asked.
+
+And Pauline with a breath of dismay was conscious of an inclination to
+pretend that they had not been here this afternoon. She discovered
+herself, as it were, proposing to Guy that they should not overtake
+Monica and Margaret. A secretiveness she had never known before had
+seized her soul, and she hoped that their presence in the Abbey was
+unknown. Guy divined at once that she did not want to overtake her
+sisters, and he kept her under the trees, where they watched each
+assault of the wind tearing at the little foliage that still remained.
+He guided her tenderly away from the sight of the house; and they walked
+along the broad path down through the shrubbery, meeting a rout of brown
+and red and yellow leaves that swept by them. She clung to Guy's arm as
+if this urgent and tumultuous wind had the power to sweep her too into
+the confusion: such an affraying journey was life beginning to seem.
+This ghastly elation of the October weather would not allow her breath
+to examine the perplexity in which she had involved herself. She felt
+that if the wind blew any louder, she would have to scream out in
+defiance of its violence or else surrender miserably and be whirled into
+oblivion. A brown oakleaf had escaped from the perishable host and was
+palpitating in a fold of her sleeve like a hunted creature; but when
+Pauline would have rescued it at the same moment a gust came roaring up
+the walk under the hissing trees, and the driven leaf was torn from its
+refuge and flung high into the air to join the myriads in their giddy
+riot of death.
+
+"Come away from here," she cried to Guy. "Come away or I shall go mad in
+this wind."
+
+He looked at her with a sort of judicial demeanour, as if he were in
+doubt whether he ought not to reprove such excitement.
+
+"It was really beginning to blow quite fiercely," he said when they had
+reached the comparative stillness of Abbey Lane.
+
+Behind them Pauline still heard with terror and hatred the moaning of
+the trees, and she hurried away from the sound.
+
+"Never, never will I go there again. Why did you ask me to go there? I
+would sooner have met a thousand Brydones than have been in that house."
+
+"Pauline," he protested. "You really do sometimes encourage yourself to
+be overwrought."
+
+"Guy, don't lecture me," she said, turning upon him fiercely.
+
+"Well, don't let the whole of Wychford see that you're in a temper," he
+retorted. "People haven't yet got over the idea of us two as a natural
+curiosity of the neighbourhood. I don't want ... and I don't suppose
+you're very anxious for these yokels to discuss our quarrels in the
+post-office to-night."
+
+"I don't mind what anybody does," said Pauline desperately. "I only want
+to be out of this wind--this wind."
+
+She was rather glad that Guy, perhaps to punish her for the loss of
+control, said he must go and work instead of coming back to tea at the
+Rectory. It strangely gave her the ability to smile at him and be in
+their parting herself again, whereas had he come back with her she knew
+that she would still have felt irritated. Her smile may have abashed his
+ill-humour, for he seemed inclined to change his mind about the need for
+work; but she would not let him and hurried towards home at the back of
+the west wind. Should she ask her sisters if they had seen her in the
+Abbey? It would be better to wait until they said something first. It
+would really be best to say nothing about this afternoon. Tea was in the
+nursery that day, for the Rector was holding some sort of colloquy in
+the drawing-room which he always used for parochial business, because
+he dreaded having his seeds scattered by the awkward fingers of the
+flock.
+
+Tea had not come in yet, and Pauline took her familiar seat in the
+window, glad to be out of the wind but pondering a little mournfully the
+lawn mottled with leaves, and the lily-pond that was being seamed and
+crinkled by every gust that skated across the surface. When the others
+arrived, Pauline knew that she turned round to greet them defiantly,
+although she would have given much not to feel excuseful like this.
+
+"You didn't see Monica and me?" Margaret asked.
+
+"Only after you'd gone too far for us to call to you," Pauline answered,
+nervously assuring herself that Margaret had not tried to 'catch her
+out,' as Janet would have said.
+
+"We had taken the short cut through the Abbey," Monica explained.
+
+Pauline felt that what Monica meant to say had been: 'we did not spy
+upon you deliberately.' And that she should have had this instinct of
+putting her sisters in the wrong prepared her for something unpleasant,
+that and the fuss her mother was making over the tea-tray. Pauline was
+more than ever grateful to the impulse which had not allowed Guy to
+change his mind and come back with her. As soon as tea was over,
+Margaret and Monica went away to practise a duet; and in the manner of
+their going from the room Pauline felt the louring of the atmosphere.
+
+Her mother began at once:
+
+"Pauline, I'm surprized at your going into the Abbey with Guy."
+
+"Well, it was really an accident. I mean it was because we wanted not to
+meet any of the Brydones, who were rushing at us from every side."
+
+Pauline tried to laugh, but her mother looked down at the milk jug and
+flushed nearly to crimson in the embarrassment of something she was
+forcing herself to say.
+
+"It's not merely going into the Abbey ... no ... not merely that ... no,
+not merely going into the Abbey ... but to let Guy make love to you like
+that is so vulgar. Pauline, it's the sort of way that servants behave
+when they're in love."
+
+She sprang from the window-seat.
+
+"Mother, what do you mean?"
+
+"Margaret and Monica saw you sitting on Guy's knee. In any case I would
+rather you never did that. In any case ... yes ... but in a place where
+people passing might have seen ... yes, would have seen ... oh, it was
+inexcusable.... I shall have to make much stricter rules...."
+
+"Are you going to speak to Guy about this?" Pauline asked. The house
+seemed to be whirling away like a leaf, such a shattering of her love
+were these words of her mother.
+
+"How can I speak to Guy about it?" Mrs. Grey demanded irritably. "How
+can I, Pauline? It has nearly choked me to speak to you."
+
+"I think Monica and Margaret are almost wicked," Pauline cried in
+flames. "They are trying to destroy everything. They are, they are. No,
+Mother, you shan't defend them. I knew they felt guilty when they went
+out of the room like that. How dare they put horrible thoughts in your
+mind? How dare they? They're cruel to me. And you're cruel to me. I
+don't understand what's happening to everybody. You'll make me hate you
+all, if you speak like that."
+
+She rushed from the nursery and went first to the music-room where
+Margaret was sounding deep notes, hanging over her violoncello, and
+where Monica was playing one of those contained, somewhat frigid
+accompaniments.
+
+"Margaret and Monica," said Pauline standing in the doorway. "You're
+never to dare to speak about me to Mother as you must have spoken this
+afternoon. Because neither of you have any emotion but conceit and
+selfishness, you shall not be jealous of Guy and me. Margaret, you can
+have no heart. I shall write to Richard and tell him you're heartless.
+Don't smile down at your violoncello. You shall not rule me into being
+like yourself. Oh, I'll never play music with either of you again."
+
+Then she left them and in her white room for an hour she listened
+hopelessly to the trolling wind.
+
+
+
+
+_November_
+
+
+Guy was very indignant when he heard from Pauline the sequel of her
+sisters' vigilance. That they should afterward have tried to atone with
+gentleness for what they had made her suffer did not avail with him.
+Monica and Margaret now impressed him with their unworldly beauty in a
+strange way, for they became sinister figures like the Lady Geraldine in
+Christabel, sly malignant sylphs set in ambush to haunt the romantic
+path of his love. He was intensely aware that he ought not to resent
+their interference, but that he ought in fact to acknowledge the justice
+of it and by a stoical endeavour prove himself entitled to the cares of
+this long engagement. Actually Guy was enduring a violent jealousy, and
+illogically he began to declare how the others were jealous of him and
+Pauline. The consciousness that he could not carry her off into
+immediate marriage galled him and he suffered all the pangs of an
+unmerited servitude. He and Pauline became the prisoners of tyrants who
+were urging them to accept the yoke of convention; the more he suffered,
+the more he knew in his heart that he was culpable, and the more
+culpable he recognized himself, the more he chafed against the burden of
+waiting. All the resolutions that with the announcement of their
+betrothal had seemed to sail before a prospering breeze now turned and
+beat up against adverse influences and were every moment in danger of
+being irreparably wrecked.
+
+Naturally coincident with all the stress of a situation, that owing to
+the temperament of the Greys was never relieved by discussion, was a
+complete failure to advance on the private road of his poetical
+ambition. All that he had written was seeming vain and bad: all that he
+was now trying to write deteriorated with every word painfully inscribed
+upon the cheerless empty page. He had conceived a set of eclogues that
+were to mark his contempt for the feverish incompetence of the modern
+school, whose ears had been corrupted by Wagner's filthy din; and all he
+could manage to achieve were seeming the banal inspirations of
+Mendelssohn. Guy was like an alchemist perpetually on the verge of
+discovering the stone that will transmute base metals to gold as he
+tried to find the secret by which such an one as Beethoven could purify
+with art the most violent emotions of humanity, yet always preserve
+their intrinsic value. He craved the secret which even the most obscure
+Elizabethans seemed to have possessed, that unearthly power of harmony
+which could fuse all baseness in a glittering song. Passion had never
+lost itself in arid decoration when they sang; nor yet had it ever
+betrayed itself with that impudently direct appeal these modern lyrists
+made, these shameless Rousseaus of verse. Yet he was as bad as any of
+them, for he was either like them when he tried to write his heart, or
+he expired in the mere sound of words like the degenerate ruck of the
+Caroline heirs to a great tradition. He was almost on the point of
+proclaiming his final failure, and if at that moment he could have
+received from his father the offer to come and teach small boys at Fox
+Hall, he would have gone.
+
+And yet would he have gone? Could he abandon the delight of being with
+Pauline? The nearer he came to confessing his failure, the more he
+longed for her company. He was surely now in the midway of the thorny
+path of love, and whether he progressed or retreated he could not escape
+the spines. Well had he said to himself that night in May: '_La belle
+Dame sans mercy bath thee in thrall_.'
+
+All the fire and fever of his present life on the outskirts of a
+haunted country was for his imagination alone. However timidly his pen
+approached those dreams, they vanished; and whenever his pen betrayed
+him, Guy turned despairingly again to Pauline herself. These days
+without her were every day more unendurable. Once he had been content to
+talk about her to Mrs. Grey and her sisters, to listen to their praise
+of her: now every word they spoke wounded his pride. This madness of
+love could only feed itself in the very dungeons of his mind; and unless
+she were with him it did so horribly gorge itself that, if he had not
+swiftly seen her again, the madness would have broken the bars of its
+prison and ridden him like a hag.
+
+It was when Guy had worked himself to this pitch of desire for the
+remedy of her sweet presence that Pauline was denied to him. He knew he
+must blame himself because, even after the warning of that afternoon in
+the Abbey, whenever they were together he would carry her away into the
+country, whence they would not return sometimes until night had fallen.
+Worse than that, by his now continuous withdrawal from the life of the
+Rectory he must have disquieted her family. He saw that they were
+becoming anxious about Pauline, but for that very reason he could not
+bring himself to mitigate a solitary doubt of theirs. Even to talk about
+her in the lightest way was now become an outrage upon the seclusion of
+their joint life. Such a conversation as that with Margaret about the
+silver photograph frame was now unimaginable. What right had anyone to
+know even what picture of Pauline burned upon his wall in the
+night-time? At first Pauline herself when the memory of the shock her
+mother's words had been to her died out, tried to justify the attitude
+of guardianship. She would explain to Guy how, ever since she could
+remember, her mother and sisters had treated her with this vigilance.
+They had, as she said, always so much adored her that it was natural for
+them to be unable at once to relinquish entirely to someone else the
+complete possession of her. Yet Guy must not be jealous, because she
+told them none of her secrets now: indeed she was distressed at the
+thought of how far outside her confidence they reproachfully esteemed
+themselves. Her love for him had severely shaken the perfect unity of
+their immemorial life together, and he must be generous and understand
+how gradual would have to be their renunciation of her to him. Guy,
+however, would not allow Pauline to have regrets like this. The most
+trivial consideration of her family aroused his jealousy; and when Mrs.
+Grey said she thought it would be better if the old rule of only seeing
+Pauline twice a week came into force again, Guy was determined that
+Pauline should resent the step as bitterly as he resented it. All the
+time he was with her he would be lamenting the briefness of their
+permitted intercourse, and since the weather was now so wet that even
+they could not reasonably claim beneath such streaming skies the right
+to abscond into deserted country, November shed a gloom upon their love.
+
+On the days when Guy did come to the Rectory, no one attempted to rob
+them of their privacy; they were always granted the nursery to
+themselves, and even sometimes they had tea there together, if visitors
+came, so that the privilege of their few hours should not be infringed.
+Nevertheless, the old sense of time and the world at their service was
+lost. The dull November dusk came swiftly on; and out in the passage the
+cuckoo with maddening reiteration proclaimed each fleeting fifteen
+minutes. Often Guy was asked to dinner, but the old pleasure was mostly
+gone, for in the evening he and Pauline were not expected to retire by
+themselves; and there was always an implied reproach for his influence
+when she refused to play her violin. Then there came a dreadful day,
+because some cousins had arrived to stay at the Rectory; for these two
+girls like everyone else had been accustomed to adore Pauline, and so
+were determined to take an extreme interest in her engagement.
+
+"We seem to have a ghastly lure for them," Guy groaned in exasperation,
+when Pauline had managed at last to secure the nursery for themselves.
+
+"Guy, they're only staying a week."
+
+"Well," he protested, "and for me to stay with you a week takes months
+of these miserable little hours we have. Oh, Pauline, I must see more of
+you."
+
+Then back came the adoring cousins, and Guy felt that no torture he
+could imagine was bad enough for them. Their cordiality to him was so
+great that he had to be superficially pleasant; and, as smile after
+smile was wrung from him, by the end of the afternoon he felt sick with
+the agony his politeness had cost.
+
+"Hurry and dress! hurry! hurry!" he begged Pauline, in a whisper when
+the gong sounded. "Let us at least have five minutes alone before dinner
+comes and I must go."
+
+Pauline was scarcely five minutes in coming down again, but Guy counted
+each tick of the clock with desperate heartsickness.
+
+"Oh, my darling, my darling," he said when she was held in the so dearly
+longed for, the so terribly brief embrace. "I cannot bear the torment of
+to-day."
+
+She tried to soothe him; but Guy had reached the depths and this relief
+after such effort was almost too late.
+
+"Pauline, listen," he said quickly. "You must come and say good-night to
+me in the garden. Do you hear? You must. You must. I shan't sleep unless
+you do. You must."
+
+"Guy," she murmured, "I couldn't."
+
+"You must. Promise ... you must. Come down and say good-night to me on
+the lawn. I shall wait there all night. I shall wait...."
+
+The cuckoo burst out to cry seven o'clock.
+
+"You must come. You must come. Promise."
+
+"Perhaps," she whispered faintly. Then she said she could not.
+
+Guy went to the door.
+
+"Remember, I have not kissed you good-night," he proclaimed solemnly.
+"And now I'm going. I shall wait from eleven o'clock, and stay all night
+until you have kissed me."
+
+"Oh, but Guy...."
+
+"To-night," he said. "You promise?"
+
+"Guy, if I dare, if I dare."
+
+There were footsteps in the passage. He fled across the room, kissed her
+momentarily and hurried out, saying good-bye to the cousins, as he
+passed them, with a kind of exultant affection.
+
+Outside, the November night hung humid and oppressive; Guy looking up
+felt rain falling softly yet with gathering intensity, and he lingered a
+few moments in the drive held by the whispering blackness. Behind him,
+the lamplight of the Rectory windows seemed for the moment sad and
+unattainable and gave him the fancy he was drifting away from a friendly
+shore. Then suddenly he marched away along the drive, content; for the
+thought of 'to-night,' which latterly had often brought such a
+presentiment of loneliness, now sounded upon his imagination like the
+rapture of a nightingale.
+
+Plashers Mead had never appeared so desirable as now when it was the
+prelude to such an enterprise as this of consecrating with a last
+embrace the rain and gloom of November. If he had any hesitation about
+the rightness or even, setting probity aside, about the prudence of such
+an action, he justified himself with romantic reasons; and if he was
+driven by conscience to an ultimate defence, he justified himself with
+the exceptional circumstances that gave him a sanction to accept from
+Pauline this sacrifice of her traditions. Impulses to consider what he
+was doing were easily dismissed: indeed before he reached his house
+there was not one left. Inside, the warmth and comfort of Plashers Mead
+were additional incentives to prosecute his resolve; every gleaming
+book, the breathing of the dog upon the mat before the fire, the gentle
+purr of the lamp, all seemed to demand that voluptuous renunciation
+which would later urge him forth again into the night. That it would
+probably be raining was not to prove an obstacle: Pauline would be more
+sure to come if she thought he were standing outside in the rain. It was
+a second Eve of St. Agnes; and Guy went across to his shelf and took
+down Keats. He had come to the knights and ladies praying in their dumb
+oratories, when there was a knock at the front-door, and his mind leapt
+to the thought that Pauline might have sent a note by Birdwood to
+prevent his coming to-night. The knock sounded again, and as Miss Peasey
+was evidently too deeply immersed in The Pilgrim's Progress, her
+vespertine lectionary, to pay heed to visitors at this hour of nine
+o'clock, he must go down and open the door himself.
+
+"Are we disturbing you?"
+
+It was the voice of Brydone, and with Willsher in his wake he came into
+the hall.
+
+"Charlie and I have made several shots to find you in, but of course we
+know you're a busy man nowadays."
+
+"Go on upstairs, will you?" said Guy making a tremendous effort to
+appear hospitable. "I'll dig out the whisky."
+
+He went along and shouted in Miss Peasey's ear what was wanted. She
+looked up as if it were Apollyon himself come to affront her holy
+abstraction.
+
+"I think there's some left from that bottle we got in August.... I shall
+lay it on the mat," she told him.
+
+Guy nodded encouragingly and went upstairs to join his guests.
+
+"Well, I suppose you'll be soon having a missus in charge here," said
+Brydone heartily.
+
+Willsher hummed Bachelor Boys as a contributory echo of the question.
+
+"Oh, no, we're not getting married at once, you know," Guy explained.
+
+"Well, you're quite right," Brydone declared heartily. "After all, being
+close at hand like this, you're not much likely to draw a blank in the
+lottery."
+
+"Marriage is a lottery, isn't it?" said Guy with polite sarcasm.
+
+"Rather," sighed Willsher. "Terrific!"
+
+"I suppose I shall have to be looking round preparatory to getting
+married in two or three years' time," Brydone added. "Well, you see,
+after Christmas I shall be thinking about my finals, and then I'm going
+to come in as the old man's partner. Country people like it best, if a
+doctor's married. No doubt about that, is there, Charlie?"
+
+The solicitor's son agreed it was indubitable.
+
+"Of course if I had the cash to hang on in Harley Street for ten years
+as a specialist, it would be another matter. But I can't, so there it
+is."
+
+Even this fellow had his dreams, Guy thought; even he would make
+acquaintance with thwarted ambitions.
+
+"Been doing anything with a rod lately?" asked Willsher, whose pastime,
+when he could not be standing in action on the river's bank, was always
+to steer a conversation in the direction of anglers' gossip.
+
+"No, not lately," said Guy. "Though I knocked down a lot of apples with
+one last month."
+
+"Ha-ha! that's good," Brydone ejaculated. "That's very good, Hazlewood.
+That's good, isn't it, Charlie?"
+
+"Awfully good," agreed the angler.
+
+Their appreciation seemed perfectly genuine, and Guy was touched by the
+readiness of them to be entertained by his lame wit.
+
+"I mustn't forget to tell the old man that," Brydone chuckled. "He's
+always digging at me over the fish. Done anything with a rod lately? I
+knocked down a lot of apples last month. Your governor will like that,
+Charlie!"
+
+Guy heard the clink of a tray deposited cautiously on the floor of the
+passage outside. He allowed Miss Peasey time to retreat before he opened
+the door, because it was one of the clauses in her charter that she was
+never, as a lady-housekeeper, to be asked to bring a tray into a room
+when anyone but Guy was present. He hoped that after they had drunk, his
+visitors would depart; but alas, the unintended charm of his
+conversation seemed likely to prolong their stay.
+
+"Rabelais," Brydone read slowly as he saw the volumes on the shelves.
+"That's a bit thick, isn't it?"
+
+"In quantity or quality, do you mean?" asked Guy.
+
+"I've heard that's the thickest book ever written," said Brydone.
+
+"Do you read old French easily?" asked Guy.
+
+"Oh, it's in old French, is it?" said Brydone in a disappointed voice.
+"That would biff me."
+
+A silence fell upon the room, a silence that seemed to symbolize the
+'biffing' of the doctor's son by old French. Willsher took the
+opportunity to steer the conversation back to fish, and ten o'clock
+struck in the middle of an argument between him and his friend over the
+merits of two artificial flies. Guy must be on the Rectory lawn by
+eleven o'clock, and he began to be anxious, so animated was the
+discussion, about the departure of these well-meaning intruders. He did
+not want to plunge straight from their company into the glorious
+darkness that would hold Pauline; and he eyed the volume of Keats lying
+face downward on the table, hoping he would be allowed to come back to
+the knights and ladies praying in their dumb oratories, while he
+thought with a thrill of the moment when he should be able to read:
+
+    _And they are gone; ay, ages long ago_
+    _These lovers fled away into the storm._
+
+"If you can't get a chub any other way, you can sometimes get him with a
+bit of bacon," Willsher was saying. "And I know a fellow who caught one
+of those woppers under Marston's Mill with a cherry. Fact, I assure
+you."
+
+"I know a man at Oldbridge, who caught a four pounder with a
+bumble-bee."
+
+"I caught a six pounder at Oxford with a mouse's head myself," Guy
+declared.
+
+The friends looked at him in the admiration and envy with which anglers
+welcome a pleasant companionable sort of a lie. It was a bad move, for
+it seemed as if by that lie he had drawn closer the bonds of sympathy
+between himself and his guests. They visibly warmed to his company, for
+Brydone at once invited himself to another 'tot' and was obviously
+settling down to a competitive talk about big fish; while Willsher's
+first shyness turned to familiarity, so completely indeed that he asked
+if Guy would mind his moving the furniture in order to try to explain to
+that fathead Brydone the exact promontory of the Greenrush where he had
+caught thirty trout in an hour when the mayfly was up two years ago.
+
+Half-past-ten struck from the church tower, and Guy became desperate.
+There was nothing he hated so much as asking people to go, which was one
+reason why he always discouraged them at the beginning; but it really
+seemed as if he must bring himself to the point of asking Brydone and
+Willsher to leave him to his work. He decided to allow them until a
+quarter-to-eleven. The minutes dragged along, and when the quarter
+sounded Guy said he was sorry but that he was very much afraid he would
+have to work now.
+
+"Right O," said Brydone. "We'll tootle off." But it took ten minutes to
+get them out of the house, and when at last they disappeared into the
+mazy garden Guy was in a fume of anxiety about his tryst. He could not
+now go round by Rectory Lane, as he had intended at first. No doubt
+Brydone and Willsher would stay talking half-an-hour on the bridge, for
+the rain had stopped and they had given the impression of having the
+night before them. In fact Brydone had once definitely announced that
+the night was still young. Yet in a way the fact of their nearness and
+of his having to avoid them added a zest to the adventure.
+
+How dark it was and how heavily the trees dripped in the orchard. Guy
+pulled the canoe from the shed and dragged it squeaking over the wet
+grass: not even he in the exaltation of the moment was going to swim the
+Hellespont.
+
+When he was in the canoe and driving it with silent strokes along the
+straight black stream; when the lantern was put out and the darkness was
+at first so thick that like the water it seemed to resist the sweep of
+his paddle, Guy could no longer imagine that Pauline would venture out.
+He became oppressed by the impenetrable and humid air, and he began to
+long for rain to fall as if it would reassure him that nature in such an
+annihilation of form was still alive. Now he had swung past the
+overhanging willows of the churchyard; his eyes grown accustomed to the
+darkness discovered against a vague sky the vague bulk of the church,
+and in a minute or two he could be sure that he was come to the Rectory
+paddock. He was wet to the knees and his feet, sagging in the grass,
+seemed to make a most prodigious noise with their gurgling.
+
+Guy was too early when he crept over the lawn, for there were still
+lights in all the upper windows, and he withdrew to the plantation,
+where he waited in rapt patience while the branches dripped and
+pattered, dripped and pattered ceaselessly. One by one the lights had
+faded out, but still he must not signal to Pauline. How should he after
+all make known to her his presence on that dark lawn? Scarcely would she
+perceive from her window his shadowy form. He must not even whisper; he
+must not strike a match. Suddenly a light crossed his vision and he
+started violently before he realized that it was only a glow-worm moving
+with laborious progress along the damp edge of the lawn. Black indeed
+was the hour when a glow-worm belated on this drear night of the year's
+decline could so alarm him. For a while he watched the creeping
+phosphorescence and wondered at it in kindly fellowship, thinking how
+like it was to a human lover, so small and solitary in this gigantic
+gloom. Then he began to pick it up and, as it moved across his hand and
+gave it with the wan fire a ghostly semblance, he resolved to signal
+with this lamp to Pauline.
+
+Midnight crashed its tale from the belfry, and nowhere in the long house
+was there any light. There was nothing now in the world but himself and
+this glow-worm wandering across his hand. He moved nearer to the house
+and stood beneath Pauline's window; surely she was leaning out: surely
+that was her shadow tremulous on the inspissate air. Guy waved, and the
+pale light moving to and fro seemed to exact an answer, for something
+fell at his feet and by the glow-worm's melancholy radiance he read
+'_now_' on a piece of paper. Gratefully he set the insect down to vanish
+upon its own amorous path into the murk. Not a tree quivered, not a
+raindrop slipped from a blade of grass but Guy held out his arms to
+clasp his long awaited Pauline. The '_now_' prolonged its duration into
+hours, it seemed; and then when she did come she was in his arms before
+he knew by her step or by the rustle of her dress that she was coming.
+She was in his arms as though like a moth she had floated upon a
+flower.
+
+Their good-night was kissed in a moment, and she was gone like a moth
+that cannot stay upon the flower it visits.
+
+Guy waited until he thought he saw her leaning from her window once
+more. Then he drew close to the wall of the house and strained his eyes
+to catch the farewell of her hand. As he looked up, the rain began to
+fall again; and in an ecstasy he glided back to Plashers Mead, adoring
+the drench of his clothes and the soft sighing of the rain.
+
+
+
+
+ANOTHER WINTER
+
+
+
+
+_December_
+
+
+In the first elation of having been able to prove to Guy how exclusively
+she loved him, Pauline had no misgivings about the effect upon herself
+of that dark descent into the garden. It was only when Guy, urging the
+success of what almost seemed disturbingly to state itself as an
+experiment, begged her to go farther and take the negligible risk of
+coming out with him on the river at night, that she began to doubt if
+she had acted well in yielding that first small favour. The problem,
+that she must leave herself to determine without a hint of its existence
+to anyone outside, stuck unresolved at the back of her conscience,
+whence in moments of depression it would, as it were, leap forth to
+assail her peace of mind. She was positive, however, that the precedent
+had been unwise from whatever point of view regarded, and for a while
+she resisted earnestly the arguments Guy evoked about the privileges
+conferred on lovers by the customary judgment of the world. Nevertheless
+in the end she did surrender anew to his persistence, and on two nights
+of dim December moonlight she escaped from the house and floated with
+him unhappily upon the dark stream, turning pale at every lean branch
+that stretched out from the bank, at every shadow, and at every sound of
+distant dogs' barking.
+
+Guy would not understand the falseness of this pleasure and, treating
+with scorn her alarm, he used to invent excuses by which she would be
+able to account for the emptiness of the room in the event of her
+absence being discovered. The mere prospect of such deceit distressed
+Pauline, and when she realized that even already by doing what she had
+done deceit had been set on foot, she told him she could not bear the
+self-reproach which followed. It was true, as she admitted, that there
+was really nothing to regret except the unhappiness the discovery of her
+action would bring to her family, but of course the chief effect of this
+was that Guy became even more jealous of her sisters' influence. The
+disaccord between him and them was making visible progress, and much of
+love's joy was being swallowed up in the sadness this brought to her.
+She wished now that she had said nothing about the rebuke she had earned
+for that unfortunate afternoon in the Abbey. Margaret and Monica had
+both tried hard ever since to atone for the part they played, and having
+forgiven them and accepted the justice of their point of view, Pauline
+was distressed that Guy should treat them now practically as avowed
+enemies. She might have known that happiness such as hers could not
+last, and she reproached herself for the many times she had triumphed in
+the thought of the superiority of their love to any other she had
+witnessed. She deserved this anxiety and this doubt as a punishment for
+the way in which she had often scoffed at the dulness of other people
+who were in love. Marriage, which at first had been only a delightful
+dream the remoteness of which did not matter, was now appearing the only
+remedy for the ills that were gathering round Guy and her. As soon as
+she had set her heart upon this panacea she began to watch Guy's work
+from the point of view of its subservience to that end. She was anxious
+that he should work particularly hard and she became very sensitive to
+any implication of laziness in the casual opinion that Margaret or
+Monica would sometimes express. Guy was obviously encouraged by the
+interest she took, and for a while in the new preoccupation of working
+together as it were for a common aim the strain of their restricted
+converse was allayed.
+
+One day early in December Guy announced that really he thought he had
+now enough poems to make a volume, news which roused Pauline to the
+greatest excitement and which on the same evening she triumphantly
+announced to her family at dinner.
+
+"My dears, his book is finished! And, Father, he has translated some
+poems of that man--that Latin creature you gave him on his birthday."
+
+"Propertius is difficult," said the Rector. "Very difficult."
+
+"Oh, but I'm so glad he's difficult, because that will make it all the
+more valuable if Guy ... or won't it? Oh, don't let me talk nonsense:
+but really, darlings, aren't you all glad that his book is finished?"
+
+"We'll drink the poet's health," said the Rector.
+
+"Oh, Father, I must kiss you ... aren't you pleased Guy appreciated your
+present?"
+
+"Now, Pauline, you're sweeping your napkin down on the floor...."
+
+"Oh, but Mother, I must kiss Francis for being so sweet."
+
+"He promised to show me the poems," said Margaret. "But Guy doesn't like
+me any more."
+
+"Oh, yes, Margaret, he does. Oh, Margaret, he really does. And if you
+say that, I shall have to break a secret. He's written two poems about
+you."
+
+Margaret flushed.
+
+"Has he? Well, he must certainly show them to me first or I shall veto
+the publication."
+
+"Oh, darlings," Pauline cried. "I am happy to-night! The famousness of
+Guy presently ... and oh, I forgot to tell you something so touching
+that happened this morning. What do you think? Miss Verney consulted me
+as to whether I thought it was time she began to wear caps."
+
+"Guy ought to write a poem about that," said Monica.
+
+"Oh, no, Monica, you're not to laugh at poor Miss Verney. I must tell
+her to-morrow morning about Guy's book. She so appreciates greatness."
+
+It was a delightful evening, and Pauline in her contentment felt that
+she was back in the heart of that old Rectory life, so far did the
+confidence in Guy's justification of himself enable her to leave behind
+the shadows of the past two months, and most of all those miserable
+escapades in the watery December moonlight.
+
+"A book, dear me, how important," said Miss Verney, when next morning
+Pauline was telling her the news. "Quite an important event for
+Wychford, I'm sure. I must write to the Stores and order a copy at once
+... or perhaps, as a local celebrity ... yes, I think, it would be
+kinder to patronize our Wychford stationer."
+
+"But, Miss Verney, it's not published yet, you know. We expect it won't
+be published before March at the earliest."
+
+"I don't think I ever met an author," said Miss Verney meditatively.
+"You see, my father being a sailor ... really, an author in Wychford,
+... dear me, it's quite an important occasion."
+
+Pauline thought she would devote the afternoon to writing the good news
+to Richard, and Margaret hearing of her intention, announced
+surprizingly that Richard was coming back in April for two or three
+months.
+
+"Oh, Margaret, and you never told me."
+
+"Well, I didn't think you took much interest in Richard nowadays. He
+asked what had happened to you."
+
+"I am glad he's coming back, Margaret. But oh, do tell me if you are
+going to marry him."
+
+Margaret would not answer, but Pauline, all of whose hopes were roseate
+to-day, decided that Margaret had really made up her mind at last, and
+she went upstairs full of penitence for her neglect of Richard, but
+determined to make up for it by the good news she would send both of
+herself and of him.
+
+     WYCHFORD RECTORY
+
+     OXON.
+
+     _December._
+
+     _My dear Richard,_
+
+     _I am sorry that I've not written to you for so long, but I know
+     you'll forgive me, because I have to think about so many things.
+     Margaret has just told me you are coming back in April. Be sure it
+     is April, because my birthday is on the first of May, you know, and
+     you must be in England for my birthday. Margaret looked very happy
+     when she said you were coming home. Richard, I am sure that
+     everything will be perfect. Guy's book is finished, and perhaps it
+     will be published in March. If it's published early in March, I
+     will send you a copy so that you can read it on the steamer coming
+     home. There are two poems about Margaret, who was very sympathetic
+     with Guy over me! That's one of the reasons why I'm sure that
+     everything will be perfect for you. Guy wants to meet you very
+     much. He says he admires action. That's because I told him about
+     your bridge. Your father and mother are always very sweet to us
+     when we go and have tea with them. Miss Verney is going to wear
+     caps. Birdwood asked if you would bring him back a Goorcha's--is
+     that the way to spell it--a Goorcha's knife because Godbold won't
+     believe something he told him. Birdwood said you were a grand young
+     chap and were wasted out in India. Father won a prize at Vincent
+     Square for a yellow gladiolus. It's been christened--now I've
+     forgotten what, but after somebody who had a golden throat. Guy's
+     dog is a lamb. A merry Christmas, and lots of love from_
+
+     _Your loving_
+
+     _Pauline._
+
+Pauline looked forward to Richard's return because she hoped that if
+Margaret married him her own marriage to Guy would begin to appear more
+feasible, it being at present almost too difficult to imagine anything
+like marriage exploding upon the quietude of the Rectory. The return of
+Richard, from the moment she eyed it in relation to her own affairs,
+assumed an importance it had never possessed before when it was only an
+ideal of childish sentiment, and Pauline made of it a foundation on
+which she built towering hopes.
+
+Guy, as soon as he had decided to publish his first volume, instantly
+acquired doubts about the prudence of the step, and he rather hurt
+Pauline's feelings by wanting Michael Fane to come and give him the
+support of his judgment.
+
+"I told you I should never be enough," she said sadly.
+
+He consoled her with various explanations of his reliance upon a
+friend's opinion, but he would not give up his idea of getting him and
+he wrote letter after letter until he was able to announce that for a
+week-end in mid-December Michael was actually pledged.
+
+"And I do want you to like him," said Guy earnestly.
+
+Pauline promised that of course she would like him, but in her heart she
+assured herself she never would. It was corulean winter weather when the
+friend arrived, and Pauline who had latterly taken up the habit of often
+coming into the churchyard to talk for a while with Guy across the
+severing stream, abandoned the churchyard throughout that week-end. Guy
+was vexed by her withdrawal and vowed that in consequence all the
+pleasure of the visit had been spoilt.
+
+"For I've been rushing in and out all the time to see if you were not in
+sight, and I'm often absolutely boorish to Fane, who by the way loves
+your Rectory bedroom so much."
+
+"Has he condescended to let your book appear?" asked Pauline.
+
+"Oh, rather, he says that everything I've included is quite all right.
+In fact he's a much less severe critic than I am myself."
+
+Pauline had made up her mind, if possible, to avoid a meeting with
+Michael, but on Monday she relented, and they were introduced to each
+other. The colloquy on that turquoise morning, when the earth smelt
+fresh and the grass in the orchard was so vernally green, did not help
+Pauline to know much about Michael Fane, save that he was not so tall as
+Guy and that somehow he gave the impression of regarding life more like
+a portrait by Vandyck than a human being. He was cold, she settled, and
+she, as usual shy and blushful, could only have seemed stupid to him.
+
+That afternoon, when the disturbing friend had gone, Pauline and Guy
+went for a walk.
+
+"He admired you tremendously."
+
+"Did he?" she made listless answer.
+
+"He said you were a fairy's child, and he also said you really were a
+wild rose."
+
+"What an exaggerated way of talking about somebody whom he has only seen
+for a moment."
+
+"Pauline," said Guy, affectionately rallying her, "aren't you being
+rather naughty--rather wilful, really? Didn't you like Michael?"
+
+"Guy, you can't expect me to know whether I liked him in a minute. He
+made me feel shyer than even most people do."
+
+"Well, let's talk about the book instead," said Guy. "What colour shall
+the binding be?"
+
+"What colour did he suggest?"
+
+"I see you're determined to be horrid about my poor harmless Michael."
+
+"Well, why must he be brought down like this to approve of your book?"
+
+"Oh, he has good taste, and besides he's interested in you and me."
+
+"What did you tell him about us?" Pauline asked sharply.
+
+"Nothing, my dearest, nothing," said Guy, flinging his stick for Bob to
+chase over the furrows. "At least," he added turning and looking down at
+her with eyebrows arched in pretended despair of her unreasonableness,
+"I expect I bored him to death with singing your praises."
+
+Still Pauline could not feel charitable, and still she could not smile
+at Guy.
+
+"Ah, my rose," he said tenderly. "Why will you droop? Why will you care
+about people who cannot matter to us? My own Pauline, can't you see that
+I called in a third person because I dare not trust myself now. All the
+day long, all the night long you are my care. I'm so dreadfully anxious
+to justify myself: I long for assurance at every step: once I was
+self-confident, but I can't be self-confident any longer. Success is no
+responsibility in itself, but now...."
+
+"It's my responsibility," cried Pauline melting to him. "Oh, forgive me
+for being jealous. Darling boy, it's just my foolish ignorance that
+makes me jealous of some one who can give you more than I."
+
+"But no one can!" he vowed. "I only asked Michael's advice because you
+are too kind a judge. My success is of such desperate importance to us
+two. What would it have mattered before I met you? Now my failure would
+... oh, Pauline, failure is too horrible to think of."
+
+"As if you could fail," she chided gently. "And if you did fail, I would
+almost be glad, because I would love you all the more."
+
+"Pauline, would you?"
+
+"Ah, no I wouldn't," she whispered. "Because I could not love you more
+that I do now."
+
+The dog with a sigh dropped his stick: he was become accustomed to these
+interludes.
+
+"Bob gives us up as hopeless," Guy laughed.
+
+"I'm not a bit sympathetic, you jealous dog," she said. "Because you
+have your master all day long."
+
+The next time Guy came to the Rectory, he brought with him the
+manuscript, so that Pauline could seal it for luck; and they sat in the
+nursery, while Guy for the last enumeration turned over the pages one by
+one.
+
+"It represents so much," he said, "and it looks so little. My father
+will be rather surprized. I told him I should wait another year. I
+wonder if I ought to have waited."
+
+"Oh, no," said Pauline. "Everything else is waiting and waiting. It
+makes me so happy to think of these pages flying away like birds."
+
+"I hope they won't be like homing pigeons," said Guy. "It will be rather
+a blow if William Worrall rejects them."
+
+"Oh, but how could he be so foolish."
+
+"I don't think he will really," said Guy. "After all, a good many people
+have endorsed the first half, and I'm positive that what I've written
+here is better than that. I rather wish I'd finished the Eclogues
+though. Do you think perhaps I'd better wait after all?"
+
+"Oh, no, Guy, don't wait."
+
+So, very solicitously the poems were wrapped up, and when they were tied
+and sealed and the parcel lay addressed upon the table, Mrs. Grey with
+Monica and Margaret came in. They were so sympathetic about the possible
+adventures in sight for that parcel, and Guy was so much his rather
+self-conscious self that the original relation between him and the
+family seemed perfectly restored. Pauline was glad to belong to them,
+and in her pride of Guy's achievement she basked in their simple
+affection, thrilling to every word or look or gesture that confirmed her
+desire of the cherished accord between Guy and the others.
+
+"Now I'm sure you'd both like to go and post Guy's poems," Mrs. Grey
+exclaimed. "Yes ... charming ... to go and post them yourselves."
+
+Pauline waited anxiously for a moment, because of late Guy had often
+seemed impatient of these permissions granted to him by her mother, but
+this afternoon he was himself and full of the shy gratitude that made
+her wonder if indeed nearly a year could have flown by since their love
+had been declared. Dusk was falling when they reached the post-office.
+
+"Will you register it, Mr. Hazlewood?" asked the postmistress.
+
+Guy nodded, and the parcel left their hands: in silence they watched it
+vanish into the company of other parcels that carried so much less: then
+back they came through the twilight to tea at the Rectory, both feeling
+as if the first really important step toward marriage had been taken.
+
+"You see," said Guy, "if only these poems of mine are well received, my
+father must acknowledge my right to be here, and if he once admits that,
+what barrier can there be to our wedding?"
+
+Pauline told him how much during the last month the distant prospect of
+their marriage had begun to weigh upon her, but now since that parcel
+had been left at the post-office, she said she would always talk of
+their wedding because that was such a much less remote word than
+marriage.
+
+"Come out to-night," said Guy suddenly.
+
+She put her hand on his arm.
+
+"Guy, don't ask me again."
+
+He was penitent at once, and full of promises never to ask her again to
+do anything that might cause an instant's remorse. They had reached the
+hall of the Rectory and in the shadows Pauline held him to her heart,
+suddenly caught in the flood of tenderness that a wife might have for a
+husband to whose faults she could be indulgent by the measure of his
+greater virtues kept, as it might be, for her alone.
+
+
+
+
+_January_
+
+
+Guy, as soon as he had sent off the poems to a publisher, was much less
+violently driven by the stress of love, which latterly had urged him
+along so wayward a course. He began to acquire a perspective and to lose
+some of that desperately clinging reliance upon present joys. The need
+of battling against an uncertain future had brought him to the pitch of
+madness at the thought of the hours of Pauline's company that must be
+wasted; but now when to his sanguine hopes marriage presented itself as
+at last within sight, sometimes even seeming as close as the fall of
+this new year, he was anxious to set Pauline upon more tranquil waters,
+lest she too should like himself be the prey of wild imaginations that
+might destroy utterly one untempered by any except the gentler emotions
+of a secluded life. Her mother and sisters, whom he had come to regard
+as hostile interpreters of convention, took on again their old features
+of kindliness and grace; and he was able to see without jealous torments
+how reasonable their attitude had been throughout, nay more than
+reasonable, how unworldly and noble-hearted it had been in confiding
+Pauline to the care of one who had so few pretensions to deserve her. He
+upbraided himself for having by his selfishness involved Pauline in the
+complexities of regrets for having done something against her judgment:
+and in this dreary rain of January, free from the burden of uncompleted
+labour, he now felt a more light-hearted assurance than he had known
+since the beginning of their love.
+
+Bills came in by every post, but their ability to vex him had vanished
+in the promise his manuscript gave of a speedy defeat of all material
+difficulties. The reaction from the strain of decking his poems with the
+final touches that were to precede the trial of public judgment gave
+place to dreams. A dozen times Guy followed the manuscript step by step
+of its journey from the moment the insentient mailcart carried it away
+from Wychford to the moment when Mr. William Worrall threw a first
+casual glance to where it lay waiting for his perusal on the desk in the
+Covent Garden office. Guy saw the office-boy send off the formal
+postcard of acknowledgment that he had already received; and in his
+dream he rather pitied the youth for his unconsciousness of what a
+treasure he was acknowledging merely in the ordinary routine of a
+morning's work. Perhaps the packet would lie unopened for two or three
+days--in fact probably Mr. Worrall might not yet have resumed work, as
+they say, after a short Christmas vacation. Moreover when he came back
+to business, although at Guy's request for sponsors the poems had been
+vouched for by one or two reputed friends of the publisher with whom he
+was acquainted, he would no doubt still be inclined to postpone their
+examination. Then one morning he would almost inadvertently cut the
+string and glance idly at a page, and then....
+
+At this point the author's mental visions varied. Sometimes Worrall
+would be so deeply transfixed by the revelation of a new planet swimming
+into ken that he would sit spellbound at his own good fortune, not
+emerging from a trance of delight until he sent a telegram inviting the
+poet to come post haste to town and discuss terms. In other dreams the
+publisher would distrust his own judgment and take the manuscript under
+his arm to a critic of taste, anxiously watching his face and as an
+expression of admiration gradually diffused itself knowing that his own
+wild surmize had been true. There were many other variations of the
+first reception of the poems, but they all ended in the expenditure of
+sixpence on a telegram. Here the dream would amplify itself; and proofs,
+binding, paper, danced before Guy's vision; while soon afterward the
+first reviews were coming in. At this stage the poet's triumph assumed a
+hundred shapes and diversities, and ultimately he could never decide
+between a leader on his work in The Times headed A NEW GENIUS or an
+eulogy on the principal page of The Daily Mail that galloped neck and
+neck for a column alongside one of The Letters of an Englishman. The
+former would bestow the greater honour: the latter would be more
+profitable: therefore in moments of unbridled optimism he was apt to
+allot both proclamations to his fortune. With such an inauguration of
+fame the rest was easy dreaming. His father would take a train to
+Shipcot on the same morning: if he read The Times at breakfast he would
+catch the eleven o'clock from Galton and, travelling by way of
+Basingstoke, reach Shipcot by half-past-two. Practically one might dream
+that before tea he would have settled £300 a year on his son, so that
+the pleasant news could be announced to the Rectory that very afternoon.
+In that case he and Pauline could be married in April; and actually on
+her twenty-first birthday she would be his wife. They would not go to
+the Campagna this year, because these bills must be paid, unless his
+father, in an access of pride due to his having bought several more
+eulogies at bookstalls along the line, offered to pay all debts up to
+the day of his wedding; in which case they could go to the Campagna:
+
+    _I wonder do you feel to-day_
+        _As I have felt since, hand in hand,_
+    _We sat down on the grass, to stray_
+        _In spirit better through the land,_
+    _This morn of Rome and May?_
+
+They would drive out from the city along the Appian Way and turn aside
+to sit among the ghostliness of innumerable grasses in those primal
+fields, the air of which would be full of the feathery seeds and the dry
+scents of that onrushing summer. There would be no thought of time and
+no need for words: there would merely be the two of them on a morn of
+Rome and May. And later in the warm afternoon they would drive home,
+coming back to the city's heart to eat their dinner within sound of the
+Roman fountains. Then all the night-time she would be his, not his in
+frightened gasps as when wintry England was forbidding all joy to their
+youth, but his endlessly, utterly, gloriously. They would travel farther
+south and perhaps come to that Parthenopean shore calling to him still
+now from the few days he had spent upon its silver heights and beside
+its azure waters. In his dream Pauline was leaning on his shoulder
+beneath an Aleppo pine, at the cliff's edge, Pauline whose alien
+freshness would bring a thought of England to sigh through its boughs,
+and a cooler world to the aromatic drouth. Theirs should be sirenian
+moons and dawns, and life would be this dream's perfect fulfilment. In
+what loggia, firefly-haunted, would he hold her? The desire with which
+the picture flamed upon his imagination was almost intolerable, and here
+he always brought her back to Plashers Mead on a June dusk. Then she
+could be conjured in this house, summoned in spirit here to this very
+room; and if they had loved Italy, how they would love England, as they
+walked across their meadows, husband and wife. With such visions Guy set
+on fire each January night that floated frorely into his bedroom, until
+one morning a letter arrived from Mr. William Worrall, that made his
+fingers tremble, as he broke the envelope and read the news:
+
+     217 COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
+
+     _January 6th._
+
+     _Dear Sir,_
+
+     _I have looked at the poems you were kind enough to send for my
+     consideration, and I shall be happy to hand them to a reader for
+     his opinion. The reader's fee is one guinea. Should his opinion be
+     favourable, I shall be glad to discuss terms with you._
+
+     _Yours faithfully,
+
+     William Worrall._
+
+Guy threw the letter down in a rage. He would almost have preferred a
+flat refusal to this request for money to enable some jaded hack to read
+his poems. The proposal appeared merely insolent, and he wrote curtly to
+Mr. William Worrall to demand the immediate return of his manuscript.
+But after all, if Worrall did not accept his work, who would? Money was
+an ulterior consideration when the great object was to receive such
+unanimous approval as would justify the apparent waste of time in which
+he had been indulging. The moment his father acknowledged the right he
+had to be confident, he in turn would try to show by following his
+father's advice that he was not the wrong-headed idler of his
+reputation. Perhaps he would send the guinea to Worrall. He tore up his
+first letter and wrote another in which a cheque was enclosed. Then he
+began to add up the counterfoils of his cheque book, a depressing
+operation that displayed an imminent financial crisis. He had overdrawn
+£5 last quarter. That left £32 10s. of the money paid in on December 21.
+The quarter's rent was £4 10s. That left £28. Miss Peasey's wages were
+in arrears, and he must pay her £4 10s. on the fifteenth of this month.
+That would leave £23 10s. and he must knock off 7s. 6d. for Bob's
+licence. About £3 had gone at Christmas and there were the books still
+to pay. £20 was not much for current expenses until next Lady Day.
+However, he decided that he could manage in Wychford, if he did not have
+to pay out money for Oxford debts, the creditors of which were pressing
+him harder each week.
+
+                                           £  s. d.
+    _Lampard._       Books.           39 15 0
+    _Harker._        Furniture.       17 18 0
+    _Faucett._       Books.           22 16 6
+    _Williamson._    Books.           13 19 0
+    _Ambrose._       Books.            4  7 0
+    _Brough._        Tobacco.          9 19 0
+    _Clary._         Clothes.         44  4 0
+    _Miscellaneous._ Books, Clothes,
+                            Stationery, Chemist,
+                            etc., etc.             about £50
+
+A total of £202 18s. 6d. Practically he might say that £200 would clear
+everything. Yet was £50 enough to allow for those miscellaneous
+accounts? Here for instance was a bill of £11 for boots and another of
+£14 for hats apparently, though how the deuce he could have spent all
+that on hats he did not know. It would be wiser to say that £250 was
+required to free himself from debt. Guy read through the tradesmen's
+letters and detected an universal impatience, for they all reminded him
+that not merely for fifteen months had they received nothing on account
+of large outstanding bills, but also they made it clear that behind
+reiterated demands and politeness strained to breaking-point stood
+darkly the law. That brute Ambrose, to whom after all he only owed £4
+7s., was the most threatening. In fact he would obviously have to pay
+the ruffian in full. That left only £15 13s. for current expenses to
+Lady Day, or rather £14 12s., for by the way Worrall's guinea had been
+left out of the reckoning.
+
+Guy wondered if he ought to get rid of Miss Peasey and manage for
+himself in future. Yet the housekeeper probably earned her wages by what
+she saved him, and if he relied on a woman who 'came in' every morning,
+that meant feeding a family. It would be better to sell a few books. He
+might raise £50 that way. Ten pounds to both Lampard and Clary, and six
+fivers among the rest would postpone any violent pressure for a while.
+Guy at once began to choose the books with which he could most easily
+part. It was difficult to put aside as many as might be expected to
+raise £50, for his collection did not contain rarities, and it would be
+a sheer quantity of volumes, the extraction of which would horribly
+deplete his shelves, upon which he must rely.
+
+The January rain dripped monotonously on the window-sills, while Guy
+dragged book after book from the shelves that for only fifteen months
+had known their company. They were a melancholy sight, when he had
+stacked on the floor as many books as he could bear to lose, each shelf
+looking as disreputable as a row of teeth after a fight. A hundred
+volumes were gone, scarcely a dozen of which had he sacrificed without a
+pang. But a hundred volumes in order to raise £50 must sell at an
+average of ten shillings apiece, and in the light of such a test of
+value he regarded dismayfully the victims. Precious though they were to
+him, he could not fairly estimate the price they would fetch at more
+than five shillings each. That meant the loss of at least a hundred more
+books. Guy felt sick at the prospect and looked miserably along the rows
+for the farther tribute of martyrs they must be forced to yield. With
+intense difficulty he gathered together another fifty, and then with a
+final effort came again for still another fifty. Here was the first
+edition of Swinburne's Essays and Studies. That must go, for it might
+count as ten shillings and therefore save a weaker brother. Rossetti's
+Poems in this edition of 1871 must go in order to save the complete
+works, for he could copy out the sonnet which was not reprinted in the
+later edition. Here was Payne's translation of Villon which could
+certainly go, for it would fetch at least fifteen shillings, and he
+still possessed that tattered little French edition at two francs. The
+collected Verlaine might as well go, and the Mallarmé with the Rops
+frontispiece: the six volumes would save others better loved. Besides,
+he was sick of French poetry, wretched stuff most of it. Yet, here was
+Hérédia and the Pleiad and de Vigny, all of whom were beloved
+exceptions. He must preserve too the Italians, (what a solace Leopardi
+had been), though here were a couple of Infernos, one of which could
+surely be sacrificed. He opened the first:
+
+    _Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona,_
+        _Mi prese del costui piacer si forte,_
+    _Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona._
+
+The words were stained with the blue anemone to which he had likened
+Pauline's eyes that first day of their love's declaration. He opened the
+other:
+
+    _Ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse,_
+      _Quando leggemmo il disiato riso_
+    _Esser baciato da cotanto amante,_
+      _Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,_
+    _La bocca mi baciò tutto tremante:_
+
+And in this volume the words were stained with a ragged robin which
+unnoticed had come back to Plashers Mead in his pocket that May eve and
+which when it fell out later he had pressed between those burning pages.
+It was doubtless the worst kind of sentiment, but the two books must go
+back upon their shelves, and never must they be lost, even if everything
+but Shakespeare went.
+
+Guy put his hand to his forehead and found that it was actually wet
+with the agony of what on this January afternoon he had been compelling
+himself to achieve. Each book before it was condemned he stroked fondly
+and smelt like incense the fragrant mustiness of the pages, since nearly
+every volume still commemorated either the pleasure of the moment when
+he had bought it or some occasion of reading equally good to recall.
+Then he covered the pile with a shroud of tattered stuff and wrote a
+letter offering them to the only bookseller in Oxford with whom he had
+never dealt. Two days later an assistant came over to inspect the booty.
+
+"Well?" said Guy painfully, when the assistant put away his note-book
+and shot his cuffs forward.
+
+"Well, Mr. Hazlewood, we can offer you £35 for that little lot."
+
+Guy stammered a repetition of the disappointing sum.
+
+"That's right, sir. And we don't really want them."
+
+"But surely £50...."
+
+The assistant smiled in a superior way.
+
+"We must _try_ and make a _little_ profit," he murmured.
+
+"Oh, God, you'll do that. Why, I must have paid very nearly a hundred
+for them, and they were practically all second hand when I bought them."
+
+The assistant shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I'm sorry, sir, but in offering you £35, I'm offering too much as it
+is. We don't really want them, you see. They're not really any good to
+us."
+
+"You're simply being damned charitable in fact," said Guy. "All right.
+Give me a cheque and take them away when you like ... the sooner the
+better."
+
+He could have kicked that pile of books he had with such hardship
+chosen; already they seemed to belong to this smart young assistant with
+the satin tie; and he began to hate this agglomeration which had cost
+him such agony and in the end had swindled him out of £15. The
+assistant sat down and wrote a cheque for Guy, took his receipt and
+bowed himself out, saying that he would send for the books in the course
+of the week.
+
+Through the rain Guy went for consolation to Pauline. He told her of his
+sacrifice and she with all she could give of exquisite compassion
+listened to his tale.
+
+"But, Guy, my darling, why don't you borrow the money from Father? I am
+sure he'd be delighted to lend it to you."
+
+Guy shook his head.
+
+"It's impossible. My debts must be paid by myself. I wouldn't even
+borrow from Michael Fane. Dearest, don't look so sad. I would sell my
+soul for you. Kiss me. Kiss me. I care for nothing but your kisses. You
+must promise not to say a word of this to any one. Besides, it's no
+sacrifice to do anything that brings our marriage nearer by an inch.
+These debts are weighing me down. They stifle me. I am miserable too
+about the poems. I haven't told you yet. It's really a joke in one way.
+Yes, it's really funny. Worrall wrote to ask for a guinea before he read
+them. Now, don't you think there is something very particularly humorous
+in being charged a guinea by a reader? However, don't worry about that."
+
+"How could he be so stupid?" she cried. "I hope you took them away from
+him."
+
+"Oh, no. I sent the guinea. They must be published. Pauline, I must have
+done something soon or I shall go mad! Surely you see the funny side of
+his offer? I think the notion of my expecting to get five shillings
+apiece out of a lot of readers, and my only reader's getting a guinea
+out of me is funny. I think it's quite humorous."
+
+"Nothing is funny to me that hurts you," Pauline murmured. "And I'm
+heartbroken about the books."
+
+"Oh, when I'm rich I can buy plenty."
+
+"But not the same books."
+
+"That's mere sentiment," he laughed. "And the only sentiment I allow
+myself is in connection with things that you have sanctified."
+
+Then he told her about the flowers pressed in the two volumes of Dante,
+both in that same fifth canto.
+
+"And almost you know," Guy whispered, "I value most the ragged robin,
+because it commemorates the day you really began to love me."
+
+"Ah, no," she protested. "Guy, don't say that. I always loved you, but I
+was shy before. I could not tell you. Sometimes, I wish I were shy now.
+It would make our love so much less of a strain."
+
+"Is it a strain?"
+
+"Oh, sometimes," she cried nearly in tears, her light brown hair upon
+his shoulder. "Oh, yes, yes, Guy. I can't bear to feel.... I'm
+frightened sometimes, and when Mother has been cross with me, I've not
+known what to do. Guy, you won't ever ask me to come out again at
+night?"
+
+"Not if it worries you afterward."
+
+"Oh, yes, it has, it has. Guy, when shall we be married?"
+
+"This year. It shall be this year," he vowed. "Let us believe that,
+Pauline. You do believe that?"
+
+"Oh, Guy, I adore you so wildly. It must be this year. My darling, my
+darling, this year ... let it be this year."
+
+Guy doled out very carefully the £35 he had accumulated by the sale of
+his books. Lampard and Clary had to be content with £7 apiece. Five more
+creditors received £4, or rather one of them only £3 19s., so that the
+guinea left over could be put back into the current account for poetic
+justice. There was for the present nothing more to do but await the
+verdict of Worrall's reader, and in a fortnight Guy heard from the
+publisher to say this had been favourable enough to make Mr. Worrall
+wish to see him in order to discuss the matter of publication. Guy was
+much excited and rushed across to the Rectory in a festivity of
+hopefulness. He had wired to say he would be in London next day, and all
+that evening the name of Worrall was lauded until round his unknown
+personality shone the aureole of a wise and benevolent saint. There
+seemed no limit to what so discerning a publisher might not do for Guy,
+and he and Pauline became to themselves and to her family the hero and
+heroine of such an adventure as never had been. In the course of the
+evening Guy had an opportunity of talking to Margaret, and for the first
+time for a long while he availed himself of it.
+
+"Are you really going to talk to me then?" she asked in mock surprize.
+
+"Margaret, I've been rather objectionable lately," said Guy, remembering
+with an access of penitence that it must be almost exactly a year ago
+that he and Margaret in that snowy weather had first talked about his
+love for Pauline.
+
+"Well, I have thought that you were forgetting me," said Margaret. "I
+shall be sad if we are never going to be friends again."
+
+"Oh, Margaret, we are friends now. I've been worried, and I thought that
+you had been rather unkind to Pauline."
+
+"I haven't really."
+
+"Of course not. It was absolutely my fault," Guy admitted. "Now that
+there seems a chance of our being married in less than ten years, I'm
+going to give up this continual exasperation in which I live nowadays.
+It's curious that my first impression of you all should have been as of
+a Mozart symphony, so tranquil and gay and self-contained and perfectly
+made did the Rectory seem. How clumsily I have plunged into that life,"
+he sighed. "Really, Margaret, I feel sometimes like a wild beast that's
+escaped from a menagerie and got into a concert of chamber-music. Look
+here, you shall never have to grumble at me again. Now tell me, just to
+show that you've forgiven my detestable irruption ... when Richard
+comes back...."
+
+Margaret gave him her hand for a moment, and looked down.
+
+"And you're happy?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"I'm sure I shall be."
+
+"Oh, you will be, you will be."
+
+Pauline asked him afterward what he had said to Margaret that could have
+made her so particularly sweet, and when Guy whispered his discovery,
+Pauline declared that the one thing necessary to make this evening
+perfect had been just that knowledge.
+
+"Guy, how clever of you to make her tell you what she will never tell
+us. You don't know how much it has worried me to feel that you were
+always angry with Margaret. How I've exaggerated everything! And what
+friends you really are, you dears!"
+
+"I've never been angry with her except on your account."
+
+"But you won't ever be again, because I'm so foolish. I'm really a sort
+of young Miss Verney."
+
+They laughed at this idea of Pauline's, and soon it was time for Guy to
+go. He thought luxuriously as he walked up the drive how large a measure
+of good news he would bring back with him from London.
+
+Guy was surprized to be kept waiting when he enquired for Mr. Worrall at
+three o'clock on the following afternoon. All the way up in the train he
+had thought so much about him and so kindlily that it seemed he must the
+very moment he entered the dusty Georgian antechamber shake his
+publisher warmly by the hand. He had pictured him really as looking out
+for his coming, almost as vividly indeed in his prefiguration of the
+scene as to behold Mr. Worrall's face pressed tight against a pane and
+thence disappearing to greet him from the step.
+
+It was a shock to be invited to wait, and he repeated his name to the
+indifferent clerk a little insistently.
+
+"Mr. Worrall will see you in a minute," the clerk repeated.
+
+Guy looked at the few objects of interest in the outer office, at the
+original drawings of wrappers and frontispieces, at the signed
+photograph of a moderately distinguished poet of the 'nineties, at a
+depressing accumulation of still unsold volumes. The window was grimy,
+and the raindrops seemed from inside to smear it as tears smudge the
+face of a dirty child. The clerk pored over a ledger, and from the grey
+afternoon the cries of the porters in Covent Garden came drearily in. At
+last a bell sounded, and the clerk invited him 'to step this way,'
+lifting the counter and pointing up a narrow staircase beyond a glass
+door. Guy went up and at last entered Mr. Worrall's private office.
+
+The publisher was a short fat man with a bald and curiously conical
+head, reminding Guy very much of a dentist in his manner. The poet sat
+down and immediately caught in his first survey Mr. William Worrall's
+caricature by Max Beerbohm. As a result of this observation Guy
+throughout the interview could only perceive Mr. Worrall as the
+caricaturist had perceived him, and like a shape in a dream his head all
+the time grew more and more conical, until it seemed as if it would soon
+bore a hole in the festooned ceiling.
+
+"Well, Mr. Hazlewood," said the publisher referring as he spoke to Guy's
+card with what Guy thought was a rather unnecessary implication of
+oblivion. "Well, Mr. Hazlewood, my reader reports very favourably on
+your poems, and there seems no reason why I should not publish them."
+
+Guy bowed.
+
+"No reason at all," Mr. Worrall continued. Then making a gothic arch
+with his fingers and looking up at the ceiling, he added:
+
+"Though, of course, there will be a risk. However, my reader's opinion
+was certainly favourable."
+
+And so it ought to be, thought Guy, for a guinea.
+
+"And I don't think," Mr. Worrall went on, "that in the circumstances we
+need be very much afraid. Have you any ideas about the price at which
+your sheaf, your little harvest is to be offered to the public?"
+
+"Oh, I should leave that to you," said Guy hastily.
+
+"Precisely," said the publisher. "Yes, I think perhaps we might say five
+shillings or ... of course it might be done in paper in the Covent
+Garden Series of Modern English Poets. Yes, the reader speaks most
+highly of your work. You know the Covent Garden series of modern poets?
+In paper at half-a-crown net?"
+
+"I should be very proud to appear in such a series," said Guy
+pleasantly. The series as a matter of fact was one that could do him no
+discredit.
+
+"It's a charming idea, isn't it?" said Mr. Worrall, fondling one of the
+set that lay on his desk. "Every five volumes has its own floral emblem.
+We've done The Rose, The Lily, The Violet. Let me see, your poems are
+mostly about London, aren't they?"
+
+"No, there isn't one about London," Guy pointed out rather sharply.
+
+"No, precisely, then of course they would not come in The London Pride
+set which still has a vacancy. Perhaps The Cowslip? What does the reader
+say? Um, yes, pastoral. Precisely! Well, then why not let us decide that
+your poems shall be Number Three in The Cowslip set. Capital! I think
+you'd be wise to choose the Covent Garden series in paper. The cost of
+publication is really less in that series, and I have always chosen my
+poets so carefully that I can be sure the Press will pay attention
+to--er neophytes. That is a great advantage for a young writer, as you
+no doubt realize without my telling you?"
+
+"The cost?" echoed Guy in a puzzled voice.
+
+"It will run you in for about £30--as a guarantee of course. The terms
+I suggest are simply a written agreement that you will guarantee £30
+toward the cost. Your royalty to be ten per cent on the first thousand,
+twelve and a half on the next thousand and fifteen over two thousand. We
+might fairly say that in the event of selling a thousand you would have
+nothing to pay, but of course if you only sell twenty or thirty, you
+will have to--er--pay for your piping."
+
+"And when should I have to produce this £30?" Guy asked.
+
+"Well, I might ask for a cheque to be placed to my account on the day of
+publication; and then of course I should send in a written statement
+twice a year with the usual three months' margin for settlement."
+
+"So that supposing my book came out in March?" Guy enquired.
+
+"By the following November I should hope to have the pleasure of sending
+you back your £30 and a cheque on account of royalties," said the
+publisher briskly.
+
+"They don't seem very good terms somehow," said Guy.
+
+Mr. Worrall shrugged his shoulders, and his conical head grew more
+conical.
+
+"You forget the advantage of being in the Covent Garden series of modern
+poets. However, don't, pray do not, entrust your manuscript to my
+pilotage unless you are perfectly satisfied. I have a good many poems to
+consider, you know."
+
+"May I write within a week or so and give you my decision?" Guy asked.
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"Well, good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Hazlewood. Clever fellow, isn't he?"
+
+Guy had given a farewell glance at Max Beerbohm's caricature.
+
+"Very clever," the poet fervently agreed.
+
+Guy left Mr. William Worrall's office and wandered dismally across
+Covent Garden, wondering where on earth he was going to be able to raise
+£30. He had intended to spend the night in town and look up some old
+friends, but foreseeing now the inevitable question 'What are you
+doing?' he felt he had not the heart to explain that at present he was
+debating the possibility of spending £30 in order to produce a book of
+poems. All the people whom he would have been glad to see had held such
+high hopes of him at Oxford, had prophesied for his career such
+prosperity; and now when after fifteen months he emerged from his
+retirement it was but to pay a man to include him in the Covent Garden
+series of modern poets. The rain came down faster, and a creeping fog
+made more inhospitable the dusk of London. He thought of a quick train
+somewhere about five o'clock, and in a sudden longing to be back in the
+country and to sleep, however dark and frore the January night that
+stretched between them, nearer to Pauline than here in this city of
+drizzled fog, he took a cab to Paddington.
+
+During the railway journey Guy contemplated various plans to raise the
+money he wanted. He knew that his father at the cost of a long letter
+would probably have given him the sum: but supposing a triumph lay
+before him, all the sweets of it would have been robbed by paternal
+help. Moreover if the book were paid for thus, there would be a
+consequent suspicion of all favourable criticism: it would never seem a
+genuine book to his father, and the reviews would give him the
+impression of being the work of well-disposed amateurs or of personal
+friends. There was the alternative of borrowing the money from Michael
+Fane; and then as the train went clanging through the night Guy made up
+his mind to be under an obligation to nobody and to sacrifice all the
+rest of his books if necessary that this new book might be born.
+
+When he was back at Plashers Mead, his resolution did not weaken:
+coldly and unsentimentally he began to eviscerate the already mutilated
+library. At the end of his task he had stacked upon the floor five
+hundred volumes to be offered as a bargain to the bookseller who had
+bought the others. All that was left indeed were the cheapest and most
+ordinary editions of poets, one or two volumes of the greatest of all
+like Rabelais and Cervantes, and the eternally read and most
+companionable like Boswell and Gilbert White and Sir Thomas Browne. In
+the determination that had seized him he rejoiced in his bare shelves,
+so much exalted by the glories of abnegation that he began to despise
+himself in his former attitude as a trifler among books and to say to
+himself, as he looked at the volumes which had survived this heartless
+clearance, that now he was set on the great fairway of literature
+without any temptation to diverge up the narrow streams of personal
+taste. The bookseller's assistant was not at all eager for the proferred
+bargain, and in the end Guy could only manage to obtain the £30 and not,
+as he had hoped, another £10 towards his debts. Nevertheless he locked
+the cheque up in his desk with the satisfaction of a man who for the
+first time in his life earns money, and later on went across to tell
+Pauline the result of the visit to London.
+
+There was a smell of frost in the air that afternoon, and the sharpness
+of the weather consorted well with Guy's mood, taking away the heavy
+sense of disappointment and giving him a sparkling hopefulness. He and
+Pauline went for a walk on Wychford down, and in the wintry cheer he
+would not allow her to be cast down at the loss of his books or to
+resent Worrall's reception of the poems.
+
+"Everything is all right," he assured her. "The more we have to deny
+ourselves now, the greater will be my success when it comes. The law of
+compensation never fails. You and I are Davidsbündler marching against
+the Philistines. So be brave, my Pauline."
+
+"I will try to be brave," she promised. "But it's harder for me because
+I'm doing nothing."
+
+"Oh, nothing," said Guy. "Nothing except endow me with passion and
+ambition, with consolation ... oh, nothing, you foolish one."
+
+"Am I really all that to you?"
+
+"Forward," he shouted, hurling his stick in front of him and dragging
+Pauline at the heels of Bob across turf that was already beginning to
+crackle in the frost. Pauline could not resist his confidence, and when
+at last they had to turn round and leave a smoky orange sunset, they
+came home glowing to the Rectory, both in the highest spirits. Guy wrote
+to the publisher that night and announced his intention of accepting the
+"offer," a word which he could not resist framing with inverted commas
+in case the sarcastic shaft might pierce Mr. Worrall's hard and conical
+head.
+
+Sitting back in his chair and thinking over his poems, all sorts of
+verbal improvements suggested themselves to Guy; and he added a note
+asking for the manuscript to be sent back for a few corrections. He
+looked at his work with new eyes when it arrived, and bent with all the
+enthusiasm that fruition gave his pen upon reviewing each line for the
+hundredth time. He had enjoyed few things so well in his life as going
+to bed tired with the intense consideration of a rhyme and falling
+asleep in the ambition to reconsider it early next morning.
+
+About ten days had passed since Guy sold the second lot of books, and
+the poems were now as good as he could make them until print should
+reveal numbers of fresh faults. He hoped that Worrall would hurry on
+with the printing in order to allow him plenty of time for an even more
+severe scrutiny; and he wrote to suggest April as the month of
+publication, so anxious was he to have one specially bound copy to offer
+Pauline on her birthday.
+
+On the very morning when the manuscript had been wrapped up and was
+ready to be sent off a disturbing letter arrived from Lampard, his
+favourite Oxford bookseller, to say that having made a purchase of books
+two or three days ago he had been surprized to find among them a large
+number of volumes with Mr. Hazlewood's name inscribed on the fly-leaves,
+for which Mr. Hazlewood had not yet paid him. He ventured to think it
+was only by an oversight that Mr. Hazlewood had not paid his long
+outstanding account before disposing of the books and in short he was
+anxious to know what Mr. Hazlewood intended to do about it. His bill,
+£32 15s., was enclosed. Guy wrote back to say that it was indeed a most
+unaccountable oversight on his part, but that he hoped in order to mark
+his sympathy with Mr. Lampard's point of view to send him another cheque
+very shortly, reminding the bookseller at the same time that he had
+scarcely three weeks ago sent him £7 on account. Mr. Lampard in his
+reply observed very plainly that Guy's letter was no reply at all and
+threatened politely to make matters rather unpleasant if the bill were
+not paid in full instantly. Guy tried once more a letter full of bland
+promises, and received in response a letter from Mr. Lampard's
+solicitor. The £30 intended for Mr. Worrall had to be sacrificed, and
+even £2 15s. had to be taken from his current account. Savagely he tore
+the paper from the manuscript, wrapped it up again and despatched it to
+another publisher. The bad luck of the Lampard business made him only
+the more resolute not to invoke aid from his father or anyone else. He
+was a prey to a perverse determination to do everything himself; but it
+was gloomy news that he had to tell Pauline that afternoon, and she
+broke down and cried in her disappointment.
+
+
+
+
+_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 £200 appalled her as much as if he had said £2000.
+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 entrusted.
+
+"William had the same difficulty," sighed the old maid. "Really it
+seems as if money _is_ the root of all evil. £200, 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
+quarrelled 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 sombre-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 grey-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 month 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 favourite 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 argued.
+
+"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 nun-like 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 toward 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 toward 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 someone 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 someone 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 behaviour, 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 anyone'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 afterward 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 mattins 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.
+
+
+
+
+ANOTHER SPRING
+
+
+
+
+_March_
+
+
+When the poems were returned by three publishers within the first
+fortnight of March, Guy was inclined to surrender his vocation and to
+think about such regular work as would banish the reproach he began to
+fancy was now perceptible at the back of everybody's eyes. The weather
+was abominably cold, and even Plashers Mead itself was no longer the
+embodiment of the old enthusiasm. Already in order to pay current
+expenses he was drawing upon the next quarter, and the combination of
+tradesmen's books with icy draughts curling through the house produced
+an atmosphere of perpetual exasperation. It always seemed to be coldest
+on Monday morning and Miss Peasey _would_ breathe over his shoulder
+while he was adding up the bills.
+
+"We apparently live on butter," he grumbled.
+
+"Oh, no, it was really lamb you had yesterday," the housekeeper
+maintained irrelevantly.
+
+"I said we apparently live on butter," Guy shouted.
+
+Then of course Miss Peasey _would_ poke her veiny nose right down into
+the book, while the draught blew her hair about and unpleasantly tickled
+his cheek.
+
+"It's the best butter," she said sorrowfully at last.
+
+"But my watch is quite all right."
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"I made an allusion to Alice in Wonderland," he shouted.
+
+Miss Peasey retired from the room in dudgeon, and Guy wasted ten minutes
+in examining various theories on what his housekeeper could have
+thought he meant by his last remark. Finally he wrote off to a friend of
+his, an ardent young Radical peer with whom he had shared rooms at
+Oxford.
+
+     PLASHERS MEAD, WYCHFORD, OXON.
+
+     _March 15._
+
+     _Dear Com,_
+
+     _Why the dickens haven't you written to me for such ages? I'm going
+     to chuck this place. Haven't you got any scheme on hand for
+     teaching the democracy to find out the uselessness of your order?
+     Why not a new critical weekly, with me as bondslave-in-chief? Or
+     doesn't one of your National Liberals want a bright young fellow to
+     dot his i's and pick up his h's? For £250 a year I'll serve any of
+     them, write his speeches, interview his constituents or even teach
+     his cubs to prey on the body politic like Father Lion himself.
+     Seriously though, if you hear of anything, do think of me._
+
+     _Yours ever
+
+     G. H._
+
+Comeragh wrote back at once:
+
+     420 Brook Street, W.
+
+     _March 16._
+
+     _Dear old Guy,_
+
+     _If you will bury yourself like a misanthropic badger, you can't
+     expect to be written to by every post. Oddly enough there has been
+     some talk of starting a new paper; at least it isn't really very
+     odd because the subject is mooted three times a day in the advanced
+     political circles round which I revolve. However, just at present
+     the scheme is in abeyance. Never mind, I'll fetch you out of your
+     earth at the first excuse that offers itself. Do you ever go in and
+     see the Balliol people? My young brother's up now, you know. Ask
+     him over to lunch some day. He's a shining light of Tory Democracy
+     and is going to preserve or I suppose I ought to say conserve the
+     honour of our family. When are your poems coming out? I heard from
+     Tom Anstruther the other day. He seems rather hurt that an attaché
+     at Madrid is not given an opportunity of adjusting or upsetting the
+     balance of power in Europe. I'll try to get down for a week-end,
+     but I'm betraying my order by voting against an obscurantist
+     majority whenever I can, and plotting hard against the liberties of
+     landowners when I'm not voting. However, when the House flies away
+     to search for summer I'll drop out of the flock and perch a while
+     on your roof. One thing I will promise, which is that when I'm
+     Prime Minister you shall be offered the Laurel at £200 a year._
+
+     _Yours ever
+
+     Com._
+
+It was jolly to hear from Comeragh like this, and the letter opened for
+Guy a prospect of something that, when he came to think about it,
+appeared very much like a retreat. He realized abruptly that the strain
+of the last two months had been playing upon his nerves to such an
+extent that the notion of leaving Wychford was no longer very
+distasteful. The realization of his potential apostasy came with rather
+a shock, and he felt that he ought somehow to atone to Pauline for the
+disloyalty toward her his attitude seemed to involve. He began to go to
+church again in a desperate endeavour to pursue the phantom that she
+called faith, but this very endeavour only made more apparent the vital
+difference in their relations with life. She always had for his attempts
+to capture something worth while for himself in religion a kind of
+questioning anxiety which was faintly irritating; and though he always
+pushed the problem hastily out of sight, the fact that he could now be
+irritated by her was dolefully significant.
+
+All through this month of maddening East wind Guy felt that he stood
+upon the verge of a catastrophe, and the despatch of the poems which at
+first had done so much to help matters along was now only another source
+of vexation. Formerly he had always possessed the refuge of work, but in
+this perpetual uncertainty he could not settle down to anything fresh,
+and the expectation every morning of his poems being once again rejected
+was a handicap to the whole day. Partly to plunge himself into a
+reaction and partly to avoid and even to crush their spiritual
+divergence Guy always made love passionately to Pauline during these
+days. He was aware that she was terribly tried by this, but the
+knowledge made him more selfishly passionate. A sort of brutality had
+entered into their relation which Guy hated, but to which in these
+circumstances that made him feverishly glad to wound her he allowed more
+liberty every day. The merely physical side of this struggle between
+them was of course accentuated by the gag placed upon discussion. He
+would not give her the chance of saying why she feared his kisses, and
+he took an unfair advantage of the conviction that Pauline would never
+declare a reason until he demanded one. He was horribly conscious of
+abusing her love for him, and the more he was aware of that, the more
+brutal he showed himself until sometimes he used to wonder in dismay if
+at the back of his mind the impulse to destroy his love altogether had
+not been born.
+
+Easter was approaching, and Pauline went to Oxford for a week to get
+summer clothes. When she came back, Guy found her attitude changed. She
+was remote, almost evasive, and at the back of her tenderest glance was
+now a wistful appeal that perplexed his ardour.
+
+"I feel you don't want me to kiss you," he said reproachfully. "What has
+happened? Why have you come back from Oxford so cold? What has happened
+to you, Pauline?"
+
+Her eyes took fire, melted into tenderness, flamed once more, and then
+were quenched in rising tears.
+
+The voice in which she answered him seemed to come from another world.
+
+"Guy, I am not cold ... I'm not cold enough...."
+
+She flung herself away from his gesture of endearment and buried her
+cheeks in the cushion of the faded old settee. A wild calm had fallen
+upon the room as if like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm it could
+register a warning of the emotional tempest at hand. The books, the
+furniture, the very pattern of birds and daisies upon the wall stood out
+sharply, almost luridly it seemed: the cuckoo from the passage called
+the hour in notes of alarm as if a stormcock were sweeping up to cover
+from dangerous open country.
+
+"What do you mean?" Guy asked. He knew that he was carrying the
+situation between Pauline and himself farther along than he had ever
+taken it since the night they met. Yet nothing could have stopped his
+course at this moment and, if the end should ruin his life, he would
+persist.
+
+"What do you mean?" he repeated.
+
+"Don't ask me," she sobbed. "It's cruel to ask me."
+
+"You mean your mother...." he began.
+
+"No, no, it's myself, myself."
+
+"My dearest, if it's only yourself, you need not be afraid. Why, you're
+so adorable...."
+
+Pauline seemed to cry out at the wound he had given her, and Guy started
+back afraid for an instant of what he was provoking.
+
+"Don't treat me like a stupid little girl that petting can cure. I'm not
+adorable, I'm bad ... I'm ... oh, Guy, I am so unhappy!"
+
+"What do you mean by 'bad'?" he asked. "You talk as if we were ...
+really, darling, you don't grasp life at all."
+
+"Guy," she said turning to him with fierce earnestness. "Don't persuade
+me I've done nothing. I have. I ought not. I've known that all the
+time. If you don't want me to be miserable for the rest of my life, you
+mustn't persuade me. I've been so weak...."
+
+He was annoyed at the exaggeration in her words and perplexed by her
+violence.
+
+"Anybody would think, you know," he told her, "that we had behaved
+terribly."
+
+"We have. We have."
+
+Her mouth was drawn with pain: her eyes were wild.
+
+"But we've not," Guy contradicted, mustering desperately all the forces
+of normality to allay Pauline's overstrained ideas. "We've not," he
+repeated. "You don't understand, darling Pauline, that when you talk
+like that you give the impression of something that is unimaginable of
+you. It's dreadful really to have to talk about this, but it's better
+that we should discuss it than that you should torture yourself
+needlessly like this."
+
+"It's not what we've done so much," she said. "It's what you've made me
+think about you."
+
+Guy laughed rather miserably.
+
+"That seems a very trifling reason for so much ... well, you know, it's
+very nearly hysteria."
+
+"To you, perhaps," she retorted bitterly. "To me it's like madness."
+
+"I can't understand these morbid fancies of yours. What have you been
+doing in Oxford? Ah, I know," he shouted in a rage of sudden divination.
+"You've been talking to a priest.... Oh, if I could burn every
+interfering scoundrel who...." The scene swept over him, choking the
+words in his throat with indignant impotent jealousy. "You've been to
+Confession. And what good have you got from it, but lies, lies?"
+
+"I've always been to Confession," Pauline answered coldly.
+
+In a flash Guy visualized her religious life as one long creeping
+toward a gloomy Confessional where lurked a smooth-faced priest who
+poured his poison into her ears.
+
+"You shall go no more," he vowed. "What right have you to drag the
+holiness of love in the mud of a priest's mind?"
+
+"You don't know how stupidly you're talking," said Pauline. "You say I
+exaggerate. You don't know how much you are exaggerating. You don't
+understand."
+
+"I thought you wanted me to have faith! How can I have faith when I hear
+of priests degrading our love. What right had you to go to a priest?
+What does he know of you or me? What has he suffered? What does he
+understand? Why do you listen to him and pay no heed to me? What did you
+say?"
+
+Pauline looked at him in silence.
+
+"What did you say?" he repeated angrily. He was caring for nothing at
+that moment but to tear from her the history of the scene that made a
+furnace of his brain. "He must have tried to put the idea into your head
+that you've been doing wrong. I say you have done nothing wrong. I
+suppose you told him you came out at night with me on the river and I
+suppose he concluded from that ... oh, Pauline, I cannot let you be a
+prey to the mind of a priest. You don't realize what it means to me. You
+don't realize the raging jealousy it rouses."
+
+"Guy," she moaned, "love is too much for me. I can't bear the
+uncertainty. Your debts ... the sending back of your poems ... the fear
+that we shall never be married ... the doubts ... the thought that I've
+deceived my family ... the misery I bring to you because I can't think
+everything is right...."
+
+"I don't want you always to agree with me. I've promised never to ask
+you again to come out with me at night. I'll even promise never to kiss
+you again, until we are married. But you must promise me never again to
+go to Confession."
+
+"I can't give up what I believe is right," she said.
+
+"Then I won't give up what I believe is right."
+
+He strained her to him and kissed her lips so closely that they were
+white instead of red. Then he went from her in an impulse to let her if
+she would break off the engagement. If he had stayed he must have
+blasphemed the religion which was soiling with its murk their love. He
+must have hurt her so deeply that he would have compelled her to bid him
+never come back. It was for her now, the responsibility of going on, and
+she should find what religion would do for her when she was left alone
+to battle with the infamous suggestions the fiction was giving to her
+mind. She should find that beside his love religion was nothing, that
+the folly would topple down and betray her at this very moment. When
+next he saw her, she would have forgotten her priests and their mummery:
+she would think only of him and live only for him.
+
+"Blow, you damned wind," he shouted to the brilliant and tranquil March
+day. "Blow, blow, can't you? You've blown all these days and now when I
+want you in my face, you lie still."
+
+But the weather stayed serene, and Guy had to run in order to tire the
+fury in his mind. He did not stop until he realized by the scampering of
+the March hares to right and left of his path how very absurd he must
+appear even to the blind heavens.
+
+"Why," he exclaimed suddenly standing still and addressing a thorn-tree
+on the green down. "Why, of course, now I realize the Reformation!"
+
+This sudden apprehension of a tremendous historical fact was rather
+disconcerting in the way it brought home to him the uselessness of all
+the information that he had for years absorbed without any real response
+of recognition. It brought home to him how much he would have to
+discover for himself and appalled him with the mockery it made of his
+confidence hitherto. How if all those poems he had written were merely
+external emotion like his conception of religion until this moment? He
+really hoped the manuscript would come back this evening from whatever
+publisher had last eyed it disdainfully, so that in the light of this
+revelation of his youthfulness he could judge his life's achievement
+afresh. It was indeed frightening that in one moment all his comfortable
+standards could be struck away from beneath his feet, for if an outburst
+of jealousy on account of a priest's interference could suddenly
+re-shape his conception of history, what fundamental changes in his
+conception of art might not be waiting for him a little way ahead?
+
+The spectacle of Pauline's simple creed had hitherto pleasantly affected
+his senses; and she had taken her place with the heroines of romantic
+poets and painters. It had been pleasant to murmur:
+
+    _Pray but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips,_
+    _Think but one thought of me up in the stars:_
+
+and to compare himself with the lover of The Blessed Damozel had been a
+luxurious melancholy. Pauline and he had worshipped together in chapels
+of Lyonesse where, if he had knelt beside her with rather a tender
+condescension toward her prayers, he had always been moved sincerely by
+the decorative appeal they made to him. He had felt a sentimental awe of
+her hushed approach to the altar and he had derived a kind of
+sentimental satisfaction from the perfection of her attitude, perhaps,
+even more, he had placed upon it a sentimental reliance. Her faith had
+been the decorative adjunct of a great deal of his verse, and he flushed
+hotly to remember lines that now appeared as damnable insincerities with
+which he had allowed his pen to play. All that piety of hers he had
+sung so prettily was real and possessed an intrinsic power to injure
+him, so that what he had patronized and encouraged could rise up and pit
+itself deliberately against him. Pauline actually believed in her
+religion, believed in it to the extent of dishonouring their love to
+appease the mumbo-jumbo. That something so monstrously inexistent could
+have any such power was barely comprehensible, and yet here he was faced
+with what easily might prove to be a force powerful enough to annihilate
+their love. He remembered how in reading of Christina Rossetti's
+renunciation of a lover who did not believe as she believed, he had
+thought of the incident as a poet's exaggeration. And it might well have
+happened. Now indeed he could see why she was so much the greatest
+poetess of them all: her faith had been real. Lines from that Sonnet of
+sonnets came back to him, broken lines but full of dread:
+
+                _I love ... God the most;_
+    _Would lose not Him but you, must one be lost:_
+
+And if Pauline should speak so to him, if Pauline should disown him at
+the bidding of her phantom gods? How the thought swept into oblivion all
+his pitiful achievement, all his fretful emotions set down in rhyme.
+Either he must convince her that she was affrighted by vain fancies or
+he must bow before this reality of belief and seek humbly the truth
+where she discovered it. Yet if he took that course, it held no pledge
+of faith for him. Shamefacedly and scarcely able to bear even the
+thorn-tree's presence Guy knelt down and prayed that he might be given
+Pauline's single heart. The song of the innumerable larks rose into the
+crystalline, but all the prayers tumbled down from that stuffy pavilion
+of sky. The moment that the first emotional aspiration was thus defeated
+Guy was only conscious of his lapse into superstition, and furious with
+the surrender he went walking over the downs in a determination to shake
+Pauline's faith at whatever the cost temporarily to the beautiful
+appearance of their love.
+
+He wrote that evening in a fine frenzy of declamation against God,
+affirming in his verse the rights of man; but on reading the lines
+through next morning they seemed like the first vapours of adolescence;
+and when he turned for consolation to Shelley, he found that even a
+great poet's rage on behalf of man against God was often turgid enough.
+It was however a hopeful sign that he could still perceive what puddles
+these aerial fountains of song often left behind them, and he was glad
+to find that not all the value of critical experience had been destroyed
+by the imperative need to readjust his values of reality.
+
+Birdwood brought a note from Pauline just when Guy had burnt his
+effusion of the night before and come to the conclusion that as a
+polemical and atheistic rhymester he was of the very poorest quality.
+
+The gardener was inclined to be chatty, and when the weather and the
+flowers in season had been discussed at length, he observed that Miss
+Pauline was not looking so well as she ought to look.
+
+"You'll have to speak to her about it, Mr. Hazlenut."
+
+Birdwood had never learned to give Guy his proper name, and there had
+been many jokes between him and Pauline about this and many vows by Guy
+that one day he would address the gardener as Birdseed. How far away
+such foolish little jokes were seeming now.
+
+"It's been a tiring Spring," said Guy. "The East wind...."
+
+"Her cheeks isn't nothing like so rosy as they was," said the gardener.
+"You'll excuse the liberty I'm taking in mentioning them, but having
+known Miss Pauline since she couldn't walk ... why I happen to mention
+it is that there was a certain somebody up in the town who passed the
+remark to me and, I having to give him a piece of my mind pretty sharp
+on account of him talking so free, it sort of stuck in my memory and ...
+you don't think she's middling?"
+
+"Oh, no, I think she's quite well," said Guy.
+
+"Well, as long as you aren't worrited, I don't suppose I've got any call
+to be worrited; only anyone can't help it a bit when they see witches'
+cheeks on a young lady. She certainly does look middling, but maybe, as
+you say, it is this unnatural East wind."
+
+Birdwood touched his cap and retired, but his words had struck at Guy
+remorsefully while he walked away to a corner of the orchard, reading
+Pauline's letter. The starlings were piping a sweet monotony of Spring,
+and daffodils, that he and she had planted last Summer when they came
+back from Ladingford, haunted his path.
+
+     _My darling,_
+
+     _Why haven't you been to see me this morning? Why weren't you in
+     the orchard? I stayed such a long while in the churchyard, but you
+     never came. If I said anything yesterday that hurt your feelings,
+     forgive me. You mustn't think that I was angry with you because
+     perhaps I spoke angrily. Darling, darling Guy, I adore you so, and
+     nothing else but you matters to my happiness. I should not have
+     spoken about religion--I don't know how we came to argue about it.
+     It was unkind of me to be depressed and sad when my dearest was
+     sad. Truly, truly I am so anxious about your poems only because I
+     want you to be happy. Sometimes I must seem selfish, but you know
+     that before anything it is your work I think of. I'm not really a
+     bit worried about our being married. I have these fits of
+     depression which are really very wrong. I'm not worried about
+     anything really, only I had a dream about you last month which
+     frightened me. Oh, Guy, come this afternoon and tell me you're not
+     angry. I promise you that I won't make you miserable with my stupid
+     depression. Guy, if I could only tell you how I love you. If you
+     only knew how never, never for an instant do I care for anything
+     but your happiness. You don't really want me to give up believing
+     in anything do you? It doesn't really make you angry, does it? Come
+     and tell me this afternoon that you've forgiven_
+
+     _Your
+
+     Pauline._
+
+     _I love you. I love you._
+
+Gently the daffodils swayed in this light breeze of dying March, and the
+grass was already tall enough to sigh forth its transitory summer tune.
+Guy in a flood of penitence hastened at once to the Rectory to accuse
+himself to Pauline, and when he saw her watching for him at the nursery
+window he had no regrets that could stab to wound him as deeply as he
+deserved to be wounded. She was very tender and still that afternoon,
+and as he held her in his arms there seemed to him nothing more worth
+while in life than her cherishing. For them sitting in that nursery the
+hours swung lazily to and fro in felicity, and all the time there was
+nobody to disturb the reconciliation. They talked only of the future and
+allowed recent despairs and foreboding agitations to slink away
+disgraced. Janet, coming to take away the tea-things, beamed at their
+happiness and through a filigree of bare jasmine twigs the slanting sun
+touched with new life the faded wall-paper, opening wider, it seemed,
+the daisies' eyes, mellowing the berries and tinting the birds with
+brighter plumes for their immutable and immemorial courtship.
+
+Plunged deep in such a peace Guy prompted by damnable discord asked idly
+what had been that dream of which Pauline had spoken in her letter. She
+was unwilling for a long while to tell him, but he spurred on by
+mischief itself persuaded her in the end and she recounted that
+experience of waking to find herself prone upon the floor of her room.
+
+"No wonder you're looking pale," he exclaimed. "Now you see the result
+of exciting yourself unnecessarily."
+
+"But it was so vivid," she protested, "and really the light was blinding
+and it thought so terribly all the time."
+
+"I shall think very terribly that you've been reading some
+spiritualistic rot in a novel," said Guy, "if you talk like that. Your
+religion may be true, but I'm quite sure these conjuring tricks of your
+fancy are a sign of hysteria. And this poor speck that was me? How did
+you know it was me if it was a speck? Did that think too? My foolish
+Pauline, you encouraged your morbid ideas when you were awake and when
+you were asleep you paid the penalty."
+
+She had gone away from him and was standing by the window.
+
+"Guy, if you talk like that, it means you don't really love me. It means
+you have no sympathy, that you're cold and cruel and cynical."
+
+He sighed with elaborate compassion for her state of mind.
+
+"And what else? I wonder how you ever managed to fall in love with me."
+
+"Sometimes I wonder too," she said slowly.
+
+He turned quickly and went out of the room.
+
+Guy regretted before he was half-way down the passage what he had done,
+but he steeled himself against going back by persuading himself that
+Pauline's hysteria must be remorselessly checked. All the way back to
+Plashers Mead he had excuses for his behaviour, and all the way he was
+wondering if he had done right. Supposing that she were to persist in
+this exaggeration of everything, who could say into what extravagance of
+attitude she might not find herself driven? Rage seized him against this
+malady that was sapping the foundations of their love, and all his
+affection for her was obscured in the contemplation of that overwrought
+Pauline who sacrificed herself to baseless doubts and alarms. If he
+once admitted her right to dream ridiculously about him, he would be
+encouraging her upon the road to madness. Had she not already fondled
+the notion of going mad, just as she would often fondle the picture of
+herself as the heroine of an unhappy love-affair? If he were severe now,
+she would surely come to see the absurdity of these religious fears,
+this heart-searching and morbid sensitiveness. It was curious that he
+was able to keep his idea of Pauline herself quite apart from Pauline as
+the subject of nervous depression. He was practically ascribing to her a
+double personality, so distinct were the two views of her in his mind.
+When he got home he found the manuscript had been sent back by a seventh
+publisher, and on top of the packet lay a letter from his friend
+Comeragh.
+
+     420 BROOK STREET, W.
+
+     _Dear Guy,_
+
+     _Sir George Gascony asked me to-day if I knew of someone who would
+     suit him as private secretary. He's going out to Persia next month.
+     I told him about you. Come up to town and meet him. He's dining
+     here on Thursday. I'm certain you can have the job._
+
+     _Yours ever
+
+     Comeragh._
+
+At first the letter only presented itself to his imagination as an easy
+way of punishing Pauline's hysteria. It seemed to him the very weapon
+that was wanted to 'give her a lesson,' and after dinner he went across
+to the Rectory and announced his news in front of everybody, asking
+everybody if they did not think he ought to go and talking
+enthusiastically of oriental adventure until quite late. He sternly
+refused to allow himself a moment alone with Pauline in which to talk
+over the plan; and, even when they were left alone together in the hall
+he kissed her good-night hurriedly and silently and rather guiltily.
+
+When Guy was back at home and thought about his behaviour, he began to
+wonder if he had committed himself to Persia too finally. The prospect,
+except so far as it would affect Pauline, had not really sunk into his
+mind yet, but now as he read the letter over he began to think that he
+really would like to go. It might mean a separation of two years but it
+would reconcile him to his father and it would assure his marriage at
+the end of the time. Persia might easily be almost as interesting as it
+sounded, and how remote from debts looked Baghdad. If last year he had
+been able practically to settle to be a schoolmaster, how much more
+easily could this resolution be taken. Dreamily he let his imagination
+play round the notion of Persia, dreamily and rather pleasantly it would
+solve so many difficulties and it held the promise of so much active
+romance.
+
+Next morning Mrs. Grey sent round to ask if Guy would come to lunch
+early enough to have a talk with her first.
+
+"Yes ... charming.... I really wanted us to have a little talk
+together," she said in nervous welcome, as she led the way to her own
+sitting-room that with its red lacquer and its screen painted with birds
+of paradise hid itself away in a corner of the house. Ordinarily Guy
+would have accepted it as a sign of the highest favour to be brought to
+her small room, but this morning it seemed to imprison him.
+
+"Yes ... charming ... a little talk," said Mrs. Grey; and Guy while he
+waited for her to begin, watched the mandarins that moved in absurd
+reduplications all about her armchair's faded green pattern.
+
+"Of course it was rather a surprize to us all last night ... yes ... I
+expect it was a surprize to you. And you really think you ought to go?"
+
+"I'm getting rather discouraged about poetry," Guy confessed. "I'm
+beginning to think that what I've written isn't much good and that if I
+am ever going to write anything worth while, it will be because I've
+learnt to be less self-conscious about it. If I went to Persia with Sir
+George Gascony I should probably be kept fairly busy and if there was
+any poetry left in me after that, well, it might be good stuff."
+
+"But you've not seen yet what people think of what you have written ...
+no ... you see the poems haven't been published yet, which is very
+vexing ... and so I thought ... I mean the Rector thought that if there
+was any difficulty he would like to help you to publish them ... yes ...
+rather than go away to Persia ... you know ... yes ... poor little
+Pauline was crying nearly all night and I don't think you ought to go
+away suddenly like this ... no ... and we couldn't find an atlas
+anywhere!"
+
+"You think I ought not to go?" said Guy, and he realized as he spoke
+that he was disappointed.
+
+"I do think that after all these months of hoping for your poems to be a
+success that you ought at least to try them first, and then afterwards
+we can talk about Persia. I'm afraid you think I've been too strict
+about Pauline ... perhaps I have ... yes ... and so I think that now
+Spring is here you can go out every day ... yes ... charming ... now
+that the weather is getting better...."
+
+But now every day, thought Guy bitterly, there would be recriminations
+between them.
+
+"Of course if you think I ought not to go, I won't," he said. "I'll
+write to Comeragh and refuse."
+
+"I'm sure you're glad, aren't you?"
+
+"Oh, rather."
+
+"We all understood why you thought you ought to go, and now I've another
+plan ... yes ... charming.... I'm going to send Pauline away for a month
+... with Miss Verney ... yes ... charming, charming plan ... and you
+must make arrangements at once about your poems ... and then perhaps you
+could give them to Pauline for her birthday...."
+
+"But I don't think the Rector ought to pay for them," Guy objected.
+
+"The Rector wants to pay for them. But of course he won't say anything
+about it, and you will have to make the arrangements yourself."
+
+"You're all so good to me, and I feel such a fraud," said Guy.
+
+"You'd better make arrangements with the man you sent them to first ...
+and Pauline needn't know anything about it ... and I shan't say I've
+persuaded you not to go to China ... or else she will be worried ...
+she's looking rather pale ... I think two or three weeks by the seaside
+... Lyme Regis perhaps or Cromer ... Lyme Regis, I think, because the
+trains to Folkestone have been torn out ... yes ... charming, charming."
+
+After lunch Guy told Pauline in the garden that he had decided not to
+accept the post he had been offered, and she was so obviously overjoyed
+at his decision, that he no longer had the heart to feel the slightest
+disappointment.
+
+"Guy, I've been so stupid," she told him. "I've depressed you without
+any reason, but I will come back from Scarborough quite well."
+
+Guy began to laugh.
+
+"Oh, why are you laughing?"
+
+"Dearest, because I cannot make out where you really are going."
+
+"Scarborough, because Miss Verney has chosen Scarborough."
+
+They talked for a while of the letters that each would write to the
+other and of what a Summer should follow that short parting, when every
+day they would be together and when perhaps even such days as those at
+Ladingford might come again.
+
+"And you won't worry about anything all this time you're away?" Guy
+asked.
+
+"I won't, indeed I won't."
+
+Guy went home to find a telegram from Comeragh saying that Sir George
+Gascony had got appendicitis and would not be going to Persia for a
+month or two at least. Yet he did not mention this telegram at the
+Rectory when next day he came to say good-bye to Pauline, because he was
+anxious to preserve the idea of his having vainly attempted to do
+something, and when he sat alone in his orchard the same afternoon, he
+had an emotion of something very near to relief that for a while there
+would be no more heart-searchings and stress, no more misgivings and
+reproaches and despairs. He was perfectly happy, sitting by himself in
+the orchard and staring at the blackthorn by the margin of the stream.
+
+
+
+
+_April_
+
+
+Miss Verney was so droll at Scarborough and enjoyed herself so much that
+Pauline in her pleasure at the success of what the old maid called their
+'jaunt' really was able to put aside for the present her own
+perplexities. The sands were empty at this season and the Spa unpopulous
+except for a few residents. The wind blew inland from a sparkling sea,
+while Miss Verney with bonnet all awry sitting in a draughty shelter
+declared that somehow like this she pictured the Riviera; and when the
+weather was too bad even for Miss Verney's azure dreams Pauline and she
+sat cosily among the tropic shells and Berlin wool of their lodgings.
+Long letters used to come every day from Guy, and long letters had to be
+written by Pauline to him; while perpetually Miss Verney tinkled on with
+marine tales that if no doubt nautically inaccurate had nevertheless a
+fine flavour of salt water.
+
+"I remember I was sitting in the parlour window at Southsea when a
+regiment.... I remember a Captain in the Royal Marines.... I remember
+how anxious my father was that I should have been a boy."
+
+"Oh, dear Miss Verney, you can't remember that."
+
+"Oh, yes, he invariably spoke of me as the Midshipman, I remember. I
+would then have been about eight years of age ... pray give my very kind
+regards to Mr. Guy and say how well we are both looking and what a
+benefit this fine air is to be sure, and don't forget our little
+expedition to the theatre. You must tell Mr. Guy the story of the piece.
+He will certainly enjoy hearing about that very nice-mannered convict
+who ... ah dear! how my poor father used to revel in the play."
+
+Miss Verney's conversation scarcely ever stopped, and while Pauline was
+writing letters it was always particularly brisk, but she used to enjoy
+the accompaniment as she would have enjoyed the twittering of a bird. It
+seemed to inspire her letters with the equable gaiety that Guy was so
+glad to think was coming back to her. His own letters were invariably
+cheerful, and Pauline began to count the days to the time when she would
+see him again. Easter had gone by, and the weather was so steadily fine
+that it was a pity not to be together. He wrote of primroses awaiting
+her footsteps in the forest, of blue dog-violets and cowslips in the
+hollows of Wychford down, of all the birds that were now arrived in
+England, of the cuckoo's first call and of the first swallow seen.
+
+     _Come back soon, my own, my sweet,_ he wrote. _Come back and let
+     this winter be all forgotten. I climbed up to the top of the church
+     tower to-day, and oh, the tulips in your garden and oh, the
+     emptiness of that garden notwithstanding! Come back, my Pauline,
+     for you'll see the iris buds in the paddock and you've no idea of
+     the way in which that river of ours sparkles on these April
+     mornings. I wish I could tell you how remote this Winter already
+     has grown. It has crept out of memory like a dejected nightmare at
+     breakfast. You are never to think again about the stupid things
+     I've said about religion: think only, my dearest, that I hope
+     always for your faith. It would be dishonest of me to say that I
+     believe now exactly as you believe, but I want to believe like
+     that. Perhaps I'm illogical in writing this: perhaps all the time I
+     do believe. Forget too what I said about Confession. I would almost
+     go myself to prove my penitence (to you!), but I just can't bring
+     myself to do that, because for me it really would be useless and
+     would turn me against everything you count as holy. Forget all that
+     has cast a shadow on our love. Count it all as my heedlessness and
+     be confident that I alone was to blame. I would write more, but
+     letters are such impossible things for intimacy. Some people can
+     pour out their souls on paper: I can't. That's really what my poems
+     suffer from. I have been working at them again since you were away,
+     and they have a kind of coldness, a sort of awkward youthful
+     reserve. Perhaps that's better than youthful exuberance, and yet I
+     don't know. One can prune the too prodigal growth, but one can't
+     always be sure of having the prodigality when one has the maturity.
+     The metaphors seem to be getting rather tied up, and you must be
+     bored by now with my chattering criticism._
+
+     _Your mother came to tea yesterday and brought Monica. Margaret is
+     rather in seclusion at present on account of Richard's arrival, I
+     fancy. She's obviously dreading other people's notice. It is rather
+     a self-conscious business, this waiting for the arrival of someone
+     whom everybody expects is going to play such an important part in
+     her life. If we were separated now for two years, it would be
+     different; but I can see that Margaret is dreadfully afraid that
+     now, having at last made up her mind to marry Richard, she may not
+     care for him as much as she did. He must be a fine fellow. I'm
+     looking forward tremendously to his coming. Monica was perfectly
+     delightful yesterday, and grew quite excited in her nun-like way
+     over the ultimate decoration of Plashers Mead. Dear me, what taste
+     you all have got, and what a very great deal you've taught me! You
+     must most of all forget that I ever said a word against your
+     sisters. They have really equipped me in a way with a point of view
+     toward art. I tried to tell Monica so yesterday afternoon. In fact
+     we got on very well together. In a way, you know, she almost
+     appreciates you more than Margaret does. You represent her hope,
+     her ideal of the world. Worldly one, I must say good-night. Tell
+     Miss Verney with my love that all her cats send their best respects
+     and compliments and that Bellerophon particularly requests that his
+     mistress will bring back whatever fish is in season at Scarborough.
+     Oh, the funniest thing I've forgotten to tell you! Miss Peasey was
+     chased by some bullocks across the big field behind the orchard!
+     She was too priceless about it when she got home._
+
+Pauline began to think it was impossible for her ever to have had the
+least worry in the course of her engagement. This was the first time she
+had been parted from Guy for more than a week during the whole of a
+year, and there was something very reassuring in such an opportunity to
+regard him like this so disinterestedly, to find that the separation was
+having the traditional effect and to be positive that she was going to
+meet him again at the end of April more in love than ever. Nevertheless
+she was always aware of being grateful for the repose from problems, and
+she did once or twice play with the idea of having perhaps made a
+mistake in objecting to his going abroad. It was on occasions of doubt
+like this that Pauline would try to impress Miss Verney with what
+existence had already meant to her.
+
+"I'm feeling so old, Miss Verney."
+
+"Old, my dear? Oh, that cannot be true," exclaimed her friend.
+
+"Falling very much in love does make one feel old," Pauline declared.
+
+"Let me see," Miss Verney went on, "let me try to remember how I felt.
+My impression is _now_ that when I was in love I felt much younger that
+I do at present, but perhaps that is natural, for it is very nearly
+thirty years ago since William and I parted."
+
+"Is he still alive?"
+
+"Oh, yes, he is still alive, but I have never seen him and he must be
+wonderfully altered. Sometimes I think of all the days that have gone by
+since we parted. It seems so strange to think of our lives being able to
+go on, when once it seemed to both of us that life could not go on at
+all if we were not together. It seems so strange to think of him eating
+his lunch somewhere at the same time that somewhere else I am eating my
+lunch. Who knows if he ever thinks of me, who knows indeed?"
+
+"If anything happened to prevent our marriage," began Pauline
+thoughtfully, and then was silent.
+
+Miss Verney opened wide her pale blue eyes.
+
+"And what could happen?" she asked grandly.
+
+"I've no business to imagine such a thing, have I?"
+
+"None whatever," said Miss Verney decidedly.
+
+But had Miss Verney's love affair been complicated by anything more than
+merely natural difficulties? Guy's debts and unsuccess were nothing in
+comparison with other elements of disaccord ... and then Pauline pulled
+herself up from brooding and resolutely forced her mind to contemplate a
+happy Summer. Had she not just now been congratulating herself upon the
+disappearance of all worries in this sea-air?
+
+The time at Scarborough drew to a close, and about a week before her
+birthday came the news of Richard's arrival from India. She and Miss
+Verney packed up and were home in Wychford two days before they were
+expected.
+
+"Richard, how lovely to see you again," Pauline cried. "And oh, Richard,
+I'm sure you've grown. Don't you think he has grown?" she demanded of
+everybody. "Richard, how clever of you to grow when you're
+twenty-seven."
+
+It was really like old times to go babbling on like this, while Richard
+sat and smiled encouragingly and spoke never a word.
+
+"Coming for a stroll?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, but I ought to see Guy first," she said. "Richard, I hope you like
+Guy."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Do you think he looks like a poet?"
+
+"Never seen a poet before," said Richard.
+
+"Oh, but like your idea of a poet?"
+
+"Never thought much about poets," said Richard. "So you aren't coming
+for a stroll?"
+
+"I will to-morrow, but I must spend the sunset with Guy."
+
+Guy was waiting for her by the paddock, and they floated downstream out
+of reach of people. In their own peninsula they kissed away the absence
+of twenty-two days.
+
+"You look much better," said Guy critically.
+
+"I'm perfectly well."
+
+"And happy?"
+
+She answered him with her eyes.
+
+"Why, Pauline, I believe you're quite shy of me!"
+
+She blushed.
+
+"I really am a little, you know," she whispered. "Did you like Richard?
+Oh, Guy, I hope you did."
+
+"Of course I did."
+
+"And, Guy, you don't mind if I go for a walk with him to-morrow morning?
+You see, I know he's longing to hear about Margaret and himself."
+
+"But you'll come out with me in the afternoon?"
+
+"Why, of course."
+
+"Then Richard may have the morning," said Guy. "And I hope you'll
+arrange everything between him and Margaret so successfully that he
+won't steal any more hours from me."
+
+When Pauline had left Guy that evening she thought how strangely it had
+been like meeting him for the first time all over again. Or rather it
+was as if they had walked a long way down the wrong road and were now
+beginning to walk somewhat tentatively along what she hoped was surely
+the right road at last. Her duty was above all to help Guy with the
+material burdens: she must never again let him think that his debts or
+his prospects had any power to worry her. Merely most tactfully must she
+try to keep him from extravagance, and, oh dear, how she hoped that he
+had not bought her an expensive birthday present. It was too late to
+say anything about it now, but if Guy had been wisely economical, how
+happy she would be. How she hoped too that Richard had not brought home
+from India a present that would annoy Margaret. Really it was a most
+oppressive business, this week before her coming of age, for between
+Guy's extravagance and Richard's ... well, it was really not so much bad
+taste as Indian taste. She would love anything he gave her of course,
+but perhaps he would consult beforehand with Margaret. Dear Richard, he
+was so sweet and touching, and if only he had not brought her something
+very elaborately carved. She met him next morning half way to Fairfield,
+and two years were obliterated as she kept pace with his long stride
+when they turned aside from the high road and tramped upward over the
+grassy wold.
+
+"Richard, isn't it very hot in India?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"And didn't you ever get used to walking a bit more slowly in India?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"You lazy little thing. I thought you and Aunt Verney had been in
+training at Scarborough. Come on, let's sit down then."
+
+They sat down, and Richard drew with his stick in the close turf.
+
+"Is that your bridge?" Pauline asked with all the interest she could put
+into her voice.
+
+He laughed for a long time.
+
+"Pauline, you villain, it's the beginning of Margaret's face!"
+
+She clapped her hands.
+
+"Oh, Richard, aren't I a villain? But, you know, it's not very
+frightfully like anything, is it?"
+
+"Pauline," he said suddenly in that sharp voice in which two years ago
+he had entrusted his interests to her before he went away. "Pauline, is
+Margaret going to marry me?"
+
+"Why, of course she is, Richard."
+
+"Has she spoken to you about me?"
+
+"But you know she never speaks about her own affairs and that she can't
+bear anybody else to speak of them to her."
+
+"Then how do you know?" he asked.
+
+"Well, perhaps because I'm so much in love with Guy," Pauline whispered.
+
+"I don't see how that quite works. I'm a very dull sort of a chap after
+that Guy of yours."
+
+"But you're not at all," Pauline declared. "And if you take my advice
+you won't think you're dull. You'll make Margaret marry you. Really I'm
+sure that what she would like best is to be made to do something. You
+see, she's a darling but she is just a very tiny little bit spoilt. You
+mustn't be so patient with her. But, Richard dear, I know she loves you,
+because she practically told Guy that she did."
+
+"Guy?" he echoed looking rather indignant.
+
+"Well, you must understand how sweet Margaret was to him about me. She
+was so sympathetic, and really she practically brought about our
+engagement. Oh, I do love her so, Richard, and I do want her to be happy
+and I do know so dreadfully well that you are the very person to make
+her happy."
+
+"Pauline, you are a pink brick," he avowed.
+
+And scarcely another word did he say for the rest of their walk.
+
+Pauline went to Margaret's room that night and, after fidgeting all the
+while her sister was undressing, suddenly plunged down beside her bed
+and caught hold of her hand.
+
+"Margaret, you're not to snub me, because I absolutely must speak. I
+must beg you not to keep Richard waiting any longer. Do, my darling,
+darling Margaret, do be kind to him and not so cold. He simply adores
+you, and ... why, Margaret, you're crying ... oh, let me kiss you, my
+Margaret, because you were so wonderful about Guy, and I've been a beast
+to you and you must, you must be happy."
+
+"If I could only love him as you love Guy," Margaret sighed between her
+tears.
+
+"You do really ... at least perhaps not quite as much. Oh, Margaret,
+don't be angry with me if I whisper something to you: think how much you
+would love him if you and he had ... Margaret, you know what I mean."
+
+Pauline blew out the candle and rushed from the dark room; and lying
+awake in her own bed, she fancied among the flowers of the Rectory such
+fairy children for Margaret and herself, such fairy children dancing by
+the margin of the river.
+
+
+
+
+_May_
+
+
+On the morning before Pauline's birthday Guy received a letter from
+Michael Fane announcing abruptly his engagement and adding that on
+account of worldly opposition he had been persuaded into a postponement
+of his marriage for two months. Guy was rather ironically amused by the
+serious manner in which Michael took so brief a delay, and he could not
+help thinking how unreasonably impatient of trifles people with ample
+private means often showed themselves. Michael wrote that he would like
+to spend some of his probation at Plashers Mead and alluded to the
+'luck' of his friend in being so near his Pauline.
+
+Guy wrote a letter of congratulation, and then he put Michael's news out
+of his mind in order to examine the two complete sets of the proofs of
+his poems which had also arrived that morning. He was engaged in the
+task of making rather a clumsy binding for them out of a piece of
+stained vellum, when Richard Ford came round to Plashers Mead. Guy
+welcomed him gladly, for besides the personal attraction he felt toward
+this lean and silent engineer he perceived in the likelihood of
+Richard's speedy marriage an earnest of his own. Somehow that marriage
+was going to break the spell of inactivity, to which at the Rectory all
+seemed to be subject and from which Guy was determined to keep Richard
+free, even if it were necessary to shake him as continuously as tired
+wanderers in the snow are shaken out of a dangerous sleep.
+
+"I came round to consult with you about my present to Pauline
+to-morrow," said Richard very solemnly. "I've brought round one or two
+little things, so that you could give me your advice."
+
+"Why, of course I will," said Guy.
+
+"They're downstairs in the hall. I had some difficulty in explaining to
+your housekeeper that I wasn't a pedlar."
+
+In the hall was stacked a pile completely representative of the bazaar:
+half-a-dozen shawls, the model of a temple, a carved table, some inlaid
+stools, every sort of typical oriental gewgaw, in fact an agglomeration
+that seemed to invite the smell of cheap incense for its effective
+display.
+
+"Godbold drove them over," Richard explained as he saw Guy's
+astonishment. "Now look here, what's the best present for Pauline? You
+see I'm not at all an artistic sort of chap, and I don't want to hoick
+forward something that's going to be more of a nuisance than anything
+else."
+
+"It's really awfully difficult to choose," said Guy rather ambiguously.
+
+Then he discovered a simple ivory paper-knife which he declared was just
+the thing, having the happy thought that he would not cut the set of
+proofs he was binding for Pauline, so that to-morrow Richard could have
+the pleasure of beholding his gift put to immediate use.
+
+"You've chosen the smallest thing of the lot," said the disappointed
+donor. "You don't think a shawl as well?" he asked, holding up yards of
+gaudy material.
+
+"Well, candidly I think Pauline's too fair for that colour scheme, don't
+you?"
+
+"All right, the paper-knife. You don't mind if I leave these things here
+till Godbold can fetch them away, and ... er.... I wish you'd choose
+something for yourself. I've always taken a kind of interest in this
+house, don't you know, and I've often thought about it in India."
+
+"I'd like a gong," said Guy at once, and Richard was obviously gratified
+by his quick choice, and still farther gratified when Guy suggested they
+should sound it immediately outside the kitchen-door. Solemnly Richard
+held it up in the passage, while Guy crashed forth a glorious clamour,
+at the summons of which Miss Peasey came rushing out.
+
+"Good gracious," she gasped. "I thought that dog Bob had jumped through
+the window."
+
+"This is a present for us from India," Guy shouted.
+
+"Oh, that's extremely handsome, isn't it? Well now, I shall expect you
+to be punctual in future for your meals. Dear me, yes, quite a variety,
+I'm sure, after that measley bell."
+
+The gong was given a prominent position in the bare hall, and Guy
+invited Richard up to his own room. After the question of the presents
+had been solved Richard was shy and silent again, and Guy found it very
+hard to make conversation. Several times his visitor seemed on the point
+of getting something off his mind, but when he was given an opportunity
+for speech, he never accepted it. Desperate for a topic Guy showed him
+the proofs of the poems and explained that he was binding them roughly
+as his present to Pauline to-morrow.
+
+"That's something I can't understand," said Richard intensely. "Writing!
+It beats me!"
+
+"Bridges would beat me," said Guy.
+
+Richard looked quite cheerful at this notion and under the influence of
+the encouragement he had received seemed at last on the point of getting
+out what he wanted to say, but he could manage nothing more confidential
+than a tug at his bristled fair moustache.
+
+"When are you and Margaret going to be married?" Guy asked abruptly, for
+of course he had guessed that it was Margaret's name which was
+continually on the tip of his tongue.
+
+"By Jove, there you are, I'm rather stumped," said Richard gloomily.
+"You see the thing is ... well ... I suppose you know that when I
+started off to India last June year, Margaret and I were sort of engaged
+... at least I was certainly engaged to her, only she hadn't absolutely
+made up her mind about me ... and of course that's just what you'd
+expect would happen to a chap like me ... dash it all, Hazlewood, I'm
+afraid to ask her again!"
+
+"I don't think you need be," said Guy. "Of course we haven't discussed
+you, except very indirectly," he hastily added, "but I'm positive that
+Margaret is only waiting for you to ask her to marry her on some
+definite day: on some definite day, Ford, that's the great thing to
+remember."
+
+"You mean I ought to say 'Margaret, will you marry me on the twelfth of
+August, or the first of September?' That's your notion, is it?"
+
+Guy nodded.
+
+"By gad, I'll ask her to-day," said Richard.
+
+"And you'll be engaged to-morrow," Guy prophesied.
+
+"When are you and Pauline going to be married?"
+
+Guy looked up quickly to see if the solid Richard were laughing at him,
+but there was nothing in those steel-blue eyes except the most
+benevolent enquiry.
+
+"That's the question," said Guy. "Writing is not quite such a certainty
+as bridge-building."
+
+"You mean there's the difficulty of money? By Jove, that's bad luck,
+isn't it? Still, you know, I expect that having the good fortune to have
+Pauline in love with you ... well, I expect, you've got to expect a bit
+of difficulty somewhere, you know. You know, Pauline was...." he stopped
+and blinked at the window.
+
+"Pauline's awfully fond of you," Guy said encouragingly.
+
+"Hazlewood, that kid's been ... well, I can't express myself, you know,
+but I'd ... well, I really can't talk about her."
+
+"I understand though," said Guy. "Look here, you'll stay and have lunch
+with me, and then we can go across to the Rectory afterwards."
+
+Emotional subjects were tacitly put on one side to talk of the birds and
+butterflies that one might expect to find round Wychford, of Miss Verney
+and Godbold and other local characters, or of the prospects of the
+cricket team that year. After lunch Guy put the unbound set of proofs in
+his pocket and, launching the canoe, they floated down to the Rectory
+paddock. Mrs. Grey and the girls were all in the garden picking purple
+tulips, and Guy taking Pauline aside told her on what momentous quest
+Richard was come, suggesting that he should occupy the Rector's
+attention, while Pauline lured away her mother and Monica.
+
+The Rector was sitting in the library hard at work, rubbing the fluff
+from the anemone seeds with sand.
+
+"And what can I do for you, Sir?" he asked.
+
+"I thought you'd like to see the proofs of my poems," said Guy.
+
+He laid the duplicates on the dusty table and tried to thank his patron
+for what he had done. The Rector waved a clay pipe deprecatingly.
+
+"You must thank Constance ... you must thank my wife, if you thank
+anybody. But if I were you I shouldn't thank anybody till you find out
+for certain that she's done you a service," he recommended with a
+twinkle.
+
+Guy laughed.
+
+"Worrall doesn't want to publish until the Autumn."
+
+The Rector made a face.
+
+"All that time to wait for the verdict?"
+
+"Time seems particularly hostile to me," Guy said.
+
+"You'll have to tweak his forelock pretty hard."
+
+"That's what I've come to consult you about. Do you think I ought to go
+to Persia with Sir George Gascony? Mrs. Grey thought I oughtn't to take
+so drastic a step until I had first tested my poems in public. But I've
+been reading them through, and they don't somehow look quite as
+important in print as they did in manuscript. I can't help feeling that
+I ought to have a regular occupation. What do you really advise me to
+do, Mr. Grey?"
+
+The Rector held up his arms in mock dismay.
+
+"Gracious goodness me, don't implicate a poor country parson in such
+affairs! I can give you advice about flowers and I can pretend to give
+you advice about your soul, but about the world, no, no."
+
+"I think perhaps I'll get some journalistic work in town," Guy
+suggested.
+
+"Persia or journalism!" commented the Rector. "Well, well, they're both
+famous for fairy tales. I recommend journalism as being nearer at hand."
+
+"Then I'll take your advice."
+
+"Oh, dear me, you must not involve me in such a responsibility. Now, if
+you were a nice rational iris I would talk to you, but for a talented
+young man with his life before him I shouldn't even be a good quack.
+Come along, let's go out and look at the tulips."
+
+"You _will_ glance through my poems?" Guy asked diffidently.
+
+The Rector stood up and put his hand on the poet's shoulder.
+
+"Of course I will, my dear boy, and you mustn't be deceived by the
+manner of that shy old boor, the Rector of Wychford. Do what you think
+you ought to do, and make my youngest daughter happy. We shall be having
+her birthday before we know where we are."
+
+"It's to-morrow!"
+
+"Is it indeed? May Day. Of course. I remember last year I managed to
+bloom Iris Lorteti. But this year, no! That wet May destroyed Iris
+Lorteti. A delicate creature. Rose and brown. A delicate lovely
+creature."
+
+Guy and the Rector pored over the tulips a while where in serried
+borders they displayed their sombre sheen of amaranth and amethyst: then
+Guy strolled off to hear what was the news of Margaret and Richard.
+Pauline came flying to meet him down one of the long straight
+garden-paths.
+
+"Darling, they are to be married early in August," she cried.
+
+He caught her to him and kissed her, lest in the first poignant
+realization of other people's joy she might seem to be escaping from him
+utterly.
+
+Guy had a few minutes with Margaret before he went home that evening,
+and they walked beside the tulip borders, she tall and dark and
+self-contained in the fading light being strangely suited by association
+with such flowers.
+
+"Dear Margaret," he said, "I want to tell you how tremendously I like
+Richard. Now that sounds patronizing. But I'm speaking quite humbly.
+These sort of Englishmen have been celebrated enough perhaps, and lately
+there's been a tendency to laugh at them, but, my God, what is there on
+earth like the Richards of England? Margaret, you once very rightly
+reproved me for putting Pauline in a silver frame, do let me risk your
+anger and beg you never to put yourself in a silver frame from which to
+look out at Richard."
+
+"You do rather understand me, don't you?" she said offering him her
+hand.
+
+"Help Pauline and me," he begged.
+
+"Haven't I always helped you?"
+
+"Not always, but you will now that you yourself are no longer uncertain
+about your future. The moment you find yourself perfectly happy you'll
+be longing for everyone else to be the same."
+
+"But how haven't I helped you?" she persisted.
+
+"It would be difficult to explain in definite words. But I don't think
+my idea of your attitude toward us could have been entirely invented by
+my fancy."
+
+"What attitude? What do you mean, Guy?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"My dear, if you aren't conscious of it, I'm certainly not going to
+attempt to put it into words and involve myself in such a net."
+
+"How tantalizing you are!"
+
+"No, I'm not. If you have the least inclination to think I may be right,
+then you know what I mean and you can do what I ask. If you haven't the
+least notion of what I mean, then it was all my fancy and I'm certainly
+not going to give my baseless fancies away."
+
+"This is all too cryptic," she murmured.
+
+"Then let it remain undeciphered," he said smiling; and he led the
+conversation more directly toward their marriage and the strangeness of
+the Rectory without Margaret.
+
+Richard spent the night at Plashers Mead, and Guy heard the halting
+account of two years' uncertainty, of the bungalow that had been taken
+and embowered against Margaret's coming, and of the way in which his
+bridge had spanned not merely the river, but the very ocean, and even
+time itself.
+
+Pauline's birthday morning was cloudless, and Guy, though to himself he
+was inclined to blame the action as weak, went to church and knelt
+beside her. Then afterward there was the scene of breakfast on the lawn
+that already with only this first repetition wore for him an immemorial
+air, so that he could no longer imagine a May Day that was not thus
+inaugurated. The presentation of his poems in proof had not a bit less
+wonderful an effect than he had hoped, for Pauline could never finish
+turning over the pages and loving the ludicrously tumbledown binding.
+
+"Oh, it's so touching! I wish they could all be bound like this. And how
+I adore Richard's paper-knife."
+
+The four lovers disappeared after breakfast to enjoy the flashing May
+Day, and Monica left alone with her mother looked a little sad, she,
+the only one of those three lovely daughters of the Rectory still
+undisturbed by the demands of the invading world.
+
+May that year was like the fabled Spring of poets; and Guy and Pauline
+were left free to enjoy the passionate and merry month as perhaps never
+before had they enjoyed any season, not even that dreamed away fortnight
+at Ladingford last year. They had ceased for a while with the engagement
+of Richard and Margaret to be the central figures of the Rectory whether
+for blame or commendation, and desiring nothing better than to be left
+without interference they were lost in apple-blossom to every-day
+existence. Guy with the prospect of his poems' appearing in the Autumn
+felt that he was justified in forgetting responsibilities and, having
+weathered the financial crisis of the March quarter, he had now nothing
+to worry him until Midsummer. That was the date he had fixed upon in his
+mind as suitable for making a determined attempt upon London. He had
+planned to shut up Plashers Mead and to take a small room in Chelsea
+whence he would conquer in a few months the material obstacles that
+prevented their marriage. The poems now that they were in print seemed a
+less certain talisman to fame; but they would serve their purpose,
+indeed they had served their purpose already, for this long secluded
+time would surely counterbalance the too easy victories of journalism.
+He would surely by now have lost that spruce Oxford cleverness and might
+fairly expect to earn his living with dignity. The least success would
+justify his getting married, and Pauline would enjoy two years spent
+high in some London attic within the sound of chirping sparrows and the
+distant whispers of humanity. They would perhaps be able to afford to
+fly for magic weeks to Plashers Mead, pastoral interludes in that
+crowded life which lay ahead. How everything had resolved itself
+latterly, and how this gift of glorious May should be accepted as the
+intimate and dearest benefaction to their love. He and Pauline were
+together from earliest morn to the last minute of these rich and shadowy
+eves. They wreathed their boat with boughs of apple-blossom and went
+farther up the river than they had ever gone. The cuckoo was still in
+tune, and still the kingcups gilded all that hollow land: there was not
+yet the lush growth of weeds and reeds that indolent June would use to
+delay their dreaming progress: and still all the trees and all the
+hedges danced with that first sharp green of Spring, that cold and
+careless green of Spring.
+
+Then when the hawthorn came into prodigal bloom, and all the rolling
+country broke in endless waves of blossom, Pauline in her muslin dress
+seemed like an airy joy sustained by all these multitudinous petals,
+dancing upon this flowery tide, this sweet foam of May.
+
+"My flower, my sweet, are you indeed mortal?" he whispered.
+
+The texture of her sleeve against his was less tangible than the light
+breeze that puffed idly from the South to where they sat enraptured upon
+the damasked English grass. Apple-blossom powdered her lap and starred
+her light brown hair, and around them like a Circean perfume drowning
+the actual world hung the odorous thickets of hawthorn.
+
+The month glided along until the time of ragged robins came round again,
+and as if these flowers were positively of ill omen to Guy and Pauline,
+Mrs. Grey suddenly took it into her head again that they were seeing too
+much of each other.
+
+"I said you could see Pauline every day," she told Guy. "But I did not
+say all day."
+
+"But I shall be going away soon," he said, "and it seems a pity to lose
+any of this lovely month."
+
+"I'm sure I'm right ... and I did not know you had really decided to go
+away.... I'm sure, yes, I'm positive I'm right.... Why don't you be more
+like Margaret and Richard ... they aren't together all day long ... no,
+not all day."
+
+"But Pauline is so different from Margaret," Guy argued.
+
+"Yes, I know ... that's the reason ... she is too impulsive.... Yes,
+it's much better not to be together all the time.... I'm glad you've
+settled to go to London ... then perhaps you can be married next
+year...."
+
+A rule came into force again, and Guy began to feel the old exasperation
+against the curb upon youth's leisure. Rather unjustly he blamed
+Margaret, because he felt that the spectacle of her sedate affection
+made his for Pauline appear too wild and Pauline herself beside Margaret
+seem completely distraught with love.
+
+It pleased Guy rather, and yet in a way it rather annoyed him that
+Michael Fane should choose this moment to announce his intention of
+spending some time at Plashers Mead. Perhaps a little of the doubt was
+visible in his welcome, because Michael asked rather anxiously if he
+were intruding upon the May idyll: Guy laughed off the slight
+awkwardness and asked why Michael had not yet managed to get married.
+They talked about the evils of procrastination, but Guy could not at all
+see that Michael had much to complain of in a postponement of merely two
+months. His friend, however, was evidently rather upset, and he could
+not resist expatiating a little on his own grief with what Guy thought
+was the petulance of the too fortunate man. The warm May nights lulled
+them both and they used to pass pleasant evenings, leaning over the
+stream while the bats and fern-owls flew across the face of the
+decrescent moon; yet for Guy all the beauty of the season was more than
+ever endowed with intolerable fugacity.
+
+Pauline with Michael's arrival began to be moody again; would take no
+kind of interest in Michael's engagement; would only begin to see again
+the endless delays that hung so heavily round their marriage. Michael
+was not at all in the way, for he spent all the time writing to his
+lady-love, of whom he had told Guy really nothing; or he would sit in
+the lengthening grass of the orchard and read books of poetry, the pages
+of which used to wink with lucid reflections caught from the leaves of
+the fruit-trees overhead.
+
+Guy looked over his shoulder and saw that he was reading The Statue and
+the Bust:
+
+    _So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam_
+    _The glory dropped from their youth and love,_
+    _And both perceived they had dreamed a dream;_
+
+"That poem haunts me," exclaimed Guy with a shudder.
+
+    _Where is the use of the lip's red charm,_
+    _The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,_
+    _And the blood that blues the inside arm--_
+
+    _Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,_
+    _The earthly gift to an end divine?_
+
+"And yet I can't stop reading it," he sighed.
+
+    _How do their spirits pass, I wonder,_
+    _Nights and days in the narrow room?_
+
+    _Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder_
+    _What a gift life was, ages ago,_
+    _Six steps out of the chapel yonder._
+
+On this Summer morning the words wrote themselves in fire across his
+brain.
+
+"They light the way to dusty death," he muttered over and over again,
+when he had left Browning to Michael and flung himself face downward in
+the orchard grass.
+
+In despair of what a havoc time was making of their youth and their
+love, that very afternoon he begged Pauline to meet him again now in
+these dark nights of early Summer, now when soon he would be going away
+from her.
+
+"Going away?" she echoed in alarm. "I suppose that's the result of your
+friend's visit."
+
+Guy, however, was not going to surrender again, and he insisted that
+when a month had passed he would indeed be gone from Plashers Mead. It
+was nothing to do with Michael Fane: it was solely his own determination
+to put an end to this unprofitable dalliance.
+
+"But your poems? I thought that when your poems were published
+everything would be all right."
+
+"Oh, my poems," he scoffed. "They're valueless!"
+
+"Guy!"
+
+"They're mere decoration. They are trifles."
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"I care for nothing but to be married to you. For nothing, do you hear?
+Pauline, everything is to be subordinate to that. I would even write and
+beg my father to take me as a junior usher at Fox Hall for that. We must
+be married soon. I can't bear to see Richard and Margaret sailing along
+so calmly and quietly toward happiness."
+
+In the end he persuaded her to make all sorts of opportunities to meet
+him when no one else knew they were together. Even once most recklessly
+on a warm and moonless night of May's languorous decline to June he took
+her in the canoe far away up the river; and when they floated home dawn
+was already glistening on the banks and on the prow of their ghostly
+canoe. Through bird-song and rosy vapours she fled from him to her
+silent room, while he stood in a trance and counted each dewy footstep
+that with silver traceries marked her flight across the lawn.
+
+
+
+
+ANOTHER SUMMER
+
+
+
+
+_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 toward
+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
+quarrelled 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 toward 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
+surprize, 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 fervour 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 grey 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 behaviour 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 least 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 candlelight 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 toward
+that narrow white bed, toward 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 ballades 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 candlelight 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 grey 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 travelled upstream 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 downstream toward
+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 honour, 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 toward 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 upstairs 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 grey wall. A
+cock crowed in the distance, and through the leaves of the wistaria
+there ran a flutter of waking sparrows.
+
+
+
+
+_July_
+
+
+When Guy looked back next morning at what had happened on the river, he
+felt that the only thing to do was to leave Pauline for a while and give
+her time and opportunity to recover from the shock. He wondered if it
+would be wiser merely to write a note to announce his intention or if
+she had now reached a point at which even a letter would be a disastrous
+aggravation of her state of mind. He felt that he could not bear any
+scene that might approximate to that horrible scene last night, and yet
+to go away abruptly in such circumstances seemed too callous. Supposing
+that he went across to the Rectory and that Pauline should have another
+seizure of hatred for him (there was no other word that could express
+what her attitude had been), how could their engagement possibly go on?
+Mrs. Grey would be appalled by the emotional ravages it had made Pauline
+endure: she would not be justified, whatever Pauline's point of view, in
+allowing the engagement to last a day longer. It would be surely wiser
+to write a letter and with all the love he felt explain that he thought
+she would be happier not to see him for a short while. Yet such a course
+might provoke her to declare the whole miserable business, and the false
+deductions that might be made from her account were dreadful to
+contemplate. He blamed himself entirely for what had happened, and yet
+he could scarcely have foreseen such a violent change. Even now he could
+not say what exactly had begun the outburst, and indeed the only
+explanation of it was by a weight of emotion that had been accumulating
+for months. Of course he should never have persuaded her to come out on
+the river at night, but still that he had done so was only a technical
+offence against convention. It was she who had magnified her
+acquiescence beyond any importance he could have conceived. He must
+thank religion for that, he must thank that poisonous fellow in the
+confessional who had first started her upon this ruinous path of
+introspection and self-torment. But, whatever the cause, it was the
+remedy that demanded his attention, and he twisted the situation round
+and round without being able to decide how to act. He realized how month
+by month his sense of responsibility for Pauline had been growing, yet
+now the problem of her happiness stared at him, brutally insoluble. What
+was it Margaret had once said about his being unlikely to squander
+Pauline for a young man's experience? Good God, had not just that been
+the very thing he had nearly done; and then with a shudder remembering
+last night, he wondered if he ought any longer to say 'nearly.' He must
+see her. Of course he must see her this morning. He must somehow heal
+the injury he had inflicted upon her youth.
+
+Pauline was very gentle when they met. She had no reproaches except for
+herself and the way she had frightened him.
+
+"Oh, my Pauline, can't you forget it?" he begged. "Let me go away for a
+month or more. Let me go away till Margaret and Richard are going to be
+married."
+
+She acquiesced half-listlessly, and then seeming to feel that she might
+have been cold in her manner, she wished him a happy holiday from her
+moods and jealousy and exacting love. He tried to pierce the true
+significance of her attitude, because it held in its heart a premonition
+for him that everything between them had been destroyed last night, and
+that henceforth whatever he or she did or said they would meet in the
+future only as ghosts may meet in shadowy converse and meaningless
+communion.
+
+"You will be glad to see me when I come back?" he asked.
+
+"Why, my dearest, of course I shall be glad."
+
+He kissed her good-bye, but her kiss was neither the kiss of lover nor
+of sister, but such a kiss as ghosts may use, seeking to perpetuate the
+mere form and outward semblance of life lost irrevocably.
+
+When Guy was driving with Godbold along the Shipcot road, he had not
+made up his mind where he would go, and it was on the spur of the
+moment, as he stood in the booking-office, that he decided to go and see
+his father, to whom latterly he had written scarcely at all and of whom
+he suddenly thought with affection.
+
+"I've settled to give up Plashers Mead," Guy told him that night, when
+they were sitting in the library at Fox Hall.
+
+"And try and get on the staff of a paper," he added to his father's
+faint bow. "Or possibly I may go to Persia as Sir George Gascony's
+secretary. My friend Comeragh got me the offer in March, but Sir George
+was ill and did not start."
+
+"That sounds much more sensible than journalism," said Mr. Hazlewood.
+
+"Yes, perhaps it would be better," Guy agreed. "But then of course there
+is the question of leaving Pauline for two years."
+
+Yet even as he enunciated this so solemnly, he knew in his heart that he
+would be rather glad to postpone for two years all the vexations of
+love.
+
+His father shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"My poems are coming out this Autumn," Guy volunteered.
+
+His father gave some answer of conventional approbation, and Guy without
+the least bitterness recognized that to his father the offer of the
+secretaryship had naturally presented itself as the more important
+occasion.
+
+"If you want any help with your outfit...."
+
+"Oh, you mustn't count on Persia," interrupted Guy. "But I'll go up to
+town to-morrow and ask Comeragh when Sir George is going."
+
+Next day, however, when Guy was in the train, he began to consider his
+Persian plan a grave disloyalty to Pauline. He wondered how last night
+he had come to think of it again and fancied it might have been merely
+an instinct to gratify his father after their coolness. Of course he
+would not dream of going really, and yet it would have been jolly. Yes,
+it would certainly have been jolly, and he was rather relieved to find
+that Comeragh was out of town for a week, for his presence might have
+been a temptation. Michael Fane was not in London either, so Guy went
+round to Maurice Avery's studio in Grosvenor Road and in the pleasure of
+the company he found there the Persian idea grew less insistent. Maurice
+himself had just been invited to write a series of articles on the
+English ballet for a critical weekly journal called The Point of View.
+They went to a theatre together, and Guy as he listened to Maurice's
+jargon felt for a while quite rustic and was once or twice definitely
+taken in by it. Had he really been stagnating all this time at Wychford?
+And then the old superiority which at Oxford he always felt over his
+friend reasserted itself.
+
+"You're still skating, Maurice," he drawled. "The superficial area of
+your brain must be unparalleled."
+
+"You frowsty old yokel!" his friend exclaimed laughing.
+
+"I don't believe I shall get much out of breath, catching up with your
+advanced ideas," Guy retorted. "Anyway this Autumn I shall come to town
+for good."
+
+"And about time you did," said Maurice. "I say, mind you send your poems
+to The Point of View, and I'll give you a smashing fine notice the week
+after publication."
+
+Guy asked when Michael was coming back.
+
+"He's made a glorious mess of things, hasn't he?" said Maurice.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Not necessarily."
+
+"Well, I admit he found her out in time. But fancy wanting to marry a
+girl like that. I told him what she was, and he merely got furious with
+me. But he's an extraordinary chap altogether. By the way when are you
+going to get married?"
+
+"When I can afford it," said Guy.
+
+"The question is whether an artist can ever afford to get married."
+
+"What rot you talk."
+
+"Wiser men than I have come to that conclusion," said Maurice. "Of
+course I haven't met your lady-love; but it does seem to me that your
+present mode of life is bound to be sterile of impressions."
+
+"I don't go about self-consciously obtaining impressions," said Guy a
+little angrily. "I would as soon search for local colour. Personally I
+very much doubt if any impressions after eighteen or nineteen help the
+artist. As it seems to me, all experience after that age is merely
+valuable for maturing and putting into proportion the more vital
+experiences of childhood. And I'm not at all sure that there isn't in
+every artist a capacity for development which proceeds quite
+independently of externals. I speculate sometimes as to what would be
+the result upon a really creative temperament of being wrecked at
+twenty-two on a desert island. I say twenty-two, because I do count as
+valuable the academic influence that only begins to be effective after
+eighteen."
+
+"And what is your notion about this literary Crusoe?" asked Maurice.
+
+"Well, I fancy that his work would not suffer at all, that it would
+ripen, just as certain fruit ripens independently of sun, that he would
+display in fact quite normally the characteristic growth of the artist."
+
+"But where would he obtain his reaction?" Maurice asked.
+
+"From himself. If that isn't possible for some people I don't see how
+you're going to make a distinction between literature and journalism."
+
+"Some journalism is literature."
+
+"Only very bad journalism," Guy argued. "The journalistic mind
+experiences a quick reaction, the creative writer a very slow one. The
+journalist is affected by extremes: and he is continually aware of the
+impression they are making at the moment: contrariwise the creative
+artist is always unaware of the impression at the moment it is made; he
+feels it from within first and it develops according to his own
+characteristics. Let me give you an example. The journalist is like a
+man who, seeing a mosquito in the act of biting him, claps his hand down
+and kills it. The creative artist isn't aware of having been bitten
+until he sees the swelling ... big or small according to his
+constitution. It is his business to cure the swelling, not to bother
+about the insect."
+
+"Your theories may be all right for great creative artists," said
+Maurice. "And I suppose you're willing to take the risk of stagnation?"
+
+"I'm not a great creative artist," said Guy quickly. "At the same time
+I'm damned if I'm a journalist. No, the effect of Plashers Mead on me
+has been to make me long to be a man of action. So far it has been
+stimulating, and without external help I've been able to reach the
+conclusion that my poems were never worth writing.... I wrote because I
+wanted to: I don't believe I ever had to."
+
+"Then what are you going to do now?" asked Maurice.
+
+"I'm probably going to work in London at journalism."
+
+"Then, great Scott, why all this preliminary tirade against it?"
+
+"Because I don't want to bluff myself into thinking that I'm going to do
+anything but be a strictly professional writer," said Guy. "Or else
+perhaps because I don't really want to come and live in London at all,
+but go to Persia. Dash it all, for the first time in my life, Maurice, I
+don't know what I do want, and it's a very humiliating state of affairs
+for me."
+
+When Guy left the studio that evening, he came away with that pleasant
+warming of the cockles of the brain that empirical conversation always
+gave. It was really very pleasant to be chattering away about aesthetic
+theories, to be meeting new people and to be infused with this sense of
+being joined up to the motive force of a city's life. At his lodgings in
+Vincent Square a letter from Pauline awaited his return, and with a
+shock he realized half way through its perusal that he was reading it
+listlessly. He turned back and tried to bring to its contents that old
+feverish absorption in magic pages, but something was wanting whether in
+the letter or whether in himself he did not know. He came to the point
+of asking himself if he loved her still as much, and almost with horror
+at the question vowed he loved her more than ever and that of all things
+on earth he only longed for their marriage. Yet in bed that night he
+thought more of his argument in the studio than about Pauline, and when
+he did think about her it was with a drowsy sense of relief. Vincent
+Square under the bland city moon seemed very peaceful, and in retrospect
+Wychford a place of endless storms.
+
+Next morning when Guy sat down to answer Pauline's letter he found
+himself writing with mechanical fluency without really thinking of her
+at all. In fact for the moment she represented something that disturbed
+the Summer calm in London, and he consciously did not want to think
+about her until all this late troublous time had lost its actuality and
+he could be sure of returning to the Pauline of their love's earlier
+days.
+
+These shuttlecock letters were tossed backward and forward between
+Wychford and London throughout the rest of June and most of July, and
+sometimes Guy thought they were as unreal as his own poetry. He spent
+his time in looking up old friends, in second-hand book shops, in the
+galleries of theatres. He did not see Michael Fane, who wrote to him
+from Rome before Guy knew he had gone there. Comeragh however he saw
+pretty often, and he enjoyed talking about politics nearly as much as
+about art. He met Sir George Gascony, and Comeragh assured him afterward
+that when Sir George went out to Persia in August or September he could
+if he liked go with him. Guy put the notion at the back of his mind
+whence he occasionally took it out and played with it. In the end,
+however, when the definite offer came he refused it. This happened at
+the end of his visit to London when his money was running out and when
+he had to be going back to Wychford to live somehow on credit, until the
+Michaelmas quarter replenished his overdrawn account. Before he left
+town he paid a visit to Mr. Worrall and told him that he wanted his
+poems to appear anonymously. In fact if it were not for hurting the
+Rector's feelings he would have stopped their publication altogether.
+
+At the end of a hot and dusty July and about a week before the Lammas
+wedding of Margaret and Richard, Guy came back to Plashers Mead. The
+immediate effect of seeing again the place which was now associated in
+his mind with interminable difficulties was to make him resolute to
+clarify the situation once and for all, to clarify it so completely that
+there could never again be a repetition of that night in June. His
+absence had been in the strictest sense an interlude, and all the
+letters which marked to each the existence of the other had been but
+conventional forms of love and comfortable postponements of reality.
+When he met Pauline, Guy felt that he met her to all intents directly
+after that dreadful night, with only this difference that owing to the
+time they had had for repose he could now say things that six weeks ago
+he could not have said. He had arrived at Wychford for lunch, and as a
+matter of course they were to be together that afternoon. Ordinarily on
+such a piping July day he would have proposed the river for their
+converse, and it was a sign of how near at hand he felt their last time
+on the river that he proposed a walk instead.
+
+Guy was aware of wanting to take Pauline to some place that was neither
+hallowed nor cursed by past hours, and avoiding familiar ways, they
+reached a barren cup-shaped field shut off from the road by a spinney of
+firs that offered such a dry and draughty shade as made the field even
+in the hot sun of afternoon more tolerable. They sat down on the sour
+stony land among the ragwort and teazles and feverfew. Summer had burnt
+up this abandoned pasturage, and while they sat in silence Guy rattled
+from the rank umbels of fools-parsley and hemlock the innumerable seeds
+that would only profit the rankness of another year.
+
+"Well?" he said at last.
+
+Pauline looked at him questioningly, and he felt impatient to be sitting
+here on this sour stony land and wondered how for merely this he could
+have refused that offer of Persian adventure. Not until now had he
+realized how much he had been resenting the performance of a duty.
+
+"You've hardly told me anything about your time in London," said
+Pauline.
+
+He looked at her sharply in case this might be a prelude to jealous
+interrogation.
+
+"There's nothing much to tell. I settled that my poems should appear
+anonymously. I'm afraid their publication may otherwise do me more harm
+than good."
+
+"All your poems?" she asked wistfully.
+
+He nodded impelled by a strong desire for absolute honesty, though he
+would have liked to except the poems about her, knowing how much she
+must be wounded to hear even them called worthless.
+
+"Then I've been no good to you at all?"
+
+"Of course you have. Because these poems are no good, it doesn't follow
+that what I write next won't be good. And yet I'm uncertain whether I
+ought to go on merely writing. I'm beginning to wonder if I oughtn't to
+have gone out to Persia with Gascony. I refused the job because I
+thought it would upset you. And so, dearest Pauline, when next you feel
+jealous, do remember that. Do remember that it is always you who come
+first. Don't think I'm regretful about Persia. I'm only wondering on
+_your_ account if I ought to have gone. It would have made our marriage
+in three years a certainty, but still I hope by journalism to make it
+certain in one year. Are you glad, my Pauline?"
+
+"Yes, of course I'm glad," she answered without fervour.
+
+"And you won't be jealous of my friends? Because it's impossible to be
+in London without friends you know."
+
+"I told you I should never be enough."
+
+Guy tried not to be irritated by this.
+
+"If you would only be reasonable! I realize now that for me at my age
+it's foolish to withdraw from my contemporaries. I shall stagnate. These
+two years have not been wasted...."
+
+"Yes, they have," she interrupted, "if your poems are not worth your
+name."
+
+"Dearest, these two years may well be the foundation on which I build
+all the rest of my life."
+
+"May they?"
+
+"Yes, of course. But a desire for the stimulus of other people isn't the
+only reason for leaving Plashers Mead. I can't afford it here. My debts
+are really getting impossible to manage, and unless I can show my
+father that I'm ready to do anything to be a writer, as I can't go out
+to Persia, well ... frankly I don't know what will happen. I gave
+Burrows notice at Midsummer."
+
+"You never told me," said Pauline.
+
+"Well, no, I was afraid you'd be upset and I wanted you to have this
+quiet time when I was away...."
+
+"You don't trust me any more," she said.
+
+"Oh, yes, I do, but I thought it would worry you. I know my money
+affairs do worry you. But now I shall be all right. I'll come down here
+often, you know, and, oh, really, dearest girl, it is better that I
+should be in London. So don't be jealous, will you, and don't torment
+yourself about my debts, will you, and don't think that you are anything
+but everything to me."
+
+"I expect you'll enjoy being in London," she said slowly shredding the
+flowers from a spray of wild mignonette.
+
+"I hope I shall be so busy that I won't have time to regret Wychford,"
+said Guy.
+
+He had by now broken off all the rank flowers in reach, and the sour
+stony ground was littered with seeds and pungent heads of bloom and
+ragged stalks.
+
+"You'll never regret Wychford," she said. "Never. Because I've spoilt it
+for you, my darling."
+
+She touched his hand gently and drew close to him, but only timidly; and
+as she made the movement a flight of goldfinches lighted upon the
+swaying thistle-down in the hollow of the waste land.
+
+"Pauline! Pauline!" he cried and would have kissed her passionately, but
+she checked him:
+
+"No, no, I just want to lean my head upon your shoulder for a little
+while."
+
+Above her murmur he heard the rustle of the goldfinches' song in parting
+cadences upon the air, rising and falling: and looking down at Pauline
+in the sunlight, he felt that she was a wounded bird he should be
+cherishing.
+
+
+
+
+_August_
+
+
+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
+and Margaret's happiness, she was determined at whatever cost of
+dejection afterward 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 shan'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 anyone 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 upstairs 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 toward 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 grey 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 afterward 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 an 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. Upstairs 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._
+
+     _Pauline._
+
+Her mother found her sobbing over her desk that was full of childish
+things, and asked what was the matter.
+
+"I've broken off my engagement," and wearily she told her some of the
+reasons, but never any reason that might have seemed to cast the least
+blame on him. Next morning very early came a note for her mother from
+Guy in which he said he was leaving Plashers Mead in a couple of hours
+and begged that she would not let Pauline be the one to go away.
+
+
+
+
+EPIGRAPH
+
+
+
+
+_Guy_
+
+
+Guy could not make the effort to fight the doom upon their love declared
+by Pauline in her letter. He felt that if he did not acquiesce he would
+go mad: a deadness struck at him that he fancied was a wonderful sense
+of relief, and hurriedly packing a few things he went in pursuit of his
+friend Comeragh in case it might not even now be too late to go to
+Persia. However, though he did not manage to be in time for Sir George
+Gascony, his friend secured him a job on some committee that was being
+organized in Macedonia by enthusiastic Liberals. His previous experience
+there was recommendation enough, and after he had seen his father,
+acquired his outfit and settled up everything at Plashers Mead by means
+of Maurice Avery, early in September he set out Eastward.
+
+In Rome Guy picked up Michael Fane who was on the point of starting for
+the Benedictine monastery at Cava. Having a few days to spare before he
+went on to Brindisi, he agreed to spend the time with Michael tramping
+in the sun along the Parthenopean shore.
+
+"I can't understand what consolation you expect to find by shutting
+yourself up with a lot of frowsty monks," said Guy fretfully.
+
+"Nor can I understand when just at the moment you have been dealt the
+blow that should at last determine if you are to be an artist," retorted
+Michael, "I can't understand why you choose that exact moment to go and
+be futile in Macedonia."
+
+"Do you think I would be an artist now, even if I could?" asked Guy
+fiercely. "How I hate such a point of view. No, no, I have made myself
+miserable and I have made someone else miserable because I thought I
+wanted to be an artist. But never, never, shall that old jejune ambition
+be gratified now."
+
+"You'll never try to write anything more?"
+
+"Nothing," said Guy.
+
+"Then what has all this been for?"
+
+"Perhaps to come back in a year, and ... listen:
+
+    _O ragged robins, you will bloom each year,_
+    _But we shall never pluck you after rain:_
+    _For aye, O ragged hearts, you beat alone,_
+    _And never more shall you be joined again._
+
+Do you think I want to come back in a year and still be able to versify
+my grief like that? I look forward to something better than minor
+poetry."
+
+"You mean you still hope...." his friend began.
+
+"I daren't even hope yet ... but all my life I'll do penance for having
+said that an artist must be free."
+
+They had reached the inn at Amalfi, where letters might be waiting for
+them.
+
+Guy read aloud one which had arrived from Maurice Avery.
+
+     422 GROSVENOR ROAD,
+
+     WESTMINSTER.
+
+     _My dear Guy,
+
+     _I settled up everything for you at Plashers Mead. Rather a jolly
+     place. I nearly took it on myself. I'm getting quite used to
+     settling up other people's affairs since you and Michael have made
+     me your executor. Good luck to you in Macedonia._
+
+     _Last night I went to the Orient Ballet and met a perfectly
+     delightful girl. If there is such a thing as love at first sight, I
+     am in love. Jenny Pearl she is called. Forgive this apparently
+     casual enthusiasm, but you two cynics will be able to tear me to
+     pieces to your satisfaction. I offer my heart for your bitter mirth
+     to embalm._
+
+     _Yours ever
+
+     M. A._
+
+     _Your dog is at Godalming with my people. My sisters talk of
+     nothing else._
+
+"Maurice rises like a phoenix from our ashes," said Guy grimly.
+
+"He was always irrepressible," Michael agreed.
+
+"And still you haven't answered my question about your monkery," Guy
+persisted.
+
+"You want action. I want contemplation. But don't think that I'm going
+to take final vows to-morrow."
+
+"And do you really believe in the Christian religion?" Guy asked
+incredulously.
+
+"Yes, I really do."
+
+"What an extraordinary thing!"
+
+Next day they parted, Michael going to the Benedictine house at Cava,
+Guy pressing on toward Salerno. With every breath of the rosemary, with
+every sough of the Aleppo pines, with every murmur of the blue
+Tyrrhenian winking far below, more and more sharply did he realize that
+what he had thought at the time was wonderful relief had been more truly
+despair. Yet in a happier September might he not hope to come back this
+way, setting his face toward England?
+
+    _One more turn of the head in the gathering gloom_
+      _To watch her figure in the lighted door:_
+    _One more wish that I never should turn again,_
+      _But watch her standing there for evermore._
+
+
+
+
+_Pauline_
+
+
+Pauline went away with Monica to spend the rest of August and the
+beginning of September in the depths of the country, where however for
+all the stillness of the ripe season she did not find very great peace.
+In every lane, in every wood, below the brow of every hill she was
+always half-expecting to meet Guy. It was not until Monica was going to
+her sisterhood and that she came back to see TO LET staring from the
+windows of Plashers Mead that Pauline was able at last to realize what
+she had irrevocably done.
+
+On the day after her return Pauline went to see Miss Verney. To her she
+explained that the engagement was at an end.
+
+"I heard something about it," said Miss Verney. "And feeling sure that
+it was doubtless on account of money, I must very impertinently beg you
+to accept this."
+
+Pauline looked at the packet the old maid had thrust into her hand.
+
+"Those are deeds," said Miss Verney importantly. "I have felt for some
+time past that I do not really need all my money. My income, you know,
+is very nearly £250 a year. £100 would be ample, and therefore I hope
+_you_ will accept the surplus."
+
+"My darling Miss Verney," said Pauline, "it could not be."
+
+But the old maid was with very great difficulty persuaded of the
+impossibility.
+
+"And you mean to say," she gasped, "that you are never going to see each
+other again?"
+
+"Oh, sometimes," Pauline whispered, "sometimes I wonder if it could
+really happen that Guy and I should never meet again. Please don't let's
+talk about it. I shall come and see you often, but you mustn't ever talk
+about Guy and me, will you?"
+
+"I shall put this money aside," Miss Verney announced, "because I am
+_most_ anxious to prove that £100 a year is ample for me. Extravagance
+has always been my temptation!"
+
+Later in the afternoon Pauline left her friend and went down Wychford
+High Street toward home. There were great wine-dark dahlias in the
+gardens, and the bell was sounding for Evensong. She knelt behind a
+pillar, all of the congregation. How through this winter that was coming
+she would love her father and mother. And if Guy ever came back ... if
+Guy ever came back....
+
+She heard her father's voice dying away with the close of the Office;
+and presently they walked about the golden churchyard, arm-in-arm.
+
+"I shouldn't be surprized to see Sternbergia Lutea this year," he
+observed. "We have had a lot of sun."
+
+"Have we?" Pauline sighed.
+
+"Oh, yes, a great deal of sun."
+
+Her father of course would never speak of that broken engagement, and
+already she had made her mother promise never to speak of it again. Deep
+to her inmost heart only these familiar vales and streams and green
+meadows would speak of it for the rest of her life.
+
+THE END
+
+_Capri_
+_December, 1914--April, 1915_
+
+PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
+WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
+PLYMOUTH
+
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF
+
+SINISTER STREET
+
+_By_ COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+_PUNCH:_
+
+     "I shall not easily forget the delightful revelation of a new power
+     that was given me by Mr. Compton Mackenzie's 'Carnival.' 'Sinister
+     Street' confirms and heightens my estimate of its author.... As a
+     study of the education of character it is already a masterpiece....
+     It is not my habit lightly to prophesy fame; but after these two
+     books I am prepared to wager that Mr. Mackenzie's future is bound
+     up with what is most considerable in English fiction."
+
+_EVENING STANDARD:_
+
+     "Not without complacency we remember that, in noticing 'Carnival,'
+     we suggested that Mr. Mackenzie's next novel would mark a critical
+     stage in his career. We are complacent because the author has
+     largely fulfilled the promise of that arresting novel. He has
+     passed the critical stage, and whatever happens now nothing can
+     deprive him of the honour of being the author of 'Sinister
+     Street.'"
+
+_MORNING POST:_
+
+     "'Sinister Street' has indeed interested us profoundly, as the
+     intimate study of the infancy and boyhood of a singularly
+     attractive lad.... Its picture of West Kensington life, and its
+     attempt to describe the atmosphere of the Public School which
+     dominates the social life of West Kensington are really
+     remarkable."
+
+_TIMES:_
+
+     "We do not wish it any shorter, for it is almost wholly delightful
+     in itself."
+
+_STANDARD:_
+
+     "In his pages there is not one which even a reviewer could wish to
+     skip.... The architecture of the book is superb."
+
+_DAILY EXPRESS:_
+
+     "'Sinister Street' is a fine novel, an achievement far removed from
+     the average easy banality."
+
+_MANCHESTER GUARDIAN:_
+
+     "As difficult a task as fiction could undertake; but Mr.
+     Mackenzie's tact and insight and comprehension have brought him
+     through with brilliant success.... Something we would not willingly
+     have missed."
+
+MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF CARNIVAL _By_ COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+
+_ATHENÆUM:_
+
+     "Mr. Mackenzie's second novel amply fulfils the promise of his
+     first.... Its first and great quality is originality. The
+     originality of Mr. Mackenzie lies in his possession of an
+     imagination and a vision of life that are as peculiarly his own as
+     a voice or a laugh, and that reflect themselves in a style which is
+     that of no other writer.... A prose full of beauty."
+
+_PUNCH:_
+
+     "After reading a couple of pages I settled myself in my chair for a
+     happy evening, and thenceforward the fascination of the book held
+     me like a kind of enchantment. I despair, though, of being able to
+     convey any idea of it in a few lines of criticism.... As for the
+     style, I will only add that it gave me the same blissful feeling of
+     security that one has in listening to a great musician.... In the
+     meantime, having recorded my delight in it, I shall put 'Carnival'
+     upon the small and by no means crowded shelf that I reserve for
+     'keeps.'"
+
+_OUTLOOK:_
+
+     "In these days of muddled literary evaluations, it is a small thing
+     to say of a novel that it is a great novel; but this we should say
+     without hesitation of 'Carnival,' that not only is it marked out to
+     be the reading success of its own season, but to be read afterwards
+     as none but the best books are read."
+
+_OBSERVER:_
+
+     "The heroic scale of Mr. Compton Mackenzie's conception and
+     achievement sets a standard for him which one only applies to the
+     'great' among novelists."
+
+_ENGLISH REVIEW:_
+
+     "An exquisite sense of beauty with a hunger for beautiful words to
+     express it."
+
+_ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS:_
+
+     "The spirit of youth and the spirit of London."
+
+_NEW YORK TIMES:_
+
+     "We hail Mr. Mackenzie as a man alive--who raises all things to a
+     spiritual plane."
+
+_MR. C. K. SHORTER in the SPHERE:_
+
+     "'Carnival' carried me from cover to cover on wings."
+
+_NEW AGE:_
+
+     "We are more than sick of it."
+
+MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF
+
+=THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT
+
+_By_ COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+_TIMES:_
+
+     "We are grateful to him for wringing our hearts with the 'tears and
+     laughter of spent joys.'"
+
+_SPECTATOR:_
+
+"As an essay in literary _bravura_ the book is quite remarkable."
+
+_COUNTRY LIFE:_
+
+     "In the kindliness, the humour and the gentleness of the treatment,
+     it comes as near to Thackeray as any man has come since Thackeray."
+
+_DAILY CHRONICLE:_
+
+     "Thanks for a rare entertainment! And, if the writing of your story
+     pleased you as much as the reading of it has pleased us,
+     congratulations too."
+
+_GLOBE:_
+
+     "A little tenderness, a fragrant aroma of melancholy laid away in
+     lavender, a hint of cynicism, an airy philosophy--and so a wholly
+     piquant, subtly aromatic dish, a rosy apple stuck with cloves."
+
+_GLASGOW NEWS:_
+
+     "Fresh and faded, mocking yet passionate, compact of tinsel and
+     gold is this little tragedy of a winter season in view of the pump
+     room.... Through it all, the old tale has a dainty, fluttering,
+     unusual, and very real beauty.'"
+
+_ENGLISH REVIEW:_
+
+     "All his characters are real and warm with life. 'The Passionate
+     Elopement' should be read slowly, and followed from the smiles and
+     extravagance of the opening chapters through many sounding and
+     poetical passages, to the thrilling end of the Love Chase. The
+     quiet irony of the close leaves one smiling, but with the wiser
+     smile of Horace Ripple who meditates on the colours of life."
+
+_WESTMINSTER GAZETTE:_
+
+     "Mr. Mackenzie's book is a novel of genre, and with infinite care
+     and obvious love of detail has he set himself to paint a literary
+     picture in the manner of Hogarth. He is no imitator, he owes no
+     thanks to any predecessor in the fashioning of his book.... Mr.
+     Mackenzie recreates (the atmosphere) so admirably that it is no
+     exaggeration to say that, thanks to his brilliant scene-painting,
+     we shall gain an even more vivid appreciation of the work of his
+     great forerunners. Lightly and vividly does Mr. Mackenzie sketch in
+     his characters ... but they do not on that account lack
+     personality. Each of them is definitely and faithfully drawn, with
+     sensibility, sympathy, and humour."
+
+MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF
+
+KENSINGTON RHYMES
+
+_By_ COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+
+_SATURDAY REVIEW:_
+
+
+     "These are particularly jolly rhymes, that any really good sort of
+     a chap, say a fellow of about ten, would like. Mr. J. R. Monsell's
+     pictures are exceptionally jolly too.... If we may judge by
+     ourselves, not only the children, but the grown-ups of the family
+     will be enchanted by this quite delightful and really first-rate
+     book."
+
+_DAILY MAIL:_
+
+     "Among the picture-books of the season, pride of place must go to
+     Mr. Compton Mackenzie's 'Kensington Rhymes.' They are full of quiet
+     humour and delicate insight into the child-mind."
+
+_OBSERVER:_
+
+     "Far the best rhymes of the year are 'Kensington Rhymes,' by
+     Compton Mackenzie, almost the best things of the kind since the
+     'Child's Garden of Verse.'"
+
+_ATHENÆUM:_
+
+     "Will please children of all ages, and also contains much that will
+     not be read without a sympathetic smile by grown-ups possessed of a
+     sense of humour."
+
+_TIMES:_
+
+     "The real gift of child poetry, sometimes almost with a
+     Stevensonian ring."
+
+_OUTLOOK:_
+
+     "What Henley did for older Londoners, Mr. Compton Mackenzie and Mr.
+     Monsell have done for the younger generation."
+
+_STANDARD:_
+
+     "Our hearts go out first to Mr. Compton Mackenzie's 'Kensington
+     Rhymes.'"
+
+_SUNDAY TIMES:_
+
+     "Full of whimsical observation and genuine insight, 'Kensington
+     Rhymes' by Compton Mackenzie are certainly entertaining."
+
+_EVENING STANDARD:_
+
+     "Something of the charm of Christina Rossetti's."
+
+_VOTES FOR WOMEN:_
+
+     "They breathe the very conventional and stuffy air of Kensington.
+... We are bound to say that the London child we tried it on liked
+     the book."
+
+
+MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI
+
+_MARTIN SECKER_
+
+_HIS COMPLETE CATALOGUE MCMXV_
+
+_The Books in this list should be obtainable from all Booksellers and
+Libraries, and if any difficulty is experienced the Publisher will be
+glad to be informed of the fact. He will also be glad if those
+interested in receiving from time to time Announcement Lists,
+Prospectuses, &c., of new and forthcoming books from Number Five John
+Street will send their names and addresses to him for this purpose. Any
+book in this list may be obtained on approval through the booksellers,
+or direct from the Publisher, on remitting him the published price, plus
+the postage._
+
+_MARTIN SECKER
+Publisher
+Number Five John Street
+Adelphi London_
+
+_Telephone Gerrard 4779
+Telegraphic Address:
+Psophidian London_
+
+
+  PART ONE
+  INDEX OF AUTHORS
+
+  ABERCROMBIE, LASCELLES
+  SPECULATIVE DIALOGUES. _Wide Cr. 8vo._ 5_s._ _net_.
+  THOMAS HARDY: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy 8vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  THE EPIC (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap_
+  _8vo._ 1_s._ _net_.
+
+  AFLALO, F. G.
+  BEHIND THE RANGES. _Wide Demy 8vo._ 10_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  REGILDING THE CRESCENT. _Demy 8vo._ 10_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  BIRDS IN THE CALENDAR. _Crown 8vo._ 3_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  ALLSHORN, LIONEL
+  STUPOR MUNDI. _Medium Octavo._ 16_s._ _net_.
+
+  APPERSON, G. L.
+  THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF SMOKING. _Post 8vo._
+  6_s._ _net_.
+
+  ARMSTRONG, DONALD
+  THE MARRIAGE OF QUIXOTE. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  ARTZIBASHEF, MICHAEL
+  SANINE. _Preface by Gilbert Cannan._ _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  BREAKING-POINT. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  THE MILLIONAIRE. _Intro. by the Author._ _Cr. 8vo._ 6_s._
+  TALES OF THE REVOLUTION. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  BARRINGTON, MICHAEL
+  GRAHAME OF CLAVERHOUSE. _Imperial 8vo._ 30_s._
+  _net_. _Edition de Luxe_ 63_s._ _net_.
+
+  BENNETT, ARNOLD
+  THOSE UNITED STATES. _Post 8vo._ 2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  BLACK, CLEMENTINA
+  THE LINLEYS OF BATH. _Medium 8vo._ 16_s._ _net_.
+  THE CUMBERLAND LETTERS. _Med. 8vo._ 16_s._ _net_.
+
+  BOULGER, D. C.
+  THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE. _Med._ 8_vo._ 21_s._ _net._
+
+  BOTTOME, PHYLLIS
+  THE COMMON CHORD. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  BROWN, IVOR
+  YEARS OF PLENTY. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  SECURITY. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  BURROW, C. KENNETT
+  CARMINA VARIA. _F'cap_ 8_vo._ 2_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+
+  CALDERON, GEORGE (With St. John Hankin)
+  THOMPSON: A Comedy. _Sq._ _Cr._ 8_vo._ 2_s._ _net._
+
+  CANNAN, GILBERT
+  ROUND THE CORNER. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  OLD MOLE. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  YOUNG EARNEST. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  SAMUEL BUTLER: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._ 7_s_. 6_d._ _net._
+  WINDMILLS: A Book of Fables. _Cr._ 8_vo._ 5_s._ _net._
+  SATIRE (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap_ 8_vo._ 1_s._ _net._
+
+  CHESTERTON, G. K.
+  MAGIC: A Fantastic Comedy. _Sq._ _Cr._ 8_vo._ 2_s._ _net._
+
+  CLAYTON, JOSEPH
+  THE UNDERMAN. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE. _Demy_ 8_vo._ 12_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+  ROBERT KETT. _Demy_ 8_vo._ 8_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+
+  COKE, DESMOND
+  THE ART OF SILHOUETTE. _Demy_ 8_vo._ 10_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+
+  CRAVEN, A. SCOTT
+  THE FOOL'S TRAGEDY. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  DAWSON, WARRINGTON
+  THE TRUE DIMENSION. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  DE SELINCOURT, BASIL
+  WALT WHITMAN: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._ 7_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+  RHYME (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap_ 8_vo._ 1_s._ _net._
+
+  DOUGLAS, LORD ALFRED
+  THE WILDE MYTH. _Demy_ 8_vo_. 12_s_. 6_d_. _net_.
+
+  DOUGLAS, NORMAN
+  FOUNTAINS IN THE SAND. _Wide Demy_ 8_vo_. 7_s_. 6_d_. _net_.
+  OLD CALABRIA. _Demy_ 8_vo_. 15_s_. _net_.
+
+  DRAYCOTT, G. M.
+  MAHOMET: FOUNDER OF ISLAM. _Demy_ 8_vo_.
+  12_s_. 6_d_. _net_.
+
+  DRINKWATER, JOHN
+  WILLIAM MORRIS: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo_.
+  7_s_. 6_d_. net.
+  D. G. ROSSETTI: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo_.
+  7_s_. 6d__. _net_.
+  THE LYRIC _(The Art and Craft of Letters)_. _F'cap_
+  8_vo_. 1_s_. net.
+
+  FALLS, CYRIL
+  RUDYARD KIPLING: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_
+  8_vo_. 7_s_. 6_d_. net.
+
+  FEA, ALLAN
+  OLD ENGLISH HOUSES. _Demy_ 8_vo_. 10_s_. 6_d_. _net_.
+  NOOKS AND CORNERS OF OLD ENGLAND. 5_s_. _net_.
+  THE REAL CAPTAIN CLEVELAND. _Demy_ 8_vo_.
+  8S. 6_d_. _net_.
+
+  FLECKER, J. E.
+  THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND. 5_s_. _net_.
+  COLLECTED POEMS. _Demy_ 8_vo_. 7_s_. 6_d_. _net_.
+
+  FRANCIS, RENÉ
+  EGYPTIAN ÆSTHETICS. _Wide Demy_ 8_vo_. 7_s_. 6_d_. _net_.
+
+  GRETTON, R. H.
+  HISTORY _(The Art and Craft of Letters)_. _F'cap_ 8_vo_.
+  1_s_. _net_.
+
+  HANKIN, ST. JOHN
+  THE DRAMATIC WORKS, with an Introduction by
+  John Drinkwater. _Small_ 4_to_. _Definitive Limited
+  Edition in Three Volumes_. 25_s_. _net_.
+  THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL. _Sq._ _Cr._ 8_vo._ 2_s._ _net._
+  THE CASSILIS ENGAGEMENT. _Sq._ _Cr._ 8_vo._ 2_s._ _net._
+  THE CHARITY THAT BEGAN AT HOME. 2_s._ _net._
+  THE CONSTANT LOVER, ETC. _Sq._ _Cr._ 8_vo._ 2_s._ _net._
+
+  HAUPTMANN, GERHART
+    The Complete Dramatic Works. 6 _vols._ _Crown_
+    8_vo._ 5_s._ _net per volume_.
+
+  HEWLETT, WILLIAM
+  TELLING THE TRUTH. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  UNCLE'S ADVICE: A NOVEL IN LETTERS. _Cr._ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  THE CHILD AT THE WINDOW. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  HORSNELL, HORACE
+  THE BANKRUPT. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  HOWE, P. P.
+  THE REPERTORY THEATRE. _Cr._ 8_vo._ 2_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+  DRAMATIC PORTRAITS. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 5_s._ _net._
+  BERNARD SHAW: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._
+    7_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+  J. M. SYNGE: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._
+    7_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+  CRITICISM (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap_
+    8_vo_. 1_s._ _net._
+
+  HUEFFER, FORD MADOX
+  HENRY JAMES: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._
+    7_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+  COLLECTED POEMS. _Demy_ 8_vo._ 6_s._ _net._
+
+  IBSEN, HENRIK
+  PEER GYNT. A New Translation by R. Ellis
+    Roberts. _Wide Crown_ 8_vo._ 5_s._ _net._
+
+  JACOB, HAROLD
+  PERFUMES OF ARABY. _Wide Demy_ 8_vo._ 7_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+
+  JAMES, HENRY
+  THE TURN OF THE SCREW. THE ASPERN PAPERS.
+  THE LESSON OF THE MASTER. DAISY MILLER.
+  THE DEATH OF THE LION. THE COXON FUND.
+  THE REVERBERATOR.
+  THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD.
+  THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE.
+  THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET.
+  GLASSES.
+  THE PUPIL.
+    _Each F'cap 8vo._ 2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  JOHNSON, OWEN
+  THE SALAMANDER. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  MAKING MONEY. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  LAMONT, L. M.
+  A CORONAL: AN ANTHOLOGY. _F'cap 8vo._ 2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  LEWISOHN, L.
+  THE MODERN DRAMA. _Crown 8vo._ 5_s._ _net_.
+
+  LLUELLYN, RICHARD
+  THE IMPERFECT BRANCH. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  LOW, IVY
+  THE QUESTING BEAST. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  LYNCH, BOHUN
+  UNOFFICIAL. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  L.S.D. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  McFEE, WILLIAM
+  CASUALS OF THE SEA. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  MACHEN, ARTHUR
+  HIEROGLYPHICS. _F'cap 8vo._ 2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  MACKENZIE, COMPTON
+  THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT. _Cr. 8vo._ 6_s._ _and_ 2_s._ _net_.
+  CARNIVAL. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  SINISTER STREET. Volume I. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  SINISTER STREET. Volume II. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  GUY AND PAULINE. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  KENSINGTON RHYMES. _Crown 4to._ 5_s._ _net_.
+
+  MAKOWER, S. V.
+  THE OUTWARD APPEARANCE. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  MAVROGORDATO, JOHN
+  LETTERS FROM GREECE. _F'cap 8vo._ 2_s._ _net_.
+  CASSANDRA IN TROY. _Small 4to._ 5_s._ _net_.
+
+  MELVILLE, LEWIS
+  SOME ECCENTRICS AND A WOMAN. _Demy 8vo.
+  10s. 6d. net._
+
+  METHLEY, VIOLET
+  CAMILLE DESMOULINS: A Biography. _Dy. 8vo. 15s. net._
+
+  MEYNELL, VIOLA
+  LOT BARROW. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  MODERN LOVERS. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  COLUMBINE. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  NARCISSUS. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+
+  NORTH, LAURENCE
+  IMPATIENT GRISELDA. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  THE GOLIGHTLYS: FATHER AND SON. _Cr. 8vo. 6s._
+
+  ONIONS, OLIVER
+  WIDDERSHINS. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE. _Cr. 8vo. 6s._
+  THE DEBIT ACCOUNT. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  THE STORY OF LOUIE. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+
+  PAIN, BARRY
+  ONE KIND AND ANOTHER. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  COLLECTED TALES: Volume I. _Medium 8vo. 6s._
+  COLLECTED TALES: Volume II. _Medium 8vo. 6s._
+
+  THE SHORT STORY (_The Art and Craft of Letters_).
+  _F'cap 8vo. 1s. Net._
+
+  PALMER, JOHN
+  PETER PARAGON. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  COMEDY (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap 8vo.
+  1s. net._
+
+  PERUGINI, MARK E.
+  THE ART OF BALLET. _Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net._
+
+  PHILIPS, AUSTIN
+  BATTLES OF LIFE. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+
+  PRESTON, ANNA
+  THE RECORD OF A SILENT LIFE. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+
+  REID, FORREST
+  W. B. YEATS: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy 8vo.
+  7s. 6d. net._
+
+  ROBERTS, R. ELLIS
+  HENRIK IBSEN: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy 8vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  LEO TOLSTOI: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy 8vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  PEER GYNT: A NEW TRANSLATION. _Wide Crown
+  8vo._ 5_s._ _net_.
+
+  SABATINI, RAFAEL
+  THE SEA-HAWK. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  THE BANNER OF THE BULL. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  SAND, MAURICE
+  THE HISTORY OF THE HARLEQUINADE. _Two
+  Volumes._ _Med. 8vo._ 25_s._ _net the set_.
+
+  SCOTT-JAMES, R. A.
+  PERSONALITY IN LITERATURE. _Demy 8vo._ 7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  SIDGWICK, FRANK
+  THE BALLAD (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap
+  8vo._ 1_s._ _net_.
+
+  SOLOGUB, FEODOR
+  THE OLD HOUSE. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  STONE, CHRISTOPHER
+  THE BURNT HOUSE. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  PARODY (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap 8vo._
+  1_s._ _net_.
+
+  STRAUS, RALPH
+  CARRIAGES AND COACHES. _Med. 8vo._ 18_s._ _net_.
+
+  STREET, G. S.
+  PEOPLE AND QUESTIONS. _Wide Cr. 8vo._ 5_s._ _net_.
+
+  SWINNERTON, FRANK
+  GEORGE GISSING: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy 8vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  R. L. STEVENSON: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy 8vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  TAYLOR, G. R. STIRLING
+  MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. _Demy 8vo._ 7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GREAT WAR. _Cr. 8vo._
+  2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  TAYLOR, UNA
+  MAURICE MAETERLINCK: A CRITICAL STUDY.
+  _Demy_ 8_vo._ 7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  THOMAS, EDWARD
+  FEMININE INFLUENCE ON THE POETS. _Demy_ 8_vo._
+  10_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  A. C. SWINBURNE: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_
+  WALTER PATER: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  THE TENTH MUSE. _F'cap_ 8_vo._ 2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  VAUGHAN, H. M.
+  MELEAGER. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  AN AUSTRALASIAN WANDER-YEAR. _Dy._ 8_vo._ 10_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  WALPOLE, HUGH
+  FORTITUDE. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  THE DUCHESS OF WREXE. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  WILLIAMS, ORLO
+  VIE DE BOHÈME. _Demy_ 8_vo._ 15_s._ _net_
+  GEORGE MEREDITH: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_
+   8_vo._ 7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  THE ESSAY (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap_
+   8_vo._ 1_s._ _net_.
+
+  YOUNG, FILSON
+  NEW LEAVES. _Wide Crown_ 8_vo._ 5_s._ _net_.
+  A CHRISTMAS CARD. _Demy_ 16mo. 1_s._ _net_.
+  PUNCTUATION (_The Art and Craft of Letters_).
+  _F'cap_ 8_vo._ 1_s._ _net_.
+
+  YOUNG, FRANCIS BRETT
+  DEEP SEA. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  THE DARK TOWER. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  THE IRON AGE. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  YOUNG, F. & E. BRETT
+  UNDERGROWTH. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  ROBERT BRIDGES: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  PART TWO: CLASSIFIED
+  INDEX OF TITLES
+
+  _General Literature_
+  ART OF BALLET, THE. _By Mark E. Perugini._
+  ART OF SILHOUETTE, THE. _By Desmond Coke._
+  BATTLE OF THE BOYNE, THE. _By D. C. Boulger._
+  BEHIND THE RANGES. _By F. G. Aflalo._
+  BIRDS IN THE CALENDAR. _By F. G. Aflalo._
+  CAMILLE DESMOULINS. _By Violet Methley._
+  CARRIAGES AND COACHES. _By Ralph Straus._
+  CHRISTMAS CARD, A. _By Filson Young._
+  CUMBERLAND LETTERS, THE. _By Clementina Black._
+  DRAMATIC PORTRAITS. _By P. P. Howe._
+  FEMININE INFLUENCE ON THE POETS. _By E. Thomas._
+  GRAHAME OF CLAVERHOUSE. _By Michael Barrington._
+  HIEROGLYPHICS. _By Arthur Machen._
+  HISTORY OF THE HARLEQUINADE, THE. _By M. Sand._
+  LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE. _By Joseph Clayton._
+  LETTERS FROM GREECE. _By John Mavrogordato._
+  LINLEYS OF BATH, THE. _By Clementina Black._
+  MAHOMET. _By G. M. Draycott._
+  MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. _By G. R. Stirling Taylor._
+  NEW LEAVES. _By Filson Young._
+  PEOPLE AND QUESTIONS. _By G. S. Street._
+  PERSONALITY IN LITERATURE. _By R. A. Scott-James._
+  PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GREAT WAR. _By Stirling Taylor._
+  REAL CAPTAIN CLEVELAND, THE. _By Allan Fea._
+  REGILDING THE CRESCENT. _By F. G. Aflalo._
+  ROBERT KETT. _By Joseph Clayton._
+  SOCIAL HISTORY OF SMOKING, THE. _By G. L. Apperson._
+  SOME ECCENTRICS AND A WOMAN. _By Lewis Melville._
+  SPECULATIVE DIALOGUES. _By Lascelles Abercrombie._
+  STUPOR MUNDI. _By Lionel Allshorn._
+  TENTH MUSE, THE. _By Edward Thomas._
+  THOSE UNITED STATES. _By Arnold Bennett._
+  VIE DE BOHÈME. _By Orlo Williams._
+  WILDE MYTH, THE. _By Lord Alfred Douglas._
+  WINDMILLS. _By Gilbert Cannan._
+
+
+  _Verse_
+
+  COLLECTED POEMS OF J. E. FLECKER.
+  COLLECTED POEMS OF F. M. HUEFFER.
+  CARMINA VARIA. _By C. Kennett Burrow._
+  CORONAL, A. A New Anthology. _By L. M. Lamont._
+  GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND, THE. _By J. E.
+  Flecker._
+  KENSINGTON RHYMES. _By Compton Mackenzie._
+
+
+  _Drama_
+
+  DRAMATIC WORKS OF ST. JOHN HANKIN. _3 vols._
+  DRAMATIC WORKS OF GERHART HAUPTMANN. _6 vols._
+  CASSANDRA IN TROY. _By John Mavrogordato._
+  MAGIC. _By G. K. Chesterton._
+  MODERN DRAMA, THE. _By L. Lewisohn._
+  PEER GYNT. _Translated by R. Ellis Roberts._
+  REPERTORY THEATRE, THE. _By P. P. Howe._
+  THOMPSON. _By St. John Hankin and G. Calderon._
+
+
+  _Travel_
+
+  AUSTRALASIAN WANDER YEAR, AN. _By H. M. Vaughan_
+  EGYPTIAN ÆSTHETICS. _By René Francis_.
+  FOUNTAINS IN THE SAND. _By Norman Douglas_.
+  NOOKS AND CORNERS OF OLD ENGLAND. _By Allan Fea_.
+  OLD CALABRIA. _By Norman Douglas_.
+  OLD ENGLISH HOUSES. _By Allan Fea_.
+  PERFUMES OF ARABY. _By Harold Jacob_.
+
+
+  _Martin Secker's Series of
+  Critical Studies_
+
+  ROBERT BRIDGES. _By F. E. Brett Young_.
+  SAMUEL BUTLER. _By Gilbert Cannan_.
+  GEORGE GISSING. _By Frank Swinnerton_.
+  THOMAS HARDY. _By Lascelles Abercrombie_.
+  HENRIK IBSEN. _By R. Ellis Roberts_.
+  HENRY JAMES. _By Ford Madox Hueffer_.
+  MAURICE MAETERLINCK. _By Una Taylor_.
+  GEORGE MEREDITH. _By Orlo Williams_.
+  WILLIAM MORRIS. _By John Drinkwater_.
+  WALTER PATER. _By Edward Thomas_.
+  D. G. ROSSETTI. _By John Drinkwater_.
+  BERNARD SHAW. _By P. P. Howe_.
+  R. L. STEVENSON. _By Frank Swinnerton_.
+  A. C. SWINBURNE. _By Edward Thomas_.
+  J. M. SYNGE. _By P. P. Howe_.
+  LEO TOLSTOI. _By R. Ellis Roberts_.
+  WALT WHITMAN. _By Basil de Selincourt_.
+  W. B. YEATS. _By Forrest Reid_.
+
+  _The Art and Craft of Letters_
+
+  BALLAD, THE. _By Frank Sidgwick._
+  COMEDY. _By John Palmer._
+  CRITICISM. _By P. P. Howe._
+  EPIC, THE. _By Lascelles Abercrombie._
+  ESSAY, THE. _By Orlo Williams._
+  HISTORY. _By R. H. Gretton._
+  LYRIC, THE. _By John Drinkwater._
+  PARODY. _By Christopher Stone._
+  PUNCTUATION. _By Filson Young._
+  SATIRE. _By Gilbert Cannan._
+  SHORT STORY, THE. By Barry Pain.
+
+
+  _Fiction_
+
+  ALTAR OF THE DEAD, THE. _By Henry James._
+  ASPERN PAPERS, THE. _By Henry James._
+  BANKRUPT, THE. _By Horace Horsnell._
+  BANNER OF THE BULL, THE. _By Rafael Sabatini._
+  BATTLES OF LIFE. _By Austin Philips._
+  BEAST IN THE JUNGLE, THE. _By Henry James._
+  BREAKING-POINT. _By Michael Artzibashef._
+  BURNT HOUSE, THE. _By Christopher Stone._
+  CARNIVAL. _By Compton Mackenzie._
+  CASUALS OF THE SEA. _By William McFee._
+  COLLECTED TALES: Vol. I. _By Barry Pain._
+  COLLECTED TALES: Vol. II. _By Barry Pain._
+  COLUMBINE. _By Viola Meynell._
+  COMMON CHORD, THE. _By Phyllis Bottome._
+  COXON FUND, THE. _By Henry James._
+  DAISY MILLER. _By Henry James._
+  DARK TOWER, THE. _By E. Brett Young._
+  DEATH OF THE LION, THE. _By Henry James._
+  DEBIT ACCOUNT, THE. _By Oliver Onions._
+  DEEP SEA. _By F. Brett Young._
+  DUCHESS OF WREXE, THE. _By Hugh Walpole._
+  FIGURE IN THE CARPET, THE. _By Henry James._
+  FOOL'S TRAGEDY, THE. _By A. Scott Craven._
+  FORTITUDE. _By Hugh Walpole._
+  GLASSES. _By Henry James._
+  GOLIGHTLYS, THE. _By Laurence North._
+  GUY AND PAULINE. _By Compton Mackenzie._
+  IMPATIENT GRISELDA. _By Laurence North._
+  IMPERFECT BRANCH, THE. _By Richard Lluellyn._
+  IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE. _By O. Onions._
+  IRON AGE, THE. _By F. Brett Young._
+  L.S.D. _By Bohun Lynch._
+  LESSON OF THE MASTER, THE. _By Henry James._
+  LOT BARROW. _By Viola Meynell._
+  MARRIAGE OF QUIXOTE, THE. _By Donald Armstrong._
+  MAKING MONEY. _By Owen Johnson._
+  MELEAGER. _By H. M. Vaughan._
+  MILLIONAIRE, THE. _By Michael Artzibashef._
+  MODERN LOVERS. _By Viola Meynell._
+  NARCISSUS. _By Viola Meynell._
+  OLD MOLE. _By Gilbert Cannan._
+  OLD HOUSE, THE. _By Feodor Sologub._
+  ONE KIND AND ANOTHER. _By Barry Pain._
+  OUTWARD APPEARANCE, THE. _By Stanley V. Makower._
+  PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT, THE. _By Compton Mackenzie._
+  PETER PARAGON. _By John Palmer._
+  PUPIL, THE. _By Henry James._
+  QUESTING BEAST, THE. _By Ivy Low._
+  RECORD OF A SILENT LIFE, THE. _By Anna Preston._
+  REVERBERATOR, THE. _By Henry James._
+  ROUND THE CORNER. _By Gilbert Cannan._
+  SALAMANDER, THE. _By Owen Johnson._
+  SANINE. _By Michael Artzibashef._
+  SEA HAWK, THE. _By Rafael Sabatini._
+  SECURITY. _By Ivor Brown._
+  SINISTER STREET. I. _By Compton Mackenzie._
+  SINISTER STREET. II. _By Compton Mackenzie._
+  STORY OF LOUIE, THE. _By Oliver Onions._
+  TALES OF THE REVOLUTION. _By M. Artzibashef._
+  TELLING THE TRUTH. _By William Hewlett._
+  TRUE DIMENSION, THE. _By Warrington Dawson._
+  TURN OF THE SCREW, THE. _By Henry James._
+  UNCLE'S ADVICE. _By William Hewlett._
+  UNDERGROWTH. _By F. & E. Brett Young._
+  UNDERMAN, THE. _By Joseph Clayton._
+  UNOFFICIAL. _By Bohun Lynch._
+  WIDDERSHINS. _By Oliver Onions._
+  YEARS OF PLENTY. _By Ivor Brown._
+  YOUNG EARNEST. _By Gilbert Cannan._
+
+  BALLANTYNE PRESS: LONDON AND EDINBURGH
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext
+transcriber:
+
+managed somehow that he should chose Monica=managed somehow that he
+should choose Monica
+
+were akin to the birds in their shubberies=were akin to the birds in
+their shrubberies
+
+the tapestries even more beautiful that himself had woven.=the
+tapestries even more beautiful that he himself had woven.
+
+"The train's quite punctual," said Mr. Hazelwood="The train's quite
+punctual," said Mr. Hazlewood
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Guy and Pauline, by Compton Mackenzie
+
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+<title>
+  The Project Gutenberg eBook of Guy and Pauline, by Compton Mackenzie.
+</title>
+<style type="text/css">
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+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Guy and Pauline, by Compton Mackenzie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: Guy and Pauline
+
+Author: Compton Mackenzie
+
+Release Date: April 28, 2012 [EBook #39556]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GUY AND PAULINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="351" height="550" alt="image of the book&#39;s cover" title="image of the book&#39;s cover" />
+</p>
+
+<p class="hang"><i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i><br />
+THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT<br />
+SINISTER STREET: VOL. I<br />
+SINISTER STREET: VOL. II<br /><br />
+KENSINGTON RHYMES
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="c"><i>First published September</i> 15, 1915
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a></p>
+
+<h1>GUY AND<br />
+PAULINE<br />
+<small><small><i>By COMPTON MACKENZIE</i></small></small></h1>
+
+<hr />
+<hr class="mac" />
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr class="mac" />
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cb"><big>L O N D O N : &nbsp; M A R T I N &nbsp;  S E C K E R</big><br />
+NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI MCMXV</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="c">TO<br />
+<br />
+GENERAL<br />
+SIR IAN HAMILTON<br />
+<small>G.C.B., D.S.O.</small><br />
+<br />
+AND THE GENERAL STAFF OF THE<br />
+MEDITERRANEAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+
+<tr><td colspan="3" align="left"><small>CHAP.</small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#AUTUMN">I.</a></td>
+<td> AUTUMN</td><td>
+<small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp; &nbsp; <i>September: October: November</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_009">9</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#WINTER">II.</a></td><td colspan="2"> WINTER</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp; &nbsp; <i>December: January: February</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_063">63</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#SPRING">III.</a></td><td colspan="2"> SPRING</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp; &nbsp; <i>March: April: May</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_109">109</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#SUMMER">IV.</a></td><td colspan="2"> SUMMER</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp; &nbsp; <i>June: July: August</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_167">167</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#ANOTHER_AUTUMN">V.</a></td><td colspan="2"> ANOTHER AUTUMN</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp; &nbsp; <i>September: October: November</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_219">219</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#ANOTHER_WINTER">VI.</a></td>
+<td colspan="2"> ANOTHER WINTER</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp; &nbsp; <i>December: January: February</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_271">271</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#ANOTHER_SPRING">VII.</a></td><td colspan="2"> ANOTHER SPRING</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp; &nbsp; <i>March: April: May</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_315">315</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#ANOTHER_SUMMER">VIII.</a></td><td colspan="2"> ANOTHER SUMMER</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp; &nbsp; <i>June: July: August</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_359">359</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#EPIGRAPH">IX.</a></td><td colspan="2"> EPIGRAPH</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp; &nbsp; <i>Guy: Pauline</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_391">391</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="AUTUMN" id="AUTUMN"></a>AUTUMN</h2>
+
+<p><a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>September</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE slow train puffed away into the unadventurous country; and the bees
+buzzing round the wine-dark dahlias along the platform were once again
+audible. The last farewell that Guy Hazlewood flung over his shoulder to
+a parting friend was more casual than it would have been, had he not at
+the same moment been turning to ask the solitary porter how many cases
+of books awaited his disposition. They were very heavy, it seemed; and
+the porter, as he led the way toward the small and obscure purgatory
+through which every package for Shipcot must pass, declared he was
+surprized to hear these cases contained merely books. He would not go so
+far as to suggest that hitherto he had never faced the existence of
+books in such quantity, for the admission might have impugned official
+omniscience; yet there was in his attitude just as much incredulity
+mingled with disdain of useless learning as would preserve his dignity
+without jeopardizing the financial compliment his services were owed.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well," he decided, as if he were trying to smooth over Guy's
+embarrassment at the sight of these large packing-cases in the
+parcel-office. "You'll want something as'll keep you busy this
+winter&mdash;for you'll be the gentleman who've come to live down Wychford
+way?"</p>
+
+<p>Guy nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"And Wychford is mortal dead in winter. Time walks very lame there, as
+they say. And all these books, I suppose, were better to come along of
+the bus to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>Guy looked doubtful. It was seeming a pity to waste this afternoon
+without unpacking a single case.<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a></p>
+
+<p>"The trap...." he began.</p>
+
+<p>But the porter interrupted him firmly: he did not think Mr. Godbold
+would relish the notion of one of these packing-cases in his new trap.</p>
+
+<p>"I could give you a hand...." Guy began again.</p>
+
+<p>The porter stiffened himself against the slight upon his strength.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not the heffort," he asserted. "Heffort is what I must look for
+every day of my life. It's Mr. Godbold's trap."</p>
+
+<p>The discussion was given another turn by the entrance of Mr. Godbold
+himself. He was not at all concerned for his trap, and indeed by an
+asseverated indifference to its welfare he conveyed the impression that,
+new though it were, it was so much firewood, if the gentleman wanted
+firewood. No, the trap did not matter, but what about Mr. Hazlewood's
+knees?</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, there you are," said the porter, and he and Mr. Godbold both stood
+dumb in the presence of the finally insuperable.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it must be the bus," said Guy. On such a sleepy afternoon he
+could argue no longer. The books must be unpacked to-morrow; and the
+word lulled like an opiate the faint irritation of his disappointment.
+The porter's reiterated altruism was rewarded with a fee so absurdly in
+excess of anything he had done, that he began to speak of a possibility
+if after all the smallest case might not be squeezed ... but Mr. Godbold
+flicked the pony, and the trap rattled up the station road at a pace
+quite out of accord with the warmth of the afternoon. Presently he
+turned to his fare:</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Godbold said to me only this morning, she said, 'You ought to have
+had a luggage-flap behind and that I shall always say.' And she was
+right. Women is often right, what's more," the husband postulated.<a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a></p>
+
+<p>Guy nodded absently: he was thinking about the books.</p>
+
+<p>"Very often right," Mr. Godbold murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Still Guy paid no attention.</p>
+
+<p>"Very often," he repeated, but as Guy would neither contradict nor agree
+with him, Mr. Godbold relapsed into meditation upon the justice of his
+observation. The pony had settled down to his wonted pace and jogged on
+through the golden haze of fine September weather. Soon the village of
+Shipcot was left behind, and before them lay the long road winding
+upward over the wold to Wychford. Guy thought of the friend who had left
+him that afternoon and wished that Michael Fane were still with him to
+enjoy this illimitable sweep of country. He had been the very person to
+share in the excitement of arranging a new house. Guy could not remember
+that he had ever made a suggestion for which he had not been asked; nor
+could he call to mind a single occasion when his appreciation had
+failed. And now to-night, when for the first time he was going to sleep
+in his own house, his friend was gone. There had been no hint of
+departure during the six weeks of preparation they had spent together at
+the Stag Inn, and it was really perverse of Michael to rush back to
+London now. Guy jumped down from the trap, which was climbing the hill
+very slowly, and stretched his long legs. He was rather bored by his
+loneliness, but as soon as he had stated so much to himself, he was
+shocked at the disloyalty to his ambition. After all, he reassured
+himself, he was not going back to a dull inn-parlour: to-night he was
+going to sleep in an hermitage for the right to enjoy the seclusion of
+which he had been compelled to fight very hard. It was weak to imagine
+he was lonely already, and to fortify himself against this mood, he
+pulled out of his pocket his father's last letter and read it again
+while he walked up the hill behind the trap.<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">F<small>OX</small> H<small>ALL</small>, G<small>ALTON</small>, H<small>ANTS</small>.<br />
+<i>September 10.</i>&nbsp; &nbsp; </p>
+
+<p class="nind"><i>Dear Guy,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I agree with some of what you say, but I disagree with a good deal
+more, and I am entirely opposed to your method of procedure, which
+is to put it very mildly rather casual. Your degree was not so good
+as it ought to have been, but I did not reproach you, because in
+the Consular Service you had chosen a career which did not call
+specially for a first. At the same time you could, if you had
+worked, have got a first quite easily. Your six months with the
+Macedonian Relief people seems to have knocked all your consular
+ambitions on the head rather too easily, I confess, to make me feel
+very happy about your future. And now without consulting me you
+take a house in the country for the purpose of writing poetry! You
+imply in answer to my remonstrances that I am unable to appreciate
+the 'necessity' for your step. That may be, but I cannot help
+asking where you would be now if I at your age, instead of helping
+my father with his school, had gone off to Oxfordshire to write
+poetry. Perhaps I had ambitions to make a name for myself with the
+pen. If I had, I quenched them in order to devote myself to what I
+considered my duty. I do not reproach you for refusing to carry on
+the school at Fox Hall. Your dear mother's last request was that I
+should not urge you to be a schoolmaster, unless you were drawn to
+the vocation. Her wishes I have respected, and I repeat that I am
+not hurt at your refusal. At the same time I cannot encourage what
+can only be described as this whim of yours to bury yourself in a
+remote village where, having saddled yourself with the
+responsibilities of a house, you announce your intention of living
+by poetry! I am the last person to underestimate the value of
+poetry, but as a livelihood it seems to me as little to be relied
+upon as the weather. However, you are of age. You have £150 a year
+of your own. You are with the exercise of the strictest economy
+independent. And this brings me to the<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a> point of your last letter
+in which you ask me to supplement your own income with an allowance
+£150 a year from me. This inclination to depend upon your father is
+not what I conceive to be the artist's spirit of independence. This
+over-drawing upon your achievement fills me with dismay for the
+future. However, since I do not wish you to begin hampered by debt
+and as you assure me that you have spent all your own money on this
+idiotic house, I will give you £150, to be paid in quarterly
+instalments of £37 10s. as from the 21st of this month for one
+year. Furthermore, at the end of next year if you find that poetry
+is less profitable than even you expect, I will offer you a place
+at Fox Hall, thereby securing for you the certainty of a life
+moderately free from financial worries. After all, even a
+schoolmaster has some spare time, and I daresay our greatest poets
+did much of their best work in their</i> spare <i>time. The idea of
+writing poetry all day and every day appeals to me as enervating
+and ostentatious.</i></p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Your affectionate father,</i>&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+<i>John Hazlewood.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Guy stood still when he had finished the letter, and execrated mutely
+the damnable dependence that compelled him to accept gratefully and
+humbly this gift of £150. Yet with no money of his own coming in till
+December, with actually a housekeeper on her way from Cardiff and his
+house already furnished, he must accept the offer. In a year's time he
+would have proved the reasonableness of his request; and he began to
+compose a scene between them, in which his father would almost on bended
+knees beg him to accept an allowance of £300 a year in consideration of
+the magnificent proof he had afforded to the world of being in the
+direct line of English poets.</p>
+
+<p>"And I mustn't forget to send him a sonnet on his birthday," said Guy to
+himself.<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a></p>
+
+<p>This notion restored his dignity, and he hurried on to overtake the trap
+which was waiting on the brow of the hill.</p>
+
+<p>"You were saying something about women being right," he reminded Mr.
+Godbold, as he sat down again beside him. "Has it ever struck you that
+fathers are nearly always wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>"That wouldn't do for me at all," said Mr. Godbold, shaking his head.
+"You see I'm the father of nine, and if I wasn't always right, sir, I
+shouldn't be no better than a bull in a china-shop where I live. I've
+<i>got</i> to be right, Mr. Hazlewood."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose that's what the Pope felt," Guy murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Now do you reckon this here Pope they speak of really exists in a
+manner of speaking?" Mr. Godbold asked, as the trap bowled along the
+level stretch of upland road. "You know there's some of these
+narrow-minded mortals at Wychford as will have it that Mr. Grey, our
+parson, is in with the Pope, and I said to one or two of them the other
+night while we was arguing in the post-office, I said, 'Have any of you
+wise men of Gotham ever seen this Pope as you're so knowing about?'"</p>
+
+<p>"And had they?" asked Guy encouragingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not one of them," said Mr. Godbold. "And I thought to myself as I was
+walking up home, I thought now what if there wasn't no such thing as a
+Pope any more than there's women with fish-tails and all this rubbish
+you read of in books. If you ask my opinion of books, Mr. Hazlewood, I
+tell you that I think books is as bad for some people as wireworms is
+for carnations. They seem to regular eat into them."</p>
+
+<p>Guy laughed. Misgivings about the wisdom of his choice vanished, and he
+was being conscious of a very intimate pleasure in thus driving back to
+Wychford from<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a> the station. The country tossed for miles to right and
+left in great stretches of pasturage, and when Mr. Godbold pulled up for
+a moment to look at a trace, the air brilliantly dusted with autumnal
+gold seemed to endow him with the richness of its silence: along the
+sparse hedgerow chicory flowers burned with the pale intense blue of the
+September sky above, and Guy felt like them worshipful of the cloudless
+scene. The road ran along the upland for half-a-mile before it dipped
+suddenly down into the valley of the Greenrush from which the spire of
+Wychford church came delicately up into the air, like a coil of smoke
+ascending from the opalescent corona that hung over the small town
+clustered against the farther hillside. Down in that valley close to the
+church was Plashers Mead; and Guy watched eagerly for the first sight of
+his long low house. Already the sparkle of the more distant curves of
+the Greenrush was visible; but Plashers Mead was still hidden by the
+slope of the bank. Presently this broke away to a ragged hedge, and the
+house displayed itself as much an integral part of the landscape as an
+outcrop of stone.</p>
+
+<p>"Tasty little place," commented Mr. Godbold, while the trap jolted
+cautiously down the last twist of the hilly road. "But I reckon old
+Burrows was glad to let it. You're young though, and I daresay you won't
+mind being flooded out in winter. Two years ago Burrows's son's wife's
+nephew was floating paper boats in the front hall. But you're young, and
+I daresay you'll enjoy it."</p>
+
+<p>The pony swept round the corner and pulled up with a jerk at the wooden
+gateway in the grey wall overhung by lime-trees that concealed from the
+high road the moist fields and garden of Plashers Mead.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sleeping here to-night, you know, for the first time," said Guy. He
+had tried all the way back not to make this announcement, but the sight
+of his own gateway destroyed his reserve.<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Well, you'll have a fine night, that's one good job," Mr. Godbold
+predicted.</p>
+
+<p>"And the moon only just past the full," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Mr. Godbold agreed; and the tenant passed through the
+gateway into the garden where every path had its own melody of running
+water. He examined with proprietary solicitude the espaliers of
+apple-trees and admired for the twentieth time the pledge they offered
+by their fantastic forms of his garden's antiquity. He pinched several
+pippins that seemed ripe, but they were still hard; and he could find
+nothing over which to exert his lordship, until he saw by the edge of
+the path a piece of groundsel. Having solemnly exterminated the weed,
+Guy felt that the garden must henceforth recognize him as master, and he
+walked on through a mass of dropsical cabbages and early kale until he
+came face to face with the house, the sudden view of which like this
+never failed to give him a peculiar pleasure. The tangled garden, long
+and narrow, was bounded on the right, as one entered, by the Greenrush,
+over which hung a thicket of yews that completely shut out the first
+straggling houses of Wychford. On the left the massed espaliers ended
+abruptly in a large water-meadow reaching to the foot of the hill along
+which the high road climbed in a slow diagonal. By the corner of the
+house the garden had narrowed to the apex of a thin triangle, so that
+the windows looked out over the water-meadow and, beyond, up the wide
+valley of the Greenrush to where the mighty western sky rested on
+rounded hills. At this apex the Greenrush flung a tributary stream to
+wash the back of the house and one side of the orchard, whence it wound
+in extravagant curves towards the easterly valley. The main branch,
+dammed up to form a deep and sluggish mill-stream, flowed straight on,
+dividing Guy's domain from the churchyard. At the end of the orchard on
+this side was a lock-gate through which a certain<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> amount of water
+continuously escaped from the mill-stream, enough indeed to make the
+orchard an island, as it trickled in diamonded shallows to reinforce the
+idle tributary. Somewhere in the farther depths of the eastern valley
+all vagrant waters were united, and somewhere still more remote they
+came to a confluence with their father the Thames.</p>
+
+<p>Guy sat upon the parapet of the well under the shade of a sycamore tree
+and regarded with admiration and satisfaction the exterior of his house.
+He looked at the semi-circular porch of stone over the front-door and
+venerated the supporting cherubs who with puffed-out cheeks had blown
+defiance at wind and rain since the days of Elizabeth. He counted the
+nine windows, five above and four below, populating with the shapes of
+many friends the rooms they lightened. He looked at the steep roof of
+grey stone-tiles rich with the warm golden green of mossy patterns. He
+looked at the four pear-trees against the walls of the house barren now
+for many years. He looked at himself in silhouette against the silver
+sky of the well-water; and then he went indoors.</p>
+
+<p>The big stone-paved hall was very cool, and the sound of the stream at
+the back came babbling through lattices open to the light of a green
+world. Guy could not make up his mind whether the inside of the house
+smelt very dry or very damp, for there clung about it that odour
+peculiar to rustic age, which may be found equally in dry old barns and
+in damp potting-sheds. He wished he could furnish the hall worthily. At
+present it contained only a high-back chair, an alleged contemporary of
+Cromwell, which was doddering beside the hooded fireplace; a
+warming-pan; and an oak-chest which remained a chest only so long as
+nobody either sat upon it or lifted the lid. There was also a
+grandfather-clock which had suffered an abrupt resurrection of four
+minutes' duration when it was recently<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a> lifted out of the furniture-van,
+but had now relapsed into the silence of years. Leading out of the hall
+was a small empty room which had been dedicated to the possession of his
+friend Michael Fane: together they had planned to paper it with gold and
+paint the ceiling black. Michael, however, had still another year at
+Oxford, and the room with an obelisk of lining-paper standing upright on
+the bare floor was now a little desolate. On the other side of the hall
+was the dining-room which Guy, by taxing his resources, had managed to
+furnish very successfully. It was a square room painted emerald-green
+above the white wainscot. Two inset cupboards were filled with glass and
+china: there were four Chippendale chairs and an oval Sheraton table,
+curtains of purple silk, some old English watercolours and two
+candlesticks of Sheffield plate. Beyond the dining-room was the kitchen,
+the corridor to which was endowed with a swinging baize-door considered
+by the landlord to be the finest feature of the house. The problem of
+equipping the kitchen had seemed insoluble until Guy heard of a sale in
+the neighbourhood. He had bicycled over to this and bought the contents
+of the large kitchen at auction. The result was that the dresser
+encroached upon the table, that the table had one leg in the fender and
+that a row of graduated dish-covers, the largest of which would have
+sheltered two turkeys, occupied whatever space was left. All that
+remained of Guy's own money had been invested in his kitchen, and he
+accounted for the large size of everything by the fact of the auction's
+having been held in the open air, where everything had looked so much
+smaller. Now, as he contemplated dubiously the result, he wondered what
+Miss Peasey would say to it. She and the books would arrive together at
+half-past nine to-night. He hoped his unknown housekeeper would not be
+irritated by these dish-covers, and as a precautionary measure he
+unhooked the largest, carried it upstairs and<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a> deposited it on the floor
+of an unfurnished bedroom. The staircase ran steep and straight up from
+the hall into a long corridor with more casements opening on the orchard
+behind. The bedroom at one end was dedicated to the hope of Michael
+Fane's occupation and was always referred to in letters as his: '<i>By the
+way I put the largest dish-cover in your bedroom</i>.' The next two
+bedrooms were also empty and belonged in spirit to the friends with whom
+Guy had lived during his last year at Oxford. The fourth was his own,
+very simply and sparsely furnished in comparison with the bedroom up in
+the roof which was intended for Miss Peasey. The preparation of that for
+an elderly unmarried woman had involved a certain voluptuousness of rep
+and fumed oak and heavily decorated china, the fruit of the second-best
+bedroom in the house of the dish-covers. As Guy went up the crooked
+stairs and knocked his head on three successive beams, he hoped Miss
+Peasey would not be as disproportionately large as the kitchen dresser.
+Her handwriting had been spidery enough, and he pictured her hopefully
+as small and wizened. Miss Peasey's bower with the big dormer window
+surveying the tree-tops of the orchard was certainly a success, and Guy
+saw that Michael had with happy intuition of female aspiration hung on
+the wall opposite her bed a large steel-engraving of Doré's Martyrs,
+which had been included with two hammocks and a fishing-rod in one of
+the odd lots lightly bid for at the auction. There did not seem anything
+else she could want; so, having killed a bluebottle with a tartan
+pincushion, he came downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>Guy had left his own room to the last, partly because he regretted so
+much the delay in the arrival of those books and partly because, however
+inadequately equipped was the rest of the house, this room was always
+the final justification of his tenancy. It was a larger room than any of
+the others, for the corridor did not cut off its share of the back. It<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a>
+possessed, in addition to the usual window looking out over the western
+side of the valley, a very large bay which hung right over the stream,
+with a view of the orchard, of the church-steeple, of the water-meadows
+beyond and of the wold rolling across the horizon. This morning Michael
+and he had pushed the furniture into place, had set in order the great
+wicker chairs and nailed against the wall the frames of green canvas.
+The floor was covered with a sweet-smelling mat of Abingdon rushes; and
+the curtains of his old rooms in Balliol were hung in place, dim green
+curtains sown with golden fleurs-de-lys. The ivory image of an emaciated
+saint standing on the mantelshelf between candlesticks of old wrought
+iron was probably a Spanish Virgin, but Guy preferred to say she was
+Saint Rose of Lima because '<i>O Rose of Lima</i>' seemed a wonderful
+apostrophe to begin a poem. Nothing indeed remained for the room's
+perfection but to fill the new bookshelves on either side of the
+fireplace. Why had he not hired a cart in Shipcot? They would have been
+here by now, and he would actually have been able to begin work
+to-night, setting thus a noble period to these last six weeks of
+preparation.</p>
+
+<p>Guy dragged a chair into the bay window and, balancing his long legs on
+the sill, he made numerous calculations in which Miss Peasey's wages,
+the weekly bills for food, and the number of times he would have to go
+up to London were set against £150 a year. When he woke up, the
+lime-trees that bordered the high road had flung their shadows half-way
+across the meadow, and the air was a fume of golden gnats against the
+dipping sun. Within ten minutes the sun vanished, and the mists began to
+rise. Guy, feeling rather chilly and ashamed of himself for falling
+asleep, rose hurriedly and went up into the town. He interviewed the
+driver of the omnibus and told him to look out for his books, and as an
+afterthought he mentioned the arrival of Miss Peasey. He wished now he
+had written and told his<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a> housekeeper to spend the night in Oxford; and
+he hoped she would not be prejudiced against Plashers Mead by a
+five-mile drive in a cold omnibus after her tiring journey from Cardiff.
+He dawdled about the steep village street for a while, gossiping with
+tradesmen at their doors and watching the warmth fade out of the grey
+houses in the falling dusk. Then he went to eat his last meal in the
+Stag Inn.</p>
+
+<p>After supper Guy returned to Plashers Mead, wandering round the house,
+dropping a great deal of candle-grease everywhere and working himself up
+into a state of anxiety over Miss Peasey's advent. It would be terrible
+if she demanded her fare back to Wales the moment she arrived; and to
+propitiate her he put the best lamp in the kitchen, whence (as with such
+illumination it looked more than ever protuberant) he took another
+dish-cover up to Michael's bedroom. Since it was still but a few minutes
+after eight and the omnibus would not come for another hour and a half,
+he lit all the wax candles in his own room and wondered what to do. The
+tall shadows wavering in the draught were seeming cold and uncomfortable
+without a fire, so he restlessly threw back the curtains of the bay
+window to watch the rising of the moon. At that instant her rim appeared
+above the black hills, and presently a great moon of dislustred gold
+swam along the edge of the earth. Although she appeared to shed no
+light, the valley responded to her presence, and Guy was lured from his
+room to walk for a while in the dews.</p>
+
+<p>Out in the orchard a heavy mist wrapped him in wet folds of silver; yet
+overhead there was clear starlight, and he could watch the slow
+burnishing of the moon's face in her voyage up the sky. It was a queer
+country in which he found himself, where all the tree-tops seemed to be
+floating away from invisible trunks, and where for a while no sound was
+audible but his own footsteps making a music almost<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a> of violins in the
+saturated grass. The moon wrought upon the vapours a shifting damascene;
+and far behind, as it seemed, a rufous stain showed where the candles in
+his room were still alight. Gradually a variety of sounds began to play
+upon the silence. He could hear the dry squeak of a bat and cows
+munching in the meadows on the other side of the stream. The stream
+itself babbled and was still, babbled and was still; while along the
+bank voles were taking the water with splashes that went up and down a
+scale like the deep notes of a dulcimer. Far off, an owl hooted, an
+otter barked; and then as he crossed the middle of the orchard he was
+hearing nothing but apples fall with solemn thud, until the noise of the
+lock-gate swallowed all lighter sounds. Here the mist had temporarily
+dissolved, and in the moonlight he could see water gushing forth like an
+arch of lace and the long bramble-sprays combing the shallows below.
+Soon the orchard was left behind, and he was in the mist of a wide
+meadow, where all was silent again except for the faint sobbing of the
+grass to his footsteps. He walked straight into the moon's face,
+stumbling from time to time over molehills with an eery fragrance of
+fresh-turned soil, and wishing he could ever say in verse a little of
+the magic this autumnal night was shedding upon his fancy.</p>
+
+<p>"By gad, if I can't write here, I ought to be shot," he declared.</p>
+
+<p>The church-clock struck the half-hour as appositely as if his own father
+had said something about the need for hurrying up and showing what he
+could do.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but I'm not going to be hurried," said Guy aloud. And since the
+clock could not answer him again, it was as good as having the best of
+an argument.</p>
+
+<p>Guy walked on, and after a while could hear once more the purling of the
+stream. He thought there was something strangely human about this river
+in the way it wandered so<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a> careless of direction. When he had left these
+banks, they had been going away from him: now here they were coming back
+like himself toward the moon, so that presently he was able without
+changing his course to walk under their border of willows. The mist had
+drifted away from the stream, leaving the spires of loosestrife plainly
+visible and more dimly on the other side the forms of huge cattle at
+pasture. There was, too, a smell of meadowsweet softening with a summer
+languor the sharp September night. The willows gave way to overhanging
+thickets of hawthorn, as the river suddenly swept round to make a noose
+that was completed but a few yards ahead of where he was standing. He
+could not see on account of the bushes the size of the peninsula so
+formed, and when suddenly he heard from the depths a sound of laughter,
+so full was his brain of moonshine that if he had come face to face with
+a legendary queen of fairies, he would hardly have been surprized. It
+was with the deliberate encouragement of a vision surpassing all the
+fantasies of moon and mist that Guy stopped; and indeed, on a sensuous
+impulse to pamper his imagination with an unsolved mystery he had almost
+turned round to go back. Curiosity, however, was too strong; for, as he
+paused irresolute, the fairy mirth tinkling again from the recesses of
+that bewitched enclosure died away upon the murmur of a conversation,
+and he could not leave any longer inviolate that screen of hawthorns.</p>
+
+<p>In the apogee of the river's noose two girls, clearly seen against the
+silver glooms beyond, were bending over a basket. Their heads were close
+together, and it was not until Guy was almost on top of them that he
+realized how impertinent his intrusion might seem. He drew back
+blushing, just as one of the girls became aware of his presence and
+jumped up with an 'oh' that floated away from her as lightly as a moth
+upon the moonshine. Her sister (Guy decided at once they were sisters)
+jumped up<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a> also and luckily for him, since it offered the opportunity of
+a natural apology, overturned the basket. For a moment the three of them
+gazed at one another over the mushrooms that were tumbled upon the grass
+to be an elfin city of the East, so white and cold were their cupolas
+under the moon.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't I help to pick them up?" Guy asked, wondering to himself why on
+this night of nights that was the real beginning of Plashers Mead he
+should be blessed by this fortunate encounter. The two girls were
+wearing big white coats of some rough tweed or frieze on which the mist
+lay like gossamer; and, as neither of them had a hat, Guy could see that
+one was very dark and the other fair.</p>
+
+<p>"We wondered who you were," said the dark one.</p>
+
+<p>"I live at Plashers Mead," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, I've seen you often," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"And Father says every day 'My dears, I really must call upon that young
+man.'"</p>
+
+<p>It was the fair one who spoke, and Guy recognized that it was her
+laughter he had first heard.</p>
+
+<p>"My other sister is somewhere close by," said the dark one.</p>
+
+<p>Guy was kneeling down to gather up the mushrooms, and he looked round to
+see another white figure coming toward them.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Margaret, do let's introduce him to Monica. It will be such fun,"
+cried the fair sister.</p>
+
+<p>Guy saw that Margaret was shaking her head, but nevertheless when the
+third sister came near enough she did introduce him. Monica was more
+like Margaret, but much fairer than the first fair sister; and with her
+reserve and her pale gold hair she seemed, as she greeted him, to be
+indeed a wraith of the moon.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I carry the mushrooms back for you?" Guy offered.<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no thanks," said Monica quickly. "The Rectory is quite out of your
+way."</p>
+
+<p>He felt the implication of an eldest sister's disapproval, and not
+wishing to spoil the omens of romance, he left the three sisters by the
+banks of the Greenrush and was soon on his way home through the webs of
+mist.</p>
+
+<p>How extraordinary that he and Michael should have spent six weeks at
+Wychford without realizing that the Rector had three such daughters.
+Godbold had gossiped about him only this afternoon, reporting that he
+was held by some of his parishioners to be in with the Pope: they might
+more justly suspect him of being in with Titania. Monica, Margaret ...
+he had not heard the name of the third. Monica had seemed a little
+frigid, but Margaret and ... really when the omnibus arrived he must
+find out the name of the Rector's third daughter, of that one so
+obviously the youngest with her light brown hair and her laugh of which
+even now, as he paused, he fancied he could still hear the melodious
+echo. Monica, Margaret and ... Rose perhaps, for there had been
+something of a dewy eglantine about her. Surely that was indeed the echo
+of their voices; but, as upon distance the wayward sound eluded him, the
+belfry-clock with whirr and buzz and groan made preparation to strike
+the hour. Nine strokes boomed, leaving behind them a stillness absolute.
+The poet thought of time before him, of the three sisters by the river,
+of fame to come, and of his own fortune in finding Plashers Mead. Four
+months ago he had been in Macedonia, full of proconsular romance, and
+now he was in England with a much keener sense of every moment's
+potentiality than he had ever known in the dreams of oriental dominion.
+This sublunary adventure indicated how great a richness of pastoral life
+lay behind the slumber of a forgotten town; and it was seeming more than
+ever a pity Michael had not waited until to-night, so that he also might
+have met Monica<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a> and Margaret and that smallest innominate sister with
+the light brown hair. Guy could not help arranging with himself for his
+friend to fall in love with one of them; and since he at once allotted
+Monica to Michael, he knew that he himself preferred one of the others.
+But which? Oh, it was ridiculous to ask such questions after seeing
+three girls for three minutes of moonlight. Perhaps it really had been
+sorcery and in the morning, when he met them in Wychford High Street,
+they would appear dull and ordinary. They could not be so beautiful as
+he thought they were, he decided, since if they were he must have heard
+of their beauty. Nevertheless it was in a mood of almost elated
+self-congratulation that Guy found himself hurrying through the orchard
+toward the candlelight of his room.</p>
+
+<p>The arrival of Miss Peasey, now that it was upon him, banished
+everything else; and instead of dreaming deliciously of that encounter
+in the water-meadows, he stood meditating on the failure of the kitchen.
+As he regarded the enormous dresser; the table trampling upon the
+fender; the seven dish-covers mocking his poor crockery, Guy had little
+hope that Miss Peasey would stay a week: and then suddenly, worse than
+any failure of equipment, he remembered that she might be hungry. He
+looked at his watch. A quarter-past nine. Of course she would be hungry.
+She probably had eaten nothing but a banana since breakfast in Cardiff.
+Guy rushed out and surprized the landlord of the Stag by begging him to
+send the hostler down at once with cold beef and stout and cheese.</p>
+
+<p>"There's the bus," he cried. "Don't forget. At once. My new housekeeper.
+Long journey. And salad. Forgot she'd be hungry. Salt and mustard. I've
+got plates."</p>
+
+<p>The omnibus went rumbling past, and Guy followed at a jog-trot down the
+street, saw it cross the bridge and, making a spurt, caught it up just
+as a woman alighted by the gate of Plashers Mead.<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Miss Peasey," said Guy breathlessly. "I went up the street to see
+if the bus was coming. Have you had a comfortable journey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Hazlewood?" asked the new housekeeper blinking at him.</p>
+
+<p>The guard of the omnibus at this moment informed Guy that he had some
+cases for Plashers Mead.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Mr. Hazlewood then?" asked Miss Peasey turning sharply.</p>
+
+<p>Over her shoulder Guy saw that the guard was apparently punching the
+side of his head, and he said more loudly:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Mr. Hazlewood."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you were. I'm a little bit deaf after travelling, so you'll
+kindly speak slightly above the usual, Mr. Hazlewood."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you've had a comfortable journey," Guy shouted.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I think I shall," she said with what Guy fancied was meant to
+be an encouraging smile. "I hope you haven't lost any of my parcels,
+young man," she continued with a severe glance at the guard.</p>
+
+<p>"Four and a stringbag. Is that right, mum?" he bellowed. "She's as deaf
+as an adder, Mr. Hazlewood," he explained confidentially. "We had a
+regular time getting of her into the bus before we found out she
+couldn't hear what was being said to her. Oh, very obstinate she was."</p>
+
+<p>"This is the garden," Guy shouted, as they passed in through the gate.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I daresay," Miss Peasey replied ambiguously.</p>
+
+<p>Guy wondered how she would ever be got upstairs to her room.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the hall," he shouted. "Rather unfurnished I'm afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I'm quite used to the country," said Miss Peasey.<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a></p>
+
+<p>Guy was now in a state of nervous indecision. Just as he was going to
+shout to Miss Peasey that the kitchen was through the baize-door, the
+hostler from the Stag came up to know whether mutton would do instead of
+beef, and just as he said pork would be better than nothing, the guard
+arrived with Miss Peasey's tin box and wanted to know where he should
+put it. The hall seemed to be thronged with people.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd like your boxes upstairs, wouldn't you?" he shouted to the
+housekeeper.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do you want to come upstairs?" she said cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>"No, your boxes. The kitchen's in here."</p>
+
+<p>He really hustled her into the kitchen and, having got her at last in a
+well-lighted room, he begged her to sit down and expect her supper. By
+this time two men who had been summoned by the driver of the omnibus to
+bring in Guy's books, were staggering and sweating into the hall.
+However, the confusion relaxed in time; and before the clock struck ten
+Guy was alone with Miss Peasey and without an audience was managing to
+make her understand most of what he was saying.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come down in about half an hour," he told her, "and show you your
+room."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a long way," said Miss Peasey, when the moment was arrived to
+conduct her up the winding staircase to her bower in the roof. Guy had
+calculated that she would miss all the beams, and so from a desire to
+make the best of the staircase he had not mentioned them. He sighed with
+relief when she passed into her bedroom, unbumped.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, quite nice," she pronounced looking round her.</p>
+
+<p>"In the morning, we'll talk over everything," said Guy, and with a
+hurried good-night he rushed away.</p>
+
+<p>In the hall he attacked with a chisel the first packing-case. One by one
+familiar volumes winked at him with their gold lettering in the
+candlelight. He chose Keats to take upstairs<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a> and, having read St.
+Agnes' Eve, stood by the window of his bedroom, poring upon the moonlit
+valley.</p>
+
+<p>In bed his mind skipped the stress of Miss Peasey's arrival and fled
+back to the meadows where he had been walking.</p>
+
+<p>"Monica, Margaret...." he began dreamily. It was a pity he had forgotten
+to find out the name of that sister who was so like a wild rose. Never
+mind: he would find out to-morrow. And for the second time that day the
+word lulled him like an opiate.<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>October</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span>T was a blowy afternoon early in October, and Pauline was sitting by
+the window of what at Wychford Rectory was still called the nursery. The
+persistence of the old name might almost be taken as symbolic of the way
+in which time had glided by that house unrecognized, for here were
+Monica, Margaret and Pauline grown up before anyone had thought of
+changing its name even to schoolroom. And with the old name it had
+preserved the character childhood had lent it. There was not a chair
+that did not appear now like the veteran survivor of childish wars and
+misappropriations, nor any table nor cupboard that did not testify to an
+affectionate ill-treatment prolonged over many years. On the walls the
+paper which had once been vivid in its expression of primitive gaiety
+was now faded: but the pattern of berries, birds and daisies still
+displayed that eternally unexplored tangle as freshly as once it was
+displayed for childish fancies of adventure. Pauline had always loved
+the window-seat, and from here she had always seen before anyone else at
+the Rectory the first flash of Spring's azure eyes, the first greying of
+Winter's locks. So, now on this afternoon she could see the bullying
+Southwest wind thunderous against whatever laggards of Summer still
+tried to shelter themselves in the Rectory garden. Occasionally a few
+raindrops seemed to effect a frantic escape from the fierce assault and
+cling desperately to the window-panes, but since nobody could call it a
+really wet day Pauline had been protesting all the afternoon against her
+sisters' unwillingness to go out. Staying indoors was such a surrender
+to the season.<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a></p>
+
+<p>"We ought to practise that Mendelssohn trio," Monica argued.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate Mendelssohn," Pauline retorted.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I shall practise the piano part."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Monica, it will sound so dreadfully empty," cried Pauline. "Won't
+it, Margaret?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm reading Mansfield Park. Don't talk," Margaret murmured. "If I could
+write like Jane Austen," she went on dreamily, "I should be the happiest
+person in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but you are the happiest person already," said Pauline. "At least
+you ought to be, if you'd only...."</p>
+
+<p>"You know I hate you to talk about him," Margaret interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline was silent. It was always a little alarming when Margaret was
+angry. With Monica one took for granted the disapproval of a fastidious
+nature, and it was fun to teaze her; but Margaret with her sudden
+alternations of hardness and sympathy, of being great fun and
+frightfully intolerant, it was always wiser to propitiate. So Pauline
+stayed in the window-seat, pondering mournfully the lawn mottled with
+leaves, and the lily-pond that was being seamed and crinkled by every
+gust of the wind that skated across the surface. The very high grey wall
+against which the Japanese quinces spread their peacock-tails of foliage
+was shutting her out from the world to-day, and Pauline wished it were
+Summer again so that she could hurry through the little door in the wall
+and across the paddock to the banks of the Greenrush. In the Rectory
+punt she would not have had to bother with sisters who would not come
+out for a walk when they were invited.</p>
+
+<p>The tall trees on either side of the lawn roared in the wind and
+showered more leaves upon the angry air. What a long time it was to
+Summer, and for no reason that she could have given herself Pauline
+began to think about the man who had taken Plashers Mead. Of course it
+was obvious<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a> he would fall in love either with Monica or with Margaret,
+and really it must be managed somehow that he should choose Monica.
+Everybody fell in love with Margaret, which was so hard on poor Richard
+out in India who was much the nicest person in the world and whom
+Margaret must never give up. Pauline looked at her sister and felt
+afraid the new tenant of Plashers Mead would fall in love with her, for
+Margaret was so very adorable with her slim hands and her sombre hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Really almost more like a lily than a girl," thought Pauline. Somehow
+the comparison reassured her, since it was impossible to think of
+anyone's rushing to gather a lily without a great deal of hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish poor Richard would write and tell her she is like a lily,
+instead of always writing such a lot about the bridge he is building,
+though I expect it's a very wonderful bridge."</p>
+
+<p>After all, Monica with her glinting evanescence was just as beautiful as
+Margaret, and even more mysterious; and if she only would not be so
+frightening to young men, who would not fall in love with her! Pauline
+wondered vaguely if she could not persuade Margaret to go away for a
+month, so that the new tenant of Plashers Mead might have had time to
+fall irremediably in love with Monica before she came back. Richard
+would certainly be dreadfully worried out in India when he heard of a
+young man at Plashers Mead, and certainly rather ... yes, certainly in
+church on Sunday he had appeared rather charming. It was only last
+Spring that poor Richard had wished he could be living in Plashers Mead
+himself, and they had had several long discussions which never shed any
+light upon the problem of how such an ambition would be gratified.</p>
+
+<p>"I expect Monica will be like ice, and Margaret will seem so much easier
+to talk to, and if I dared to suggest that Monica should unbend a
+little, she would freeze me as well. Oh, it's all very difficult,"
+sighed Pauline to herself, "and<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a> perhaps I'd better not try to influence
+things. Only if he does seem to like Margaret much better than Monica, I
+shall have to bring poor Richard into the conversation, which always
+makes Margaret cross for days."</p>
+
+<p>As she came to this resolution, Pauline looked half apprehensively at
+her sister reading in the tumbledown armchair by the fire. How angry
+Margaret would be if she guessed what was being plotted, and Pauline
+actually jumped when she suddenly declared that Mansfield Park was
+almost the best book Jane Austen ever wrote.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it, darling Margaret?" said Pauline with a disarming willingness to
+be told again that it certainly was.</p>
+
+<p>"Or perhaps Emma," Margaret murmured, and Pauline hid herself behind the
+curtains. How droll Father had been about the 'new young creature' at
+Plashers Mead. It had been so difficult to persuade him to interrupt one
+precious afternoon of planting bulbs to do his duty either as a
+neighbour or as Rector of the parish. And when he came back all he would
+say of the visit was:</p>
+
+<p>"Very pleasant, my dears, oh, yes, he showed me everything, and he
+really has a most remarkable collection of dish-covers, quite
+remarkable. But I ought not to have deserted those irises that Garstin
+sent me from the Taurus. Now perhaps we shall manage that obstinate
+little plum-coloured brute which likes the outskirts of a pine-forest,
+so they tell me."</p>
+
+<p>Just as Pauline was laughing to herself at the memory of her father's
+visit, the Rector himself appeared on the lawn. He was in his
+shirt-sleeves: his knees were muddy with kneeling: and Birdwood the
+gardener, all blown about by the wind, was close behind him, carrying an
+armful of roots.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline threw up the window with a crash and called out:</p>
+
+<p>"Father, Father, what a darling you look, and your hair will be swept
+right away, if you aren't careful."<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a></p>
+
+<p>The Rector waved his trowel remotely, and Pauline blew him kisses, until
+she was made aware of protests in the room behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"Really," exclaimed Monica. "You are so noisy. You're almost vulgar."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, Monica," cried Pauline dancing round the room. "Not vulgar. Not
+a horrid little vulgar person!"</p>
+
+<p>"And what a noise you do make," Margaret joined in. "Please, Pauline,
+shut the window."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Mrs. Grey opened the door and loosed a whirlwind of
+papers upon the nursery.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's vulgar? Who's vulgar?" asked Mrs. Grey laughing absurdly. "Why,
+what a tremendous draught!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, shut the door, the door," expostulated Margaret and Monica
+simultaneously. "And do tell Pauline to control herself sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, control yourself," said Mrs. Grey.</p>
+
+<p>When the papers were settling down, Janet the maid came in to say there
+was a gentleman in the drawing-room, and in the confusion of the new
+whirlwind her entrance raised, Janet was gone before anyone knew who the
+gentleman was.</p>
+
+<p>"Ugh," Margaret grumbled. "I never can be allowed to read in peace."</p>
+
+<p>"I was practising the Mendelssohn trio, Mother," said Monica
+reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us all practise. Let us all practise," Mrs. Grey proposed, beaming
+enthusiastically upon her daughters. "That would be charming."</p>
+
+<p>"Father is so sweet," said Pauline. "He's simply covered with mud."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he got his kneeler?" asked Mrs. Grey.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline rushed to the window again.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother says 'have you got your kneeler'?"<a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a></p>
+
+<p>The Rector paused vaguely, and Birdwood tried to indicate by kicking
+himself that he had the kneeler.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, thoughtful Birdwood," said Mrs. Grey in a satisfied voice.</p>
+
+<p>"And now do you think we might have the window shut?" asked Margaret
+resignedly.</p>
+
+<p>Monica was quite deliberately thumping at the piano part she was
+practising. Mrs. Grey sat down and began to tell a long story in which
+three poor people of Wychford got curiously blended somehow into one, so
+that Pauline, who was the only daughter that ever listened, became very
+sympathetic over a fourth poor person who had nothing to do with the
+tale.</p>
+
+<p>"And surely Janet came in to say something about the drawing-room," said
+Mrs. Grey as she finished.</p>
+
+<p>"She said a gentleman," Pauline declared.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how vague you all are," exclaimed Margaret, jumping up.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Margaret, you were here," Pauline said. "And so was Monica."</p>
+
+<p>"But I was practising," said Monica primly. "And I didn't hear a word
+Janet said."</p>
+
+<p>There was always this preliminary confusion at the Rectory when a
+stranger was announced, and it always ended in the same way by Mrs. Grey
+and Monica going down first, by Pauline rushing after them and banging
+the door as they were greeting the visitor, and by Margaret strolling in
+when the stage of comparative ease had been attained. So it fell out on
+this occasion, for Monica's skirt was just disappearing round the
+drawing-room door when Pauline, horrified at the idea of having to come
+in by herself, cleared the last three stairs of the billowy flight with
+a leap and sent Monica spinning forward as the door propelled her into
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Monica, I am so sorry."<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Pauline! Pauline!" said Mrs. Grey reprovingly. "So like an avalanche
+always."</p>
+
+<p>Guy, who had by now been waiting nearly a quarter of an hour, came
+forward a little shyly.</p>
+
+<p>"How d'ye do, how d'ye do," said Mrs. Grey quickly and nervously. "We're
+so delighted to see you. So good of you ... charming really. Pauline is
+always impetuous. You've come to study farming at Wychford haven't you?
+Most interesting. Don't tug at me, Pauline. Monica, do ring for tea. Are
+you fond of music?"</p>
+
+<p>Pauline withdrew from the conversation after the whispered attempt to
+correct her mother about Mr. Hazlewood's having taken Plashers Mead in
+order to be a farmer. She wanted to contemplate the visitor without
+being made to involve herself in the confusions of politeness. 'Was he
+dangerous to Richard?' she asked herself, and alas, she had to tell
+herself that indeed it seemed probable he might be. Of course he was
+inevitably on the way to falling in love with Margaret, and as she
+looked at him with his clear-cut pale face, his tumbled hair and large
+brown eyes which changed what seemed at first a slightly cynical
+personality to one that was almost a little wistful, Pauline began to
+speculate if Margaret might not herself be rather attracted to him. This
+was an unforeseen complication, for Margaret so far had only accepted
+homage. Pauline definitely began to be jealous for Richard whose homage
+had been the most prodigal of any; and as Guy drawled on about his first
+adventure of house-keeping she told herself he was affected. The
+impression, too, of listening to someone more than usually
+self-possessed and cynical revived in her mind; and those maliciously
+drooping lids were obliterating the effect of the brown eyes. Sitting by
+herself in the oriel-window Pauline was nearly sure she did not like
+him. He had no business to be at the Rectory when Richard was building a
+bridge out in India; and now here was Margaret strolling<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a> graciously in
+and almost at once obviously knowing so well how to get on with this
+idler. Oh, positively she disliked him. So cold and so cruel was that
+mouth, and so vain he was, as he sat there bending forward over
+hand-clasped, long, stupid, crossed legs. What right had he to laugh
+with Margaret about their father's visit? This stranger had assuredly
+never appreciated him. He was come here to spoil the happiness of
+Wychford, to destroy the immemorial perfection of life at the Rectory.
+And why would he keep looking up at herself? Margaret could be pleasant
+to anybody, but this intruder would soon find that she herself was loyal
+to the absent. Pauline wished that, when he met them all on that night
+of the moon, she had been so horridly rude as to make him avoid the
+family for ever. How could Margaret sit there talking so unconcernedly,
+when Richard might be dying of sunstroke at this very moment? Margaret
+was heartless, and this stranger with his drawl and his undergraduate
+affectation would encourage her to sneer at everything.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter, Pauline dearest?" her mother turned round to ask.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," answered Pauline, biting her lips to keep back surely the
+most unreasonable tears she had ever felt were springing.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not cross with me for calling you a landslide?" persisted Mrs.
+Grey, smiling at her from the midst of a glory momentarily shed by a
+stormy ray of sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mother," said Pauline, now fairly in the midway between laughter
+and tears. "It was an avalanche you called me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you always sit near a window?" asked Monica.</p>
+
+<p>"She always rushes into a corner," said Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline jumped up from her chair and would have run out of the room
+forthwith; but in passing the first table she knocked from it a silver
+bowl of pot-pourri and<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> scattered the contents over the carpet. Down she
+knelt to hide her confusion and repair the damage, and at the same
+moment Guy plunged down beside her to help. She caught his eyes so
+tenderly humorous that she too laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it must be my fault," he said. "Don't you remember how, last
+time we met, your sister upset the mushrooms?"</p>
+
+<p>Pauline knew she was blushing, and when the rose-leaves were all
+gathered up, tea came in. Her attention was now entirely occupied by
+preventing her mother from doing the most ridiculous things with cakes
+and sugar and milk, and when tea was over, Guy got up to go.</p>
+
+<p>There was a brief discussion after his departure, in which Margaret was
+so critical of his dress and of his absurdities that Pauline was
+reassured, and presently indeed found herself taking their visitor's
+part against her sisters.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right, quite right, Pauline," said Mrs. Grey. "He's charming ...
+charming ... charming! Margaret and Monica so critical. Always so
+critical."</p>
+
+<p>Presently the family hurried out into the drive to protest against the
+Rector's planting any more bulbs, to tell him how unkind he had been not
+to come in to tea, and to warn him that the bell would sound for
+Evensong in two minutes. He was dragged out of the shrubbery where he
+had been superintending a clearance of aucubas, preparatory to planting
+a drift of new and very deep yellow primroses.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, my dears, I have never seen Primula Vulgaris so fine in texture
+or colour. My friend Gilmour has spent ten years working up the stock.
+As large as florins."</p>
+
+<p>So he boasted of new wonders next Spring in the Rectory garden, while
+his wife and daughters brushed him and dusted him and helped to button
+up his cassock.</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't Father look a darling?" demanded Pauline, as they watched the
+tall handsome dreamer striding along<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a> the drive towards the sound of the
+bell, that was clanging loud and soft in its battle with the wind.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Pauline, run after him," said Mrs. Grey, "and remind him it's the
+Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity. He started wrong last Sunday, and
+to-day's Wednesday, and it so offends some of the congregation."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline overtook her father in the church-porch, and he promised he
+would be careful to read the right collect. She had not stayed to get a
+hat and therefore must wait for him outside.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, my dear child, I shan't be long. Do go and see if those
+Sternbergias I planted against the south porch are in flower. Dear me,
+they should be, you know, after this not altogether intolerably overcast
+summer. Sun, though, sun! they want sun, poor dears!"</p>
+
+<p>"But, Father, I can't remember what Sternbergias look like."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, you can," said the Rector. "Sternbergia Lutea. Amaryllidaceae.
+A perfectly ordinary creature." And he vanished in the gloom of the
+priest's door.</p>
+
+<p>As Pauline came round the corner the wind was full in her face, and
+under the rose-edged wrack of driving clouds the churchyard looked
+desolate and savage. There were no flowers to be seen but beaten down
+Michaelmas daisies and bedabbled phlox. The bell had stopped immediately
+when the Rector arrived; and the wind seemed now much louder as it went
+howling round the great church or rasping through the yews and junipers.
+The churchyard was bounded on the northerly side by the mill-stream,
+along which ran a wide path between a double row of willows now hissing
+and whistling as they were whipped by the blasts. Pauline walked slowly
+down this unquiet ambulatory, gazing curiously over to the other bank of
+the stream where the orchard of Plashers Mead was strewn with red
+apples. There in the corner by the house that was just visible stood<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a>
+the owner playing with a dog, a bobtail too, which was the kind Pauline
+liked best. She wanted very much to wave, but of course it was
+impossible for the Rector's daughter to do anything like that in the
+churchyard. Yet if he did chance to walk in her direction, she would,
+whatever happened, shout to him across the stream to bring the dog next
+time he came to the Rectory. Pauline walked four times up and down the
+path, but first the dog disappeared and then the owner followed him, and
+presently Pauline discovered that the path beside the abandoned stream
+was very dreary. The crooked tombstones stood up starkly: the wind
+sighed across the green graves of the unknown: the fiery roses were
+fallen from the clouds. Pauline turned away from the path and went to
+take shelter behind the East end of the church. From here, as she
+fronted the invading night, she could see the grey wall of the Rectory
+garden and the paddock sloping down to the river. How sad it was to
+think of the months that must pass before that small meadow would be
+speckled with fritillaries or with irises blow white and purple. The
+wind shrieked with a sudden gust that seemed more violent, because where
+she was standing not a blade of grass twitched. Pauline looked up to
+reassure herself that the steeple was not toppling from the tower; as
+she did so, a gargoyle grinned down at her. The grotesque was
+frightening in the dusk, and she hurried round to the priest's door. The
+Rector came out as she reached it, and accepted vaguely the information
+that there were no flowers to be seen but Michaelmas daisies and phlox.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I told Birdwood to confiscate those abominable dahlias which
+wretched Mrs. Godbold will plant every year. I gave her some of that new
+saxifrage I raised. What more does the woman want?"</p>
+
+<p>Pauline hung upon his arm, while they walked back to the Rectory through
+the darkling plantation.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a>"Isn't it a perfect place?" she murmured, hugging his arm closer when
+they came to the end of the mossy path and saw the twinkling of the
+drawing-room's oriel on the narrow south side, and the eleven steep
+gables that cleft the now scarcely luminous sky, one after another all
+the length of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt if anything but this confounded cotoneaster would do well
+against this wall," replied the Rector.</p>
+
+<p>He never failed to make this observation when he reached his front-door;
+and his family knew that one day the cotoneaster would be torn down for
+a succession of camellias to struggle with the east winds of unkind
+Oxfordshire. In the hall Mrs. Grey and Margaret were bending over a
+table.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy has left his card," said Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that the man who came to see me about the rats?" asked the Rector.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, Francis," said Mrs. Grey. "Guy is the young man at Plashers
+Mead."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't Francis sweet?" cried Pauline, reaching up to kiss him.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, Pauline. Pauline, you must not call your father Francis in the
+hall," said Mrs. Grey.</p>
+
+<p>"How touching of Guy to leave a card," Pauline murmured, looking at the
+oblong of pasteboard shimmering in the gloom.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we've just time to practise the Mendelssohn trio before dinner,"
+declared Mrs. Grey. "And that will make you warm."</p>
+
+<p>The Rector wandered off to his library. Margaret and Pauline went with
+their mother up shadowy staircases and through shadowy corridors to the
+great music-room that ran half the length of the roof. Monica was
+already seated at the piano, all white and golden herself in the
+candlelight. Languidly Margaret unpacked her violoncello: Pauline tuned
+her violin. Soon the house was full of music, and the wind in the night
+was scarcely audible.<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>November</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN Guy left the Rectory that October afternoon, he felt as if he had
+put back upon its shelf a book the inside of which, thus briefly glanced
+at, held for him, whenever he should be privileged to open it again, a
+new, indeed an almost magical representation of life. On his fancy the
+Greys had impressed themselves with a kind of abundant naturalness; but
+however deeply he tried to think he was already plunged into the heart
+of their life, he realized that it was only in such a way as he might
+have dipped into the heart of a book. The intimacy revealed was not
+revealed by any inclusion of himself within the charm; and he was a
+little sad to think how completely he must have seemed outside the
+picture. Hence his first aspiration with regard to the family was
+somehow to become no longer a spectator, but actually a happy player in
+their representation of existence. Ordinarily, so far as experience had
+hitherto carried him, it had been easy enough to find himself on terms
+of intimacy with any group of human beings whose company was
+sufficiently attractive. For him, perhaps, it had even been particularly
+easy, so that he had never known the mortification of a repulse. No
+doubt now by contriving to be himself and relying upon the interest that
+was sure to be roused by his isolation and poetic ambitions, he would
+very soon be accorded the freedom of the Rectory. Yet such a prospect,
+however pleasant to contemplate, did not satisfy him, and he was already
+troubled by a faint jealousy of the many unknown friends of the Greys to
+whom in the past the privilege of that freedom must have been
+frequently<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a> accorded. Guy wanted more than that: in the excess of his
+appreciation he wanted them to marvel at a time when they had not been
+aware of his existence: in fact he was anxious to make himself necessary
+to their own sense of their own completeness. As he entered his solitary
+hall, he was depressed by the extravagance of such a desire, saying to
+himself that he might as well sigh to become an integral figure of a
+pastoral by Giorgione, or of any work of art the life of which seems but
+momentarily stilled for the pleasure of whomsoever is observing it.</p>
+
+<p>Guy was for a while almost impatient even of his own room, for he felt
+it was lacking in any atmosphere except the false charm of novelty. He
+had been here three weeks now, he and deaf Miss Peasey; and were the two
+of them swept away to-morrow, Plashers Mead would adapt itself to
+newcomers. There was nothing wrong with the house: such breeding would
+survive any occupation it might be called upon to tolerate. On the other
+hand were chance to sweep the Greys from Wychford, so essentially did
+the Rectory seem their creation that already it was unimaginable to Guy
+apart from them. And as yet he had only dipped into the volume. Who
+could say what exquisite and intimate paragraphs did not await a more
+leisurely perusal? Really, thought Guy, he might almost suppose himself
+in love with the family, so much did the vision of them in that shadowy
+drawing-room haunt his memory. Indeed they were become a picture that
+positively ached in his mind with longing for the moment of its
+repetition. For some days he spent all his time in the orchard, throwing
+sticks for his new bobtail; denying himself with an absurd
+self-consciousness the pleasure of walking so far along the mill-stream
+even as the bank opposite to the Rectory paddock; denying himself a
+fortuitous meeting with any of the family in Wychford High Street; and
+on Sunday denying himself the pleasure of seeing them in church, because
+he felt it<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a> might appear an excuse to be noticed. The vision of the
+Rectory obsessed him, but so elusively that when in verse he tried to
+state the emotion merely for his own satisfaction he failed, and he took
+refuge from his disappointment by nearly always being late for meals.
+Often he would see Miss Peasey walking about the orchard with desolate
+tinkle of a Swiss sheep-bell, the only instrument of summons that the
+house possessed. Miss Peasey herself looked not unlike a battered old
+bell-wether, as she wandered searching for him in the wind; and Guy used
+to watch her from behind a tree-trunk, laughing to himself until Bob the
+dog trotted from one to another, describing anxious circles round their
+separation.</p>
+
+<p>"Your dinner's been waiting ten minutes, Mr. Hazlewood!"</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't matter," Guy would shout.</p>
+
+<p>"Mutton to-day," Miss Peasey would say, and, "a little variety," she
+always added.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Peasey's religion was variety, and her tragedy was an invention
+that never kept pace with aspiration. For three weeks Guy had been given
+on Sunday roast beef which lasted till Wednesday; while on Thursday he
+was given roast mutton, which as a depressing cold bone always went out
+from the dining-room on Saturday night. Every morning he was asked what
+he would like for dinner, to which he always replied that he left it to
+her. Once indeed in a fertile moment he had suggested a curry, and Miss
+Peasey, brightening wonderfully, had chirped:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes, a little variety."</p>
+
+<p>But in the evening the taste of hot tin that represented Miss Peasey's
+curry made him for ever afterward leave the variety to her own fancy,
+thereby preserving henceforth that immutable alternation of roast beef
+and roast mutton which was the horizon of her house-keeping.</p>
+
+<p>These solitary meals were lightened by the thought of<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a> the Rectory.
+Neither beef nor mutton seemed of much importance, when his mind's eye
+could hold that shadowy drawing-room. There was Monica with her pale
+gold hair in the stormy sunlight, cold and shy, but of such a marble
+purity of line that but to sit beside her was to admire a statue whose
+coldness made her the more admirable. There was Margaret, carved slimly
+out of ivory, very tall with weight of dusky hair, and slow fastidious
+voice that spoke dreamily of the things Guy loved best. There was
+Pauline sitting away from the others in the window seat, away in her
+shyness and wildness. Was not the magic of her almost more difficult to
+recapture than any? A briar rose she was whose petals seemed to fall at
+the touch of definition, a briar rose that was waving out of reach, even
+of thought. Guy wished he could visualize the Rector in his own
+drawing-room; but instead he had to set him in Plashers Mead, of which
+no doubt he had thought the owner a young ass; and Guy blushed to
+remember the nervous idiocy which had let him take the Rector solemnly
+into the kitchen to look at dish-covers in a row, and deaf Miss Peasey
+sitting by as much fire as the table would yield to her chair. But if
+the Rector were missing from the picture, at any rate he could picture
+Mrs. Grey, shy like her daughters and with a delicious vagueness all her
+own. She was most like Pauline, and indeed in Pauline Guy could see her
+mother, as the young moon holds in her lap the wraith of the old
+moon....</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you haven't eaten anything," remonstrated Miss Peasey, breaking in
+upon his vision. "And I've made you a rice pudding for a little
+variety."</p>
+
+<p>The shadowy drawing-room faded with the old chintz curtains and fragile
+almost immaterial silver; the china bowls of Lowestoft; the dull white
+panelling and faintly aromatic sweetness. Instead remained a rice
+pudding that smelt and looked as solid as a pie.<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a></p>
+
+<p>However, that very afternoon Guy was greatly encouraged to get an
+invitation to dinner at the Rectory from the hands of the gardener.
+Birdwood was one of those servants who seem to have accepted with the
+obligations of service the extreme responsibilities of paternity; and
+Guy hastened to take advantage of the chance to establish himself on
+good terms with one who might prove a most powerful ally.</p>
+
+<p>"Not much of a garden, I'm afraid," he said deprecatingly to Birdwood,
+as they stood in colloquy outside. The gardener shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't do for the Rector to see them cabbages and winter greens.
+'I won't have the nasty things in my garden,' he says to me, and he'll
+rush at them regular ferocious with a fork. 'I won't have them,' he
+says. 'I can't abear the sight of them,' he says. Well, of course I
+knows better than go for to contradict him when he gets a downer on any
+plant, don't matter whether it's cabbage or calceolaria. But last time,
+when he'd done with his massacring of them, I popped round to Mrs. Grey,
+and I says, winking at her very hard, but of course not meaning any
+disrespectfulness, winking at her very hard, I says, 'Please, mum, I
+want one of these new allotments from the glebe.' 'Good Heavings,
+Birdwood,' she says, 'whatever on earth can you want with for an
+allotment?' With that I winks very hard again and says in a low voice
+right into her ear as you might say, 'To keep the wolf from the door,
+mum, with a few winter greens.' That's the way we grow our vegetables
+for the Rectory, out of an allotment, though we have got five acres of
+garden. Now you see what comes of being a connosher. You take my advice,
+Mr. Hazlenut, and clear all them cabbages out of sight before the Rector
+comes round here again."</p>
+
+<p>"I will certainly," Guy promised. "But you know it's a bit difficult for
+me to spend much money on flowers."<a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a></p>
+
+<p>"<i>We</i> don't spend money over at the Rectory," said Birdwood, smiling in
+a superior way.</p>
+
+<p>"No?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>We</i> don't spend a penny. <i>We</i> has every mortal plant and seed and
+cutting given to us. And not only that, but we gives in our turn. Look
+here, Mr. Hazlenut, I'm going to hand you out a bit of advice. The first
+time as you go round our garden with the Rector, when you turn into the
+second wall-garden, and see a border on your right, you catch hold of
+his arm and say, 'Why, good Heavings, if that isn't a new berberis."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I don't know what an old berberis looks like," said Guy
+hopelessly. "Let alone a new one."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind what the old ones look like. It's the new I'm telling you
+of. Don't you understand that everyone who comes down, from Kew even,
+says, 'That's a nice healthy little lot of Berberis Knightii as you've
+got a hold of.' 'Ha,' says the Rector. 'I thought as you'd go for to say
+that. But it ain't Knightii,' he chuckles, 'and what's more it ain't got
+a name yet, only a number, being a new importation from China,' he says.
+You go and call out what I told you, and he'll be so pleased, why, I
+wouldn't say he won't shovel half of the garden into your hands straight
+off."</p>
+
+<p>"Do the young ladies take an interest in flowers?" Guy asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they try," said Birdwood condescendingly. "But neither them
+nor their mother don't seem to learn nothing. They think more of a good
+clump of dellyphiniums than half-a-dozen meconopises as someone's gone
+mad to discover, with a lot of murderous Lammers from Tibbet ready to
+knife him the moment his back's turned."</p>
+
+<p>"Really?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I was like that myself once. I can remember the time when I was as
+fond of a good dahlia as anything. Now<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a> I goes sniffing the ground to
+see if there's any Mentha Requieni left over from the frost."</p>
+
+<p>"Sniffing the ground?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's right. It's so small that if it wasn't for the smell anyone
+wouldn't see it. That's <i>worth</i> growing that is. Only, if you'll
+understand me, it takes anyone who's used to looking at peonies and
+suchlike a few years to find out the object of a plant that isn't any
+bigger than a pimple on an elephant."</p>
+
+<p>Guy was reluctant to let Birdwood go without bringing him to talk more
+directly of the family and less of the flowers. At the same time he felt
+it would be wiser not to rouse in the gardener any suspicion of how much
+he was interested in the Rectory: he was inclined to think he might
+resent it, and he wanted him as a friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is working in your garden?" asked Birdwood, as he turned to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, nobody just at present," said Guy apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," Birdwood announced. "I'll get hold of someone for you in
+less than half a pig's whisper."</p>
+
+<p>"But not all the time," Guy explained quickly. He was worried by the
+prospect of a gardener's wages coming out of his small income.</p>
+
+<p>"Once a week he'll come in," said Birdwood.</p>
+
+<p>Guy nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"What's his name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Graves he's called, but being deaf and dumb, his name's not of much
+account."</p>
+
+<p>"Deaf and dumb?" repeated Guy. "But how shall I explain what I want
+done?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll show you," said Birdwood. "I'll come round and put you in the way
+of managing him. Work? I reckon that boy would work any other mortal in
+Wychford to the bone. Work? Well, he can't hear nothing, and he can't<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a>
+say nothing, so what else can he do? And he does it. Good afternoon, Mr.
+Hazlenut."</p>
+
+<p>And Birdwood retired, whistling very shrilly as he went down the path to
+the gate.</p>
+
+<p>Two nights later, Guy with lighted lantern in his hand set out to the
+Rectory. He did not venture to go by the orchard and the fields and so,
+crossing the narrow bridge over the stream, enter by way of the garden.
+Such an approach seemed too familiar for the present stage of his
+friendship, and he took the more formal route through an alley of
+mediaeval cottages that branched off Wychford High Street. Mysterious
+lattices blinked at him, and presently he felt the wind coming fresh in
+his face as he skirted the churchyard. The road continued past the back
+of a long row of almshouses, and when he saw the pillared gate of the
+Rectory drive, over which high trees were moaning darkly, Guy wondered
+if he were going to a large dinner-party. No word had been said of any
+one else's coming, but with Mrs. Grey's vagueness that portended
+nothing. He hoped that he would be the only guest and, swinging his
+lantern with a pleased expectancy, he passed down the drive. Suddenly a
+figure materialized from the illumination he was casting and hailed him
+with a questioning 'hulloa'?</p>
+
+<p>"Hulloa," Guy responded.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, beg your pardon," exclaimed the other. "I thought it was Willsher."</p>
+
+<p>"My name's Hazlewood," said Guy a little stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mine's Brydone. We may as well hop in together."</p>
+
+<p>Guy rather resented the implication of this birdlike intrusion in
+company with the doctor's son, a lanky youth whom he had often noticed
+slouching about Wychford in a cap ostensibly alive with artificial
+flies. Apparently Willsher must also be expected, against whom Guy had
+already conceived a violent prejudice dating from the time<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a> he called at
+his father's office to sign the agreement for the tenancy of Plashers
+Mead. It was of ill augury that the Greys should apparently be supposing
+that he would make a trio with Brydone and Willsher.</p>
+
+<p>"Brought a lantern, eh?" said Brydone.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, this is a lantern," Guy answered coldly.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll never see me with a lantern," Brydone declared.</p>
+
+<p>Guy would like to have retorted that he hoped he would never even see
+Brydone without one. But he contented himself by saying with all that
+Balliol could bring to his aid of crushing indifference,</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, really?"</p>
+
+<p>Somebody behind them was running down the drive and shouting 'Hoo-oo' in
+what Guy considered a very objectionable voice. It probably was
+Willsher.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, Charlie," said Brydone.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, Percy," said Willsher, for it was he.</p>
+
+<p>"Know this gentleman? Mr. Hazlewood?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only officially. Pleased to meet you," said the new-comer.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," answered Guy. He felt furious to think that the Greys
+would suppose he had arranged to arrive with these two fellows.</p>
+
+<p>"Done any fishing yet?" asked Brydone.</p>
+
+<p>"No, not yet," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, your bit of river has been spoilt. Old Burrows let everyone go
+there. But when you want some good fishing, Willsher and I rent about a
+mile of stream farther up and we'll always be glad to give you a day.
+Eh, Charlie?"</p>
+
+<p>Charlie replied with much cordiality that Percy had taken the very words
+of invitation out of his mouth; and Guy, unable any longer to be frigid,
+said that he had some books at which they might possibly care to come
+and look one afternoon. Mr. Brydone and Mr. Willsher both declared they
+would be delighted, and the latter added in<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a> the friendliest way that he
+knew an old woman in Wychford who was very anxious to sell a Milton
+warranted to be a hundred years old at least. Was that anything in Mr.
+Hazlewood's way? Guy explained that a Milton of so recent a date was not
+likely to be much in his way, and Mr. Brydone remarked that no doubt if
+it had been a Stilton, it would have been another matter. His friend
+laughed very heartily indeed at this joke, and in an atmosphere of
+almost hilarious good fellowship, that was to Guy still a little
+mortifying, they rang the Rectory bell.</p>
+
+<p>None of the family had reached the drawing-room when they were shown in,
+and Guy was afraid they were rather early.</p>
+
+<p>"Always like this," said Brydone. "Absolutely no notion of time.
+Shouldn't be surprized if we had to wait another quarter of an hour.
+Known them for years, and they've always been like this. Eh, Charlie?"</p>
+
+<p>The solicitor's son shook his head gravely. He seemed to feel that as a
+man of business he should display a slight disapproval of such a casual
+family.</p>
+
+<p>"Ever since I was a kid I can remember it," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Guy tried to tell himself that all this talk of intimacy was merely due
+to the accidental associations of country life over many years. But it
+was with something very like apprehension that he waited for the Greys
+to come down. It would be dreadful to find that Brydone and Willsher had
+a status in the Rectory. When, however, their hosts appeared, Guy
+realized with a tremendous relief that Brydone and Willsher obviously
+existed outside his picture of the Rectory. To be sure, they were
+Charlie and Percy to Monica, Margaret and Pauline; but galling as this
+was, Guy told himself that after a lifelong acquaintance nothing else
+could be expected.</p>
+
+<p>It pleased Guy really that the dinner was not a great success, for he
+was able to fancy that the Greys were<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a> encumbered by the presence of
+Brydone and Willsher. Monica was silent; Margaret was deliberately
+talking about things that could not possibly interest either of the
+young men; and Pauline was trying to save the situation by wild
+enthusiasms which were continually being repressed by her sisters. Mrs.
+Grey alternated between helping to check Pauline and behaving in exactly
+the same way herself. As for the Rector, he sat silent with a twinkle in
+his eye. Guy wished regretfully, when the time came to depart, that he
+could have stayed another few minutes to mark his superiority to the
+other guests; but alas, he was still far from that position, and no
+doubt he would never attain to it.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, have you brought a lantern?" asked Pauline excitedly in the hall.
+"Oh, I wish I could walk back with you. I love lantern-light."</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline! Pauline! Do think what you're saying," Mrs. Grey protested.</p>
+
+<p>"I like lantern-light too," Margaret proclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"When you come to see us again," said Pauline, "will you bring your
+dog?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I say, shall I?" asked Guy flushing with pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"Such a lamb, Margaret," said Pauline, kissing her sister impulsively
+and being straightly reproved for doing so.</p>
+
+<p>The good-nights were all said, and Guy walked up the drive with Brydone
+and Willsher.</p>
+
+<p>"Queer family, aren't they?" commented the doctor's son.</p>
+
+<p>"Extraordinarily charming," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"I've known them all my life," said Willsher a little querulously. "And
+yet I never seem to know them any better."</p>
+
+<p>Guy was so much elated by this admission that he repeated more warmly
+his invitation to come and see him and his books, and parted from the
+two friends very pleasantly.<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a></p>
+
+<p>Two or three days later Guy thought he might fairly make his dinner
+call, and with much forethought did not take Bob with him, so that soon
+there might be an excuse to come again to effect that introduction. Mrs.
+Grey and Monica were out; and Guy was invited to have tea in the nursery
+with Margaret and Pauline. He was conscious that an honour had been paid
+to him, partly by intuition, partly because neither of the girls said a
+conventional word about not going into the drawing-room. He felt, as he
+sat in that room fragrant with the memories of what must have been an
+idyllic childhood, the thrill that, as a child, he used to feel when he
+read: '<i>The Queen was in her parlour eating bread and honey</i>.' This was
+such another parlour infinitely secluded from the world; and he thought
+he had never experienced a more breathless minute of anticipation than
+when he followed the girls along the corridor to their nursery. The
+matting worn silky with age seemed so eternally unprofaned, and on the
+wall outside the door the cuckoo calling five o'clock was like a
+confident bird in some paradise where neither time nor humanity was of
+much importance. Janet, the elderly parlourmaid, came stumping in behind
+them with the nursery tea-things; and, as Guy sat by the small hob-grate
+and saw the moist autumnal sun etherealize with wan gold the tattered
+volumes of childhood, the very plumcake on the tea-table was endowed
+with the romantic perfection of a cake in a picture-book. When the sun
+dipped behind the elms, Guy half expected that Margaret and Pauline
+would vanish too, so exactly seemed they the figures that, were this
+room a mirage, he would expect to find within as guardians of the rare
+seclusion. Guy never could say what was talked about, that afternoon;
+for when he found himself outside once again in the air of earth, he was
+bemused with the whole experience, as if suddenly released from
+enchantment. Out of a multitude of impressions, which had seemed at the
+time most delicately<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a> strange and potent, only a few incidents quite
+common-place haunted his memory tangibly enough to be seized and
+cherished. Tea-cups floating on laughter against that wall-paper of
+berries, birds and daisies; a pair of sugar-tongs clicking to the
+pressure of long white fingers (so much could he recapture of Margaret);
+crumpets in a rosy mist (so much was Pauline); a copper kettle singing;
+the lisp of the wind; a disarray of tambour-frames and music, these were
+all that kept him company on his way back to Plashers Mead through the
+colourless twilight.</p>
+
+<p>Chance favoured Guy next day by throwing him into the arms of the
+Rector, who asked if he were fond enough of flowers to look round the
+garden at a dull season of the year. Guy was so much elated that, if
+love of flowers meant more frequent opportunities of going to the
+Rectory, he would have given up poetry to become a professional
+gardener. Of course there was nothing to see, according to the Rector&mdash;a
+few Nerines of his own crossing in the greenhouse; a Buddleia Auriculata
+honeycomb-scented in the angle of two walls; the double Michaelmas
+daisy, an ugly brute already condemned to extermination; a white Red Hot
+Poker, evidently a favourite of the Rector's by the way he gazed upon it
+and said so casually Kniphofia Multiflora, as if it were not indeed a
+treasure blooming in Oxfordshire's dreary Autumn.</p>
+
+<p>"Tulips to go in next week," said the Rector, rolling the prospect upon
+his tongue with meditative enjoyment. "A friend of mine has just sent me
+some nice fellows from Bokhara and Turkestan. I ought to get them in
+this week, but Birdwood must finish with these roses. And I've got a lot
+of Clusiana too that ought to be in. I am going to try her in
+competition with shrubbery roots and see if <i>they'll</i> make her behave
+herself."</p>
+
+<p>"Could I come in and help?" offered Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now that would certainly be most kind," said<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a> the Rector; and his
+thin handsome face lit up with the excitement of infecting Guy with his
+own passion. "But aren't you busy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. I usually work at night."</p>
+
+<p>So Guy came to plant tulips and from planting tulips to being asked to
+lunch was not far, and from finishing off a few left over to being asked
+to tea was not far either. Moreover when the tulips were all planted,
+there were gladioli to be sorted and put away. Incidentally too the punt
+had to be caulked and the boathouse had to be strengthened, so that in
+the end it was half way into November before Guy realized he had been
+coming to the Rectory almost every day. The more he came, however, the
+more he was fascinated by the family. They still eluded him, and he was
+always aware, particularly between Margaret and Pauline, of a life in
+which as yet he hardly shared. At the same time, so familiar now were
+the inner places of the house and most of all the nursery, he felt as if
+happily there would come a day when to none of the sisters would he seem
+more noticeable than one of their tumbledown armchairs.</p>
+
+<p>Once or twice he stayed to dinner, and the long dining-room with the
+sea-grey wall-paper and curtains of the strawberry-thief design was
+always entered with a particular contentment of spirit. The table was
+very large, for somebody always forgot to take out the extra leaf put in
+for a dinner sometime last summer, or perhaps two summers ago. The
+result was that the Rector was far away in the shadows at one end; Mrs.
+Grey equally remote at the other; while Guy would in turn be near to
+Margaret or Pauline or even Monica in the middle. Old fashioned glasses
+with spirals of green and white blown in their stems; silver that was
+nearly diaphanous with use and age; candlesticks solid as the Ionic
+columns they counterfeited, or tapering and fluted with branches that
+carried the candle-flames like<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a> flowers, everything seemed as if it had
+been created for this room alone. From the wall a lacquered clock as
+round and big and benign as the setting sun wavered in the coppery
+shadows of the fire, and with scarcely the sound of a tick showed forth
+time. Guy had never appreciated the sacredness of eating in good company
+until he dined casually like this at the Rectory. He never knew what he
+ate and always accepted what was put before him like manna; yet he was
+always conscious of having enjoyed the meal, and next morning he used to
+face, unabashed, Miss Peasey's tale of ruined tapioca which had waited
+for him too long.</p>
+
+<p>The seal of perfection was generally set on these unexpected dinners by
+chamber-music afterward, when under the arched roof of the big
+music-room for an hour or more of trios and quartets Guy contemplated
+that family. The Greys could not have revealed the design of their life
+with anything but chamber-music, and setting aside any expression of
+inward things, thought Guy, how would it be possible to imagine them
+more externally decorative than seated so at this formal industry of
+art? He liked best perhaps the trios, when he and Mrs. Grey, each in a
+Caroline chair with tall wicker back, remained outside, and yet withal
+as much in the picture as two donors painted by an old Florentine.
+Monica in a white dress sat straight and stiff with pale gold hair that
+seemed the very colour of the refined, the almost rarefied accompaniment
+upon which her fingers quivered and rippled. Something of her own
+coldness and remoteness and crystalline severity she brought to her
+instrument, as if upon a windless day a fountain played forth its
+pattern. Margaret's amber dress deepened from the shade of Monica's
+hair, and Margaret's eyes glowed deep and solemn as the solemn depths of
+the violoncello over which she hung with a thought of motherhood in the
+way she cherished it. Was it she, wondered Guy, who was the ultimate
+lure of this house, or was it Pauline? Of her,<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a> as she swayed to the
+violin, nothing could be said but that from a rose-bloomed radiance
+issued a sound of music. And how clearly in the united effect of the
+three sisters was written the beauty of their lives. Guy could almost
+see every hour of their girlhood passing in orderly pattern, as the
+divine Hours dance along a Grecian frieze. There was neither passion nor
+sentiment in the music: there was neither sorrow nor regret. It was
+heartless in its limpid beauty; it was remote as a cloud against the
+sunrise; cold as water was it, and incommunicable as a dream; yet in
+solitude when Guy reconjured the sound afterward, it returned to his
+memory like fire.</p>
+
+<p>A great occasion for Guy was the afternoon when first the Greys came to
+tea with him at Plashers Mead. Himself went into Wychford and bought the
+cakes, so many that Miss Peasey held up her hands with that ridiculously
+conventional gesture of surprize she used, exclaiming:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear, this is a variety!"</p>
+
+<p>Guy led them solemnly round the house and furnished the empty rooms with
+such vivid descriptions that their emptiness was scarcely any longer
+perceptible. In his own room he waited anxiously for judgment. Margaret
+was of course the first to declare an opinion. She did not like his
+curtains nor his green canvas, and she was by no means willing to accept
+his excuse that they were relics of undergraduate taste.</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't like them now, why do you have them? Why not plain white
+for the walls and no curtains at all, until you can get ones you really
+do like?"</p>
+
+<p>Pauline was afraid his feelings would be hurt and declared with such
+transparent dishonesty how greatly she loved everything in the room that
+Guy, grateful though he was to her intended sweetness, was more
+discouraged than ever. Monica objected to his having Our Lady on the
+mantelshelf, and would not admit her as Saint Rose of<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a> Lima; but Guy was
+enough in awe of Monica not to justify the identification with Saint
+Rose by his desire for a poetic apostrophe. As for Mrs. Grey, she
+behaved as she always did when Monica and Margaret were being critical,
+that is by firing off 'charmings!' in a sort of benevolent musketry; but
+if Guy was not convinced by her 'charmings!' he could not resist her
+when she said:</p>
+
+<p>"I think Guy's room is charming ... charming!"</p>
+
+<p>He felt his room could be an absolute failure if from the ashes of its
+reputation he were alluded to actually for the first time as 'Guy.' Gone
+then was Mr. Hazlewood: fled were those odious 'misses.' He turned to
+Pauline and said momentously, boldly:</p>
+
+<p>"I say, Pauline, you haven't seen my new kitten."</p>
+
+<p>She blushed, and Guy stood breathless with the attainment of the first
+peak. Then triumphantly he turned to Mrs. Grey:</p>
+
+<p>"Monica and Margaret are very severe, aren't they?"</p>
+
+<p>How easy it was after all, and he wished he had addressed them directly
+by their Christian names instead of taking refuge in a timid reference.
+Now all that was wanting for his pleasure was that Monica, Margaret or
+Pauline should call him Guy. He wondered which would be the first. And
+vaguely he asked himself which he wanted to be the first.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline was talking to Margaret in the bay-window.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember," she was saying, "when Richard came to look at
+Plashers Mead and we pretended he was going to take it?"</p>
+
+<p>Margaret frowned at her for answer; but for Guy the afternoon so lately
+perfected was spoilt again; and when they were gone, all the evening he
+glowered at phantom Richards who, whether Adonises or Calibans, were all
+equally obnoxious and more than obnoxious, positively minatory. Next day
+he felt he had no heart to make an excuse<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a> to visit the Rectory; and he
+was drearily eating some of the cakes of the tea-party, when Mr. Brydone
+and Mr. Willsher paid him their first call. Guy did not think they would
+appreciate the empty rooms, however eloquently he narrated their future
+glories; so he led his visitors forthwith to the cakes, listening to the
+talk of trout and jack. After a while he asked with an elaborate
+indifference if either of them had lately been round to the Rectory.</p>
+
+<p>"Too clever for me," said Brydone shaking his head. "Besides, Pauline
+kicked up a fuss a fortnight ago because we asked if we could have the
+otter-meet in their paddock."</p>
+
+<p>"They were never sporting, those Rectory kids," said Willsher gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>"Never," his friend agreed, shaking his head. "Do you remember when
+Margaret egged on young Richard Ford to punch your head because your old
+terrier chivied the Greys' cat round the churchyard?"</p>
+
+<p>"I punched <i>his</i> head, I remember," said Willsher in wrathful
+reminiscence.</p>
+
+<p>"Does Richard Ford live here?" Guy asked.</p>
+
+<p>"His father's the Vicar of Little Fairfield, the next parish, you know.
+Richard's gone to India. He's an engineer, awfully nice chap and head
+over heels in love with the fair Margaret. I believe there's a sort of
+engagement."</p>
+
+<p>In that moment by the lightening of his heart Guy knew that he was in
+love with Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, the November night hung humid and oppressive.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought we should get it soon," said Willsher, and as the two friends
+vanished in the mazy garden, Guy looking up felt rain falling softly yet
+with gathering intensity. He stood for a while in his doorway, held by
+the whispering blackness. Then suddenly in a rapture of realization he<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a>
+slammed the door and, singing at the top of his voice, marched about the
+hall. Once upon a time 'to-morrow' had been wont to drowse him: now the
+word sounded upon his imagination like a golden trumpet.<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="WINTER" id="WINTER"></a>WINTER</h2>
+
+<p><a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>December</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE rain which began the day after the Greys' visit to Plashers Mead
+went on almost without a break for a whole week. December with what it
+could bring of deadness, gloom and moisture came drearily down on
+Wychford, and Pauline as she sat high in her window-seat lamented the
+interminable soak.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't think why Guy hasn't been near the Rectory lately," she
+grumbled.</p>
+
+<p>"I expect he's tired of us," said Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't really think so," Pauline contradicted. "You're much much
+<i>much</i> too conceited to think so really."</p>
+
+<p>Margaret laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mind a bit when I call you conceited," Pauline went on,
+challenging her sister. "I believe you're so conceited that you're proud
+even of being conceited. Why doesn't Guy come and see us, I wonder."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should he come?" Monica asked rather severely. "Perhaps he's doing
+some work for a change."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe he's hurt," Pauline declared.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurt?" repeated her sisters.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, because you were both so frightfully critical of his room. Oh, I
+<i>am</i> glad that Mother and I aren't critical."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if he's hurt because I said he oughtn't to have an image of Our
+Lady on his mantelshelf," said Monica, "I really don't think we need
+bother any more about him. Was I to encourage him in such stupid little
+Gothic affectations?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh," cried Pauline. "I think he's frightened of<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a> you, Monica dear,
+and of your long sentences, for I'm sure I am."</p>
+
+<p>"He wasn't at all frightened of me," Monica asserted. "Didn't you hear
+him call me Monica?"</p>
+
+<p>"And surely," Margaret put in, "you didn't really like those stupid mock
+mediaeval curtains. No design, just a lot of meaningless fleurs-de-lys
+looking like spots. It's because I think Guy has got a glimmering of
+taste that I gave him my honest opinion. Otherwise I shouldn't have
+bothered."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I didn't like the curtains," Pauline admitted. "But I thought they
+were rather touching. And, oh, my dears, I can't tell you how touching I
+think the whole house is, with that poor woman squeezing her way about
+that enormous kitchen-furniture!"</p>
+
+<p>Pauline looked out of the window as she spoke, and there at last was Guy
+standing on the lawn with her father, who was explaining something about
+a root which he held in his hand. On the two of them the rain poured
+steadily down. Pauline threw up the sash and called out that they were
+to come in at once.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad he's ... why what's the matter, Margaret?" she asked, as she
+saw her sister looking at her with an expression of rather emphatic
+surprize.</p>
+
+<p>"Really," commented Margaret. "I shouldn't have thought it was necessary
+to soothe his ruffled feelings by giving him the idea that you've been
+watching at the window all the week for his visit."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Margaret, you are unkind," and, since words would all too soon have
+melted into tears, Pauline rushed from the nursery away to her own white
+fastness at the top of the house. She did not pause in her headlong
+flight to greet her mother in the passage; nor even when she entangled
+herself in Janet's apron could she say a word.<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious, Miss Pauline," gasped Janet. "And only just now the cat
+went and run between my legs in the hall."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline's bedroom was immediately over the nursery; but so roundabout
+was the construction of the Rectory that, to reach the one from the
+other, all sorts of corridors and twisting stairways had to be passed;
+and when finally she flung herself down in her small armchair she was
+breathless. Soon, however, the tranquillity of the room restored her.
+The faded blue linen so cool to her cheeks quieted all the passionate
+indignation. On the wall Saint Ursula asleep in her bed seemed
+inconsistent with a proud rage; nor did Tobit laughing in the angel's
+company encourage her to sulk. Therefore almost before Guy had taken off
+his wet overcoat, Pauline had rushed downstairs again; had kissed
+Margaret; and had put three stitches in the tail of the scarlet bird
+that occupied her tambour-frame. Certainly when he came into the
+drawing-room she was as serene as her two sisters, and much more serene
+than Mrs. Grey, who had just discovered that she had carefully made the
+tea without a spoonful in the pot, besides mislaying a bottle of
+embrocation she had spent the afternoon in finding for an old
+parishioner's rheumatism.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline, however, soon began to worry herself again because Guy was
+surely avoiding her most deliberately, and not merely avoiding her but
+paying a great deal of attention to Margaret. Of course she was glad for
+him to like Margaret, but Richard out in India must be considered. She
+could not forget that promise she had made to Richard last June, when
+they were paddling upstream into the sunset. Guy was charming; in a way
+she could be almost as fond of him as of Richard, but what would she say
+to Richard if she let Guy carry off Margaret? Besides, it was unkind not
+to have a word for her when she was always such a good listener to his
+tales of Miss Peasey, and when<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a> they could always laugh together at the
+same absurdities of daily life. Perhaps he had felt that Margaret, who
+had been so critical over his curtains, must be propitiated&mdash;and yet now
+he was already going without a word to herself: he was shaking hands
+with her so formally that, though she longed to teaze him for wearing
+silk socks with those heavy brogues, she could not. He seemed to be
+angry with her ... surely he was not angry because she had hailed him
+from the window.</p>
+
+<p>"What was the matter with Guy?" she asked when he was gone, and when
+everybody looked at her sharply, Pauline felt herself on fire with
+blushes; made a wild stitch in the tail of the scarlet bird; and then
+rushed away to look for the lost embrocation, refusing to hear when they
+called after her that Mother had been sitting on it all the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>The windows along the corridors were inky blue, almost turning black, as
+she stared at them, half frightened in the unlighted dusk: outside, the
+noise of the rain was increasing every moment. She would sit up in her
+bedroom till dinner-time and write a long letter to India. By
+candlelight she wrote to Richard, seated at the small desk that was full
+of childish things.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="c">W<small>YCHFORD</small> R<small>ECTORY</small><br />
+O<small>XON</small>.</p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Tuesday.</i></p>
+
+<p class="nind"><i>My dear Richard,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Thank you for your last letter which was very interesting. I
+should think your bridge was wonderful. Will you come back to
+England when it's finished? There is not much to tell you except
+that a man called Guy Hazlewood has taken Plashers Mead. He is very
+nice, or else I should have hated him to take the house you wanted.
+He is very tall&mdash;not so tall as father, of course&mdash;and he is a
+poet. He has a very nice bobtail<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a> and a touching housekeeper who is
+deaf. Birdwood likes him very much; so I expect you would too.
+Birdwood wants to know if it's true that people in India&mdash;oh,
+bother, now I've forgotten what it was, only I know he's got a bet
+with Godbold's nephew about it. Guy&mdash;you mustn't be jealous that we
+call him Guy because he really is very nice&mdash;has just been in to
+tea. Margaret is a darling, but I wish you'd take my advice and
+write more about</i> her <i>when you write. Of course I don't know what
+you do write, and I'm sure she really is interested in your bridge,
+but of course you must remember that she's not used to the kind of
+bridges you're building. But she's a darling and I'm simply longing
+for you to be married so that I can come and stay with you when I'm
+an old maid which I've quite made up my mind I'm going to be. Guy
+has been gardening with Father a good deal. Father says he's</i>
+fairly <i>intelligent. Isn't Father sweet? He drank your health at
+dinner the other night without anybody's reminding him it was your
+birthday. I think Guy likes Monica best. I don't think he cares at
+all for Margaret except of course he must admire her&mdash;Margaret is
+such a darling! Oh, a merry Christmas because it will be Christmas
+before you get this letter. Percy Brydone and Charlie Willsher came
+to dinner last month. They were so touching and bored.</i></p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Lots of love from</i>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+<i>Your loving</i>nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+<i>Pauline</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Don't forget about writing to Margaret more about herself.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Pauline put the letter in its crackling envelope with a sigh for the
+unformed hand in which it was written. Nothing brought home to her so
+nearly as this handwriting of hers the muddle she was always apt to make
+of things. How it sprawled across the page, so unlike Monica's that<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a> was
+small and neat and exquisitely formed or Margaret's that was decorated
+with fantastic and beautiful affectations of manner. It was obvious, of
+course, that her sisters must always be the favourites of everybody, but
+it had been rather unkind of Guy to avoid her so obviously to-day.
+Richard had always realized that even if she were impulsive and foolish
+she was also tremendously sympathetic.</p>
+
+<p>"For I really am sympathetic," she assured her image in the glass, as
+she tried to make the light brown hair look tidy enough to escape
+Margaret's remonstrances at dinner. If Guy were hopelessly in love with
+Margaret, how sympathetic she would be; and she would try to explain to
+him how interesting an unhappy love-affair always made people. For
+instance there was Miss Verney whom everybody thought was just a cross
+old maid; but if they had only seen, as she had seen, that cracked
+miniature, what romance even her cats would possess. She must take Guy
+to see Miss Verney or bring Miss Verney to see Guy: a meeting must
+somehow be arranged between these two, who would surely be drawn
+together by their misfortunes in love. Guy was exactly the person whom
+an unhappy love-affair would become. It would be so interesting in ten
+years' time, when she would be nearly thirty and old enough to be Guy's
+confidante without anybody's interference, to keep back the inquisitive
+world from Plashers Mead. No doubt by then Guy would be famous: he
+always spoke with such confidence of fame. Monica and Margaret would
+both be married, and she would still be living at the Rectory with her
+father and mother. Pauline, as she pictured the future, saw no change in
+them, but rather sacrificed to the ravages of time her own appearance
+and Guy's, so that at thirty she fancied both herself and him as already
+slightly grey. The gong sounded from the depths of the house, and
+hastily she snatched from her wardrobe the first frock she found: it
+happened to be a white one,<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a> more suitable to June than to December,
+with a skirt of many flounces all stiffly starched. After rustling down
+passages and stairs she reached the dining-room just as the others were
+going into dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, how charming you look in that frock," her mother exclaimed.
+"Why it's like Summer just to see you."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline was very happy that night because her mother and sisters petted
+her with the simple affection for which she was always longing.</p>
+
+<p>The next day seemed fine enough to justify Mrs. Grey, Margaret and
+Monica in making an expedition into Oxford to see about Christmas
+presents; and in the afternoon, while Pauline was sitting alone in the
+nursery, Guy was shown in by Janet. Pauline felt very shy and blushful
+when she met him so intimately as this, after all her plans for him on
+the night before. He too seemed ill at ease, and she was sadly positive
+he missed Margaret. The sense of embarrassment lasted until tea-time,
+when Janet came in to say that the Rector hearing of Mr. Hazlewood's
+arrival had decided to have tea in the nursery.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what fun," cried Pauline clapping her hands. "Janet, do give him
+the mug with '<small>A PRESENT FOR A GOOD BOY</small>' on it."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, Miss Pauline, what things you do think of, I do declare. Well,
+did you ever? Tut-tut! Fancy, for your father too!"</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless Janet sedately put the mug on the tray. When she was gone
+Pauline turned to Guy, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure Father thinks he ought to come and chaperone us. Isn't he
+sweet?"</p>
+
+<p>Presently the Rector appeared looking very tall in the low doorway. He
+nodded cheerfully to Guy:</p>
+
+<p>"Seen Vartani? You know, he's that pale blue fellow from Nazareth. Very
+often he's a washy lilac, but this is genuinely blue."<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a></p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't think I noticed it&mdash;him, I mean," said Guy apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Father, of course he didn't! It's a tiny iris," she explained to
+Guy, "and Father puts in new roots every year...."</p>
+
+<p>"Bulbs, my dear, bulbs," corrected Mr. Grey. "It's one of the Histrio
+lot."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, bulbs. And every year one flower comes out in the middle of the
+winter rain and lasts about ten minutes, and then all the summer
+Birdwood and Father grub about looking for the bulb, which they never
+find, and then Father gets six new ones."</p>
+
+<p>They talked on, the three of them, about flowery subjects while the
+Rector drank his tea from the mug without a word of comment on the
+inscription. Then he went off to write a letter, and Guy with a
+regretful glance at the room supposed he ought to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, stay a little while," said Pauline. "Look, it's raining again."</p>
+
+<p>It was only a shower through which the declining sun was lancing silver
+rays. As they watched it from the window without speaking, Pauline
+wondered if she ought to have given so frank an invitation to stay
+longer. Would Margaret have frowned? And how odd Guy was this afternoon.
+Why did he keep looking at her so intently as if about to speak, and
+then turn away with a sigh and nothing said.</p>
+
+<p>"I do love this room," said Guy at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I love it too," Pauline agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask you something?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"You spoke to Margaret the other day about someone called Richard. Do
+you like him very much?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course. Only you mustn't ask me about him. Please don't. I've
+promised Margaret I wouldn't talk about him. Please, please, don't ask
+me any more."<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a></p>
+
+<p>"But leaving Margaret out of it, do you like him ... well ... very much
+better than me, for instance?"</p>
+
+<p>Guy used himself for comparison with such an assumption of carelessness
+as might give the impression that only by accident did he mention
+himself instead of the leg of the table, or the kitten.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I couldn't tell you that. Because if I said I liked you even as
+much, I should feel disloyal to Richard, and he's the best friend I've
+got. Oh, do let's talk about something else. Please do, Mr. Hazlewood."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, look here, I'm going," exclaimed Guy, and he went instantly.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline felt unhappy to think she had hurt his feelings; but he should
+not expect her to like him better than Richard. If Richard were married
+to Margaret, it might be different; but suppose that Margaret fell in
+love with Guy? Pauline felt her heart almost stop beating at the notion,
+and she made up her mind that if such a calamity befell it would be
+entirely her fault. The idea that she should so betray Richard's
+confidence made her miserable for the rest of the evening. Yet, though
+she was unhappy about Richard, it was always the picture of Guy hurrying
+from the nursery and his reproachful backward look that was visibly
+before her mind. And in the morning when she woke up, it was with a
+strange unsatisfactory feeling such as she had never known before.
+Yesterday came back to her remembrance with a great emptiness, seeming
+to her a day which had somehow never been properly finished. Here was
+the rain again raining, raining; and the old prospect of dreary weather
+that would not change for months.</p>
+
+<p>A week went by without any sign of Guy. There were no amusing evenings
+now when he stayed to dinner: there were no delightful days of planting
+bulbs in the garden: there was nothing indeed to do, but visit bedridden
+old ladies to whom fine or bad weather no longer mattered.<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a> Yet nobody
+else except herself seemed at all unhappy it. Actually not one of the
+family commented upon Guy's absence.</p>
+
+<p>"I really am afraid that Margaret <i>is</i> heartless," said Pauline to her
+image in the glass. "She doesn't seem to care a bit whether he is here
+or not."</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly the weather changed. The country sparkled with hoar frost,
+and everybody forgot about the rain, asking if ever before such weather
+had been known for Christmas. Guy was invited to dinner at the Rectory,
+and Pauline forgot about her problems in the pleasure that the jolly
+afternoon brought. Self-consciousness under the critical glances of
+Monica and Margaret vanished in the atmosphere of intimacy shed by the
+occasion. She could laugh and make a great noise without being reproved,
+and Guy himself was obviously more at home than he had ever been. There
+seemed a likelihood that now once again the progress of simple
+friendship would advance undisturbed by the complications of love, and
+Pauline was glad to be able to assure herself that Guy did not that
+afternoon display the slightest sign of a hopeless passion for Margaret.
+He was more in his mood and demeanour of last month, and diverted them
+greatly with an account of struggling to explain to Graves, the deaf and
+dumb gardener, what he wanted done in the garden.</p>
+
+<p>"But didn't Birdwood help you?" they asked laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Birdwood showed me what I ought to do," said Guy. "But it seemed
+such a rough method of information that I hadn't the heart to adopt it.
+You see, as far as I could make out, it consisted of pulling up a
+cabbage by the root, hitting Graves on the head with it, and then
+nodding violently. That meant 'clear away these cabbages.' Or if
+Birdwood wanted to say 'plant broccoli here,' he dug Graves in the ribs
+with the dibbler and rubbed his nose in the unthinned seedlings."<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a></p>
+
+<p>"What does Miss Peasey say?" asked Pauline who was in a state of the
+highest amusement, because deaf and dumb Graves was one of the villagers
+who lived under her particular patronage.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, at first Miss Peasey was rather huffed, because she thought
+Graves was mocking her by pretending to be deaf. Now, however, she comes
+out and watches him at work and hopes that next Spring there'll be a
+little more variety in the garden."</p>
+
+<p>The sunny sparkling weather lasted for a few days after Christmas; and
+one morning Pauline, walking by herself on Wychford down, met Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"I wondered if I should see you," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you expect to see me, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I knew you often came here, and this morning I couldn't resist
+coming here myself."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline felt a sudden impulse to run away; and yet most unaccountably
+the impulse led her into walking along with Guy at a brisk pace over the
+close-cropped glittering turf. Round them trotted Bob in eddies of
+endless motion.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen," said Guy. "I'm sure I heard a lark singing."</p>
+
+<p>They stopped, and Pauline thought that never was there so sweet a
+silence as here upon the summit of this green down. Guy's lark could not
+be heard. There was not even the faint wind that sighs across high
+country. There was nothing but gorse and turf and a turquoise sky
+floating on silver deeps and distances above the winter landscape.</p>
+
+<p>"When the gorse is out of bloom, kissing's out of fashion," he said,
+pointing to a golden spray.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline had heard the jingle often enough, but spoken solemnly like this
+by Guy on Wychford down it flooded her cheeks with blushes, and in a
+sort of dear alarm the truth of it declared itself. She was startlingly
+aware of a new life, as it were demanding all sorts of questions of her.
+She felt a shyness that nearly drove her to run away from her companion<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a>
+and yet at the same moment brought a complete incapacity for movement of
+any kind, an incapacity too that was full of rapture. She longed for him
+to say something of such convincing ordinariness as would break the
+spell and prove to her that she was still Pauline Grey; while with all
+her desire for the spell to be broken, she was wondering if every moment
+she were not deliberately offering herself to enchantment.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever felt," Guy was asking, "a long time after you've met
+somebody, as if you had suddenly met them again for the first time?"</p>
+
+<p>Pauline shook her head vaguely. Then with an effort she recaptured her
+old self and said laughing:</p>
+
+<p>"But then, you see, I never think about anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Sleeping beauty, sleeping beauty," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>And with an abrupt change of manner, he began to throw sticks for Bob,
+so that the lucid air was soon loud with continuous barking.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if we shall ever meet again on Wychford down," said Guy as
+together they swung along the rolling highroad towards the village.</p>
+
+<p>A horse and trap caught them up before Pauline could answer the
+speculation, and Mr. Godbold, as he passed, wished them both a very good
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Godbold seems extraordinarily interested in us," Guy remarked, when for
+the third time before he turned the corner Mr. Godbold looked back at
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wonder...." Pauline began, expressing with her lips sudden
+apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean, he thought it strange to see us together?"</p>
+
+<p>"People in the country...." she began again.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you hurry on alone?" Guy asked. "And I'll come in to Wychford
+later."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be stupid. What do the Wychford people matter? Besides I should
+hate to do anything like that."<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a></p>
+
+<p>She was half angry with Guy for the suggestion. It seemed to cast a
+shadow on the morning.</p>
+
+<p>When Pauline got back home, she told them all about her meeting with
+Guy: nobody had a word of disapproval, not even Margaret, and the faint
+malaise of uncertainty vanished.</p>
+
+<p>After tea, however, Mrs. Grey came in looking rather agitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline," she began at once. "You must not meet Guy alone like that
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, darling Mother, you <i>are</i> looking so pink and flustered," said
+Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>"No, there's nothing to laugh at. Nothing at all. I was most annoyed.
+Four of the people I visited actually had the impertinence to ask me if
+you and Guy were engaged."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline went off into peals of laughter and danced about the room; but
+when she was alone and thought again of what the gossips were saying,
+she suddenly realized it was not altogether for Richard's sake that she
+had dreaded the idea of Guy's falling in love with Margaret.<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>January</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">P</span>LASHERS MEAD and the Rectory were not the only romantic houses in
+Wychford. Indeed the little town as a whole had preserved by reason of
+its remoteness from railways and important highroads the character given
+to it during the many years of prosperity which lasted until the reign
+of Charles the First. From that time it had slowly declined; and now
+with a stagnation that every year was more deeply accentuated by modern
+conditions it was still declining. New houses were never built, and even
+the King's Head, a pledge of commercial confidence in the Hanoverian
+succession, seemed to flaunt with an inappropriate modernity its red
+bricks mellowed by the passage of two centuries. Apart from this rival
+to the Stag Inn the fabric of Wychford was uniformly grey, to which,
+notwithstanding Miss Peasey's declaration of sameness, variety was amply
+secured by the character of the architecture. Gables and mullions; oaken
+eaves and corbels carefully ornamented; latticed oriels and sashed bows;
+roofs of steep unequal pitch to which age had often added strange
+undulations; chimney stacks of stone and gothic entries, all these gave
+variety enough; and if the whole effect was too sober for Miss Peasey's
+taste, the little town on the hillside was now safe for ever from the
+brightening of the dolls-house spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Wychford could still be called a town, for it possessed a few
+side-streets, along the grassgrown cobbles of which there still existed
+many houses of considerable beauty and dignity. These had lapsed into a
+more apparent decay, because a dwindling population had avoided their
+direct<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a> exposure to the bleak country and had left them empty. In the
+High Street this melancholy of bygone fame was less noticeable, and here
+scarcely a house was unoccupied. Some buildings, indeed, had been
+degraded to unworthy usages; and it was sad to see Perpendicular
+fireplaces filled with cheap lines in drapery, or to find an ancient
+chantry trodden by pigs and fowls. Generally, however, the High Street
+to the summit of its steep ascent had an air of sedate prosperity that
+did not reflect the reality of a slow depopulation.</p>
+
+<p>About half way up the hill on the other side of the town from Plashers
+Mead and the Rectory was a side-street called Abbey Lane that, instead
+of leading to open country, was bounded by a high stone wall. This
+blocked the thoroughfare except so far as to allow a narrow path to
+skirt its base and give egress along some untidy cottage-gardens to a
+cross-road farther up the hill.</p>
+
+<p>In the middle of the wall confronting the street two columns surmounted
+with huge round finials showed where there had once been a gate wide
+enough to admit a coach. Above the wall a belt of high trees obscured
+the view and gave a dank shadow to the road beneath. At one corner a
+small wooden wicket with a half obliterated proclamation of privacy
+enabled anyone to pass through the wall and enter the grounds of
+Wychford Abbey. This wicket opened directly on a path that wound through
+a plantation of yews interspersed with tall beeches and elms whose
+overarching tops intensified even in wintry leaflessness the prevalent
+gloom. The silence of this plantation made Wychford High Street seem in
+remembrance a noisy cheerful place, and the mere crackling of twigs and
+beech-mast induced the visitor to walk more quietly, fearful of
+profaning the mysteriousness even by so slight an indication of human
+presence. The plantation continued in tiers of trees down the hill to
+the Greenrush, which had been<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a> deepened by a dam to support this gloom
+of overhanging branches with slow and solemn stream. The path, however,
+kept to the level ground and emerged presently upon a large square of
+pallescent grass the farther side of which was bounded by a deserted
+house.</p>
+
+<p>There were no ruins of the ecclesiastical foundation to fret a gothic
+moonlight, but Wychford Abbey did not require these to justify the
+foreboding approach; and the great Jacobean pile, whose stones the
+encroaching trees had robbed of warmth and vitality, brooded in the
+silence with a monstrous ghostliness that was scarcely heightened by the
+signs of material decay. Nevertheless the casements whose glass was
+filmy like the eyes of blind men or sometimes diced with sinister gaps;
+the cracks and fissures in the external fabric; the headless supporters
+of the family coat; and the roof slowly being torn tile from tile by
+ivy, did consummate the initial impression. Within, the desolation was
+more marked. A few rotten planks had been nailed across the front door,
+but these had been kicked down by inquisitive explorers, and the hall
+remained perpetually open to the weather. In some of the rooms the
+floors had jagged pits, and there was not one which was not defiled by
+jackdaws, owls and bats. Strands of sickly ivy, which had forced an
+entrance through the windows, clawed the dusty air. A leprosy had
+infected the plaster ceilings so that the original splendour of their
+mouldings had become meaningless and scarcely any longer discernible;
+and the marble of the florid mantelpieces was streaked with abominable
+damp. The back of the house seemed to go beyond the rest in the
+expression of utter abandonment. Crumbling walls with manes of ivy
+enclosed a series of gardens rank with docks and nettles and almost
+impenetrable on account of the matted briars. As if to add the final
+touch of melancholy the caretaker (for somewhere in the depths of the
+house existed ironically a caretaker) had<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a> cultivated in this wilderness
+some dreary patches of potatoes. Beyond the forsaken parterres stretched
+a great unkempt shrubbery where laurels, peterswort and hollies
+struggled in disorderly and overgrown profusion for the pleasure of
+numberless birds, and where a wide path still maintained its slow
+diagonal down the hillside to the river's edge.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the surroundings Guy chose to embower the doubts and
+hesitations that followed close upon the morning when on Wychford down
+he had been so nearly telling Pauline he loved her. Perhaps the almost
+savage gloom of this place helped to confirm his profound hopelessness.
+A black frost had succeeded the sparkle of Christmastide. The banks of
+the river in such weather were impossible, for the wind came biting
+across the water-meadows and piped in the withered reeds and rushes with
+an intolerable melancholy. Here in the grounds of Wychford Abbey there
+was comparative warmth, and the desolation suited the unfortunate end he
+was predicting for his hopes. To begin with, it was extremely improbable
+that Pauline cared about him. His assay with regard to Richard had not
+been encouraging, and his worst fears of being too late for real
+inclusion within the charm of the Rectory were surely justified. He had
+known all along how much exaggerated were his ambitions, and he wished
+now that in the first moment of their springing he had ruthlessly
+strangled them. Moreover, even if Pauline did ultimately come to care
+for him, how much farther was he advanced upon the road of a happy
+issue? It were presumptuous and absurd with only £150 a year to propose
+marriage, and if he gave up living here and became a schoolmaster at
+home, he knew that the post would be made conditional upon a willingness
+to wait as many years for marriage as the wisdom of age decreed.
+Besides, he could not take Pauline from Wychford and imprison her at Fox
+Hall to dose little boys with Gregory's Powder or check the schedule of
+their underclothing. The only justification for<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a> taking Pauline away
+from the Rectory would be to make her immortal in poetry. Yet
+encouraging as lately one or two epithets had certainly been, he was
+still far from having written enough to fill even a very thin book; and
+really as he came to review the past three months he could not say that
+he had done much more or much better than in the days when Plashers Mead
+was undiscovered. Time had lately gone by very fast not merely on
+account of the jolly days at the Rectory, but also because weeks that
+were terminated by weekly bills seemed to be endowed with a double
+swiftness.</p>
+
+<p>"I really must eat less meat," said Guy to himself. "It's ridiculous to
+spend eleven shillings and sixpence every week on meat ... that's
+roughly £30 a year. Why, it's absurd. And I don't eat it. Bother Miss
+Peasey! What an appetite she has got."</p>
+
+<p>He wondered if he could break through the barrier of his housekeeper's
+deafness so far as to impress upon her the fact that she ate too much
+meat. She spent too much, also, on small things like pepper and salt.
+This reckless buying of pepper and salt made the grocer's bill an
+eternal irritation, for it really seemed absurd to be spending all one's
+money on pepper and salt. Yet people did live on £150 a year. Coleridge
+had married with less than that and apparently had got on perfectly
+well, or would have if he had not been foolish in other ways. How on
+earth was it done? He really must try and find out how much for instance
+Birdwood spent every week on the necessities of life. That was the worst
+of Oxford ... one came down without the slightest idea of the elementary
+facts of domestic economy. There had been a lot of soda bought last
+week. He remembered seeing it in one of those horrid little slippery
+tradesmen's books. Soda? What was it for? Vaguely Guy thought it was
+used to soften water, but there were plenty of rain tubs at Plashers
+Mead, and soda must be an unjustifiable<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a> extravagance. Then Miss Peasey
+herself was getting £18 a year. It seemed very little, so little indeed
+that when he paid her every month, he felt inclined to apologize for the
+smallness of the amount, but little as it was it only left him with
+£132. Knock off £30 for meat and he had £102. £18 must go in rent and
+there was left £84. Then there was milk and bread and taxes and the
+subscription to the cricket-club and the subscription to all the other
+vice-presidencies to which the town had elected him. There was also
+Graves his deaf and dumb gardener, and a new bucket for the well. Books
+and clothes, of course, could be obtained on credit, but even so
+sometime or other bills came in. Guy made a number of mental
+calculations, but by no device was he able to make the amount required
+come to less than £82. That left £2 for Pauline, and then by the way
+there was the dog-licence which he had forgotten. Thirty-two and
+sixpence for Pauline! Guy roamed through the sad arbours of Wychford
+Abbey in the depths of depression, and watched with a cynical amusement
+the birds searching for grubs in the iron ground. He began to feel a
+positive sense of injury against love which had descended with
+proverbial wantonness to complicate mortal affairs. He tried to imagine
+the Rectory without Pauline, and when he did so all the attraction was
+gone. Yet distinctly when he had first met the Greys, he had not thought
+more often of Pauline than of her sisters. What perversity of
+circumstance had introduced love?</p>
+
+<p>"It's being alone," said Guy. "I feed myself upon dreams. Michael was
+perfectly right. Wychford is a place of dreams."</p>
+
+<p>He would cure this love-sickness. That was an idea for a sonnet. Damn!
+'<i>I attempt from love's sickness to fly.</i>' It need not be said again. At
+the same time, poem or not, he would avoid the Rectory and shut himself
+close in that green room which Margaret and Monica had thought so<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a> crude
+with undergraduate taste. If this cold went on, there would be skating;
+and he began to picture Pauline upon the ice. The vision flashed like a
+diamond through these gloomy groves, and with the soughing of the skates
+in his ears and the thought of Pauline's hands criss-cross in his own,
+Guy's first attack on love ended in complete surrender. Skating meant
+long talks with never a curious eye to cast dismay; and in long talks
+and rhythmic motion possibly she might come to love him. Guy's footsteps
+began to ring out upon the iron-bound walk, and of all the sad ghosts
+that should have haunted his path, there was not one who walked now
+beside him; for, as he dreamed upon the vision of Pauline, the
+melancholy of that forsaken place was lightened with a sort of April
+exultation and the promise of new life to gladden the once populous
+gardens where lovers might have been merry in the past.</p>
+
+<p>However, when he was back in his house, Guy's earlier mood returned, and
+he made up his mind anew not to go to the Rectory. Nothing would do for
+him but the metaphysics and passion of Dr. John Donne; and on the dreary
+evening when the frost yielded to rain before there had been one day's
+skating, Guy was as near as anyone may ever have been to conversing with
+that old lover's ghost who died before the god of Love was born. All his
+plans wore mourning, and the bills that week rose
+two-and-sixpence-halfpenny higher than their highest total so far. Guy
+moped in his green library and, as he read through the manuscripts of
+poetry that with the progress of the night seemed to him worse and
+worse, he wished he could recapture some of that self-confidence which
+had carried him so serenely through Oxford; and he asked himself if
+Pauline's love would endow him once more with that conviction of
+ultimate fame, to the former safe tenure of which he now looked back as
+from a disillusioned old age.</p>
+
+<p>Another week passed, and Guy wondered what they were<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a> thinking of him at
+the Rectory for his neglect of all they might justly suppose had been
+offered him. Absence from Pauline did not seem to have effected much so
+far except a complete paralysis of his power to work with that diligence
+he had always preached as the true threshold of art. Perhaps he had been
+always a little too insistent upon the merit of academic industry, too
+conscious of a deliberate embarkation upon a well-built career, too
+careful of mere equipment in his exploration of Parnassus. So long as he
+had been exercizing his technical accomplishment, everything had seemed
+to be advancing securely toward the moment when inspiration should
+vitalize the promise of his craftsmanship. Now inspiration was at hand,
+and accomplishment had betrayed him. These effusions of restless love
+which he had lately produced were surely the most wretched cripples ever
+sent to climb the Heliconian slope. Guy looked at his notebook and
+marked how many apostrophes, the impulses to declaim which had seemed to
+scorch his imagination with bright ardours, had, alas, failed to kindle
+his uninflammable pencil. He derived a transient consolation from
+Browning's Pauline which was surely as inadequate as his own verse to
+celebrate the name. '<i>Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me.</i>' That opening
+half-line was the only one which moved him. But after all Browning did
+not esteem his own Pauline and had written it when he was twenty.
+Himself was twenty-two, and could not declare his passion in one lyric.
+A graceful sonnet for his father's birthday would not compensate for
+this dismaying failure. Moreover in rhymes, thought Guy, Pauline was no
+niggard; and with a flicker of sardonic humour he recalled how many
+Swinburne had found for Faustine.</p>
+
+<p>It was Godbold who fed the vexations and torments of untried love with
+the bitterest medicine of all. He had come down to see Guy about an old
+chair that had to be fetched from a neighbouring village<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a> and, when his
+business was over, seemed inclined to chat for a while.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever noticed, Mr. Hazlewood," he began, "as there's a lot of
+people in this world who know more than a man knows himself?"</p>
+
+<p>Guy indicated that the fact had struck him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, just because I happen to see you with Miss Pauline the other
+morning, there's half-a-dozen wise gabies in Wychford who've almost
+married you to her out of hand."</p>
+
+<p>Guy tried not to look annoyed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you may well frown, Mr. Hazlewood, for as I said to them, it's
+nothing more than nonsense to tie up a young man and a young woman just
+because they happen to take a walk together on a fine morning."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope this sort of intolerable gossip isn't still going on," said Guy
+savagely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, you see, sir, Wychford is a middling place for gossip. And if
+it wasn't one of the Miss Greys it would be some other young Miss
+roundhereabouts. Human nature, like pigeons, is set on mating."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you'll contradict this ridiculous rumour," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I have done already. In fact I may say that one of my principles,
+Mr. Hazlewood, is to contradict everything. As I said to them, when they
+was talking about it in the post-office the other night, and that
+post-office is a rare place for gossip! Perhaps you've noticed that the
+nosiest man in a town always gets made postmaster? Where had I got
+to?&mdash;ah, yes, I said to them, 'You know a great lot about other people's
+business,' I said, 'but when I tell you that old Mrs. Mathers who lives
+in the last cottage but one in Rectory Lane says she's taken particular
+note as Mr. Hazlewood has never been near the Rectory for the last
+fortnight unless it was once when she heard footsteps and<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a> hadn't time
+to get to the window to see who it was on account of the kettle being on
+the boil at that moment, where's your Holy Matrimony?' I said. With that
+up speaks Miss Burge from the back of the shop whose father used to keep
+the King's Head before he dropped dead of the apoplexy on Shipcot
+platform. 'That doesn't say he hasn't gone round by the field the same
+as Mr. Burrows's servant used to when she was being courted by
+We'll-mention-no-names.' 'No, and that he hasn't either,' said I
+smacking the counter, for I was feeling a bit angry by now at all this
+poking about in other people's business, 'that he hasn't,' I said,
+'because the Rectory cook asked me most particular if there was anything
+the matter down at Plashers Mead seeing as Mr. Hazlewood hadn't been
+near the Rectory for a fortnight. That doesn't look like Holy
+Matrimony,' I said, and with that I walked out of the post-office. Mr.
+Hazlewood," Godbold concluded very earnestly, "the gossip of Wychford is
+something as no one would believe, if they hadn't heard it, as I have,
+every mortal day of my life."</p>
+
+<p>Guy could have laughed on his own account, but the notion of Pauline's
+being dragged into the chatter made him furious. Yet what could he do?
+If he went frequently to the Greys' house, he must be engaged according
+to Wychford. And if he did not go....</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose they'll be saying next that the engagement has been broken
+off," he enquired with cold sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they have said it. Depend upon it, Mr. Hazlewood, it undoubtedly
+has been said."</p>
+
+<p>It began to appeal to Guy as extremely undignified&mdash;the way in which he
+had let Godbold chatter on like this.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I must be getting back to my work," he said curtly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right. Work's the best answer to talk. Did you feel it much here
+in that rainy spell?"<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a></p>
+
+<p>"The meadows were a bit splashy of course, but the water never got
+anywhere near the house."</p>
+
+<p>"But it will. Don't you make any mistake. It will. Only of course we've
+had a dry autumn. Why, last June year Miss Peasey could have been
+fishing for minnows in her kitchen. Now that seems a nice upstanding
+sort of woman. A Wesleen, they tell me? I haven't seen her in church
+that I can remember, and which would account for it. But I never talk to
+the chapel folk, they being that uncivilized. She's rather deaf, isn't
+she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and therefore cannot gossip," Guy snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know," said Godbold doubtfully. "Some of the most
+unnatural scandals I ever heard were made by deaf women. Though that
+doesn't mean I'm saying Miss Peasey is a talker."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure she isn't," Guy agreed. "Good-night, Mr. Godbold."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Mr. Hazlewood, don't you be discouraged by the gossip in
+Wychford. I always say, if you believe nothing you hear, next to nothing
+of what you read, and only half of what you see, no one can touch you.
+Good-night once more, sir. And don't you fret over what people say. I
+remember they once said I tried to work a horse which had the blind
+staggers, and Mrs. Godbold was that aggravated she went and washed a
+shirt of mine twice over, worrying herself. Good-night, Mr. Hazlewood."</p>
+
+<p>This time the red-bearded carrier of Wychford (not an inappropriate
+profession for him) really departed, leaving Guy in a state of
+considerable resentment at the thought of the Wychford commentary.</p>
+
+<p>That night the raw drizzle turned to snow; and when he looked out of his
+window next morning, it was lying thick over the country and was making
+his bedroom seem as grey as the loaded clouds above. That exhilaration
+of a new landscape which comes with snow drove away some of<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a> Guy's
+depression, and after breakfast he went out, curious to contemplate its
+effect upon the Abbey. In the black frost the great pile had seemed to
+possess scarcely more substance than a shredded leaf; and when it lay
+sodden beneath the dripping trees, a manifest decay had made extinction
+infamous with the ooze of a rotting fungus. The weather now had brought
+a strange restoration to the abandoned house, and so completely had the
+covering of snow hidden most of the signs of dissolution that Wychford
+Abbey seemed no longer dead, but asleep in the quiet of a winter
+morning. The lawn in front stretched before it in decent whiteness, and
+the veiling of the ragged unhealthy grass took away from the front of
+the house that air of wan caducity, endowing the stones by contrast with
+tinted warmth and richness. The decrepit roof was hidden, and Wychford
+Abbey dreamed under its weight of snow with all the placid romance of a
+house on a Christmas card. The dark plantation was deprived of its
+gloom, and what was usually a kind of haunted stillness was now
+aspectful peace. Guy went over the crinching ground and strolled down
+the broad walk through the shrubbery. Everywhere the snow glistened with
+the footprints of many birds, but not a single call broke a silence
+which was cold and absolute except for the powdery whisper of the snow
+where it was sliding from the holly leaves.</p>
+
+<p>When Guy reached the bottom of the shrubbery, he sat down on a fallen
+trunk by a backwater, which dried up here in the drift of dead leaves;
+and he watched the surface of it glazing perceptibly, yet not so fast
+but that the faint motion of the freezing air could write upon the
+smoothness a tremulous reticulation. He had not been resting long when
+he saw Margaret coming toward him down the walk, and with so light a
+tread that in her white coat she might have been a figment created for
+his fancy by the snow. He wondered if a sense of the added beauty her
+presence gave<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a> the scene were in her mind. Probably it was, for Margaret
+had a discreet vanity that would never gratify itself so well as when
+she was alone; and plainly she must suppose herself alone, since here on
+this snowy morning she would not have expected to meet anybody. Guy
+thought it would be considerate to draw aside without spoiling her dream
+whatever the subject of the meditation. However, as he rose from the log
+to take the narrow path along the back-water and so turn homeward across
+the fields by the river, Margaret saw him and waved with a feathery
+gesture. As Guy went up the path to greet her, he was thinking how much
+her hair was like a dark leaf that had shaken off the snow, so easily
+might her blanched attire have fallen upon her from the clouds; then, as
+he came close, every charming fancy was suddenly spoilt by a remembrance
+of Wychford gossip, and he turned hastily round to see if there were
+prying glances in the laurels.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you looking at?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"A squirrel," said Guy quickly. He would not have had his absence from
+the Rectory ascribed to any fear of gossip; moreover, since a meeting
+with Margaret did not make his conscience the thrall of public opinion,
+he would not have her discreet vanity at all impaired. Therefore it was
+a squirrel he saw.</p>
+
+<p>"We've been wondering what has become of you," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I've been working rather hard; and as a matter of fact I was
+going to the Rectory this afternoon. Isn't the snow jolly after the
+rain? Especially here, don't you think?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to go and visit an old woman who lives almost in Little
+Fairfield, and I thought I'd avoid as much as I could of the high road."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I come with you?" asked Guy, but in so doubtful<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a> a voice that
+Margaret laughingly declared she was sure he was in a state of being
+offended with the Rectory.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Margaret, don't be absurd. Offended?"</p>
+
+<p>"Over the curtains?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why if it wouldn't betray a gross insensibility to your opinion, I
+should tell you I thought no more about what you said. Besides, we've
+had reconciling Christmas since then."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but you see, Pauline is always impressing on Monica and me our
+cruelty to you, and by this time Mother has been talked into believing
+in our hard and impenitent hearts."</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline is...." Guy broke off and saw another squirrel. He could not
+trust himself to speak of Pauline, for in this stillness of snow he felt
+that the lightest remark would reveal his love; and there was in nature
+this morning a sort of suspense that seemed to rebuke unuttered secrets.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as you're walking with me to Fairfield&mdash;or nearly to
+Fairfield&mdash;your neglect of us shall be forgiven," Margaret promised.
+"Here we are out of the warm trees already. I'm glad I came this way,
+though I think it was rather foolish. Look how deep the snow seems on
+that field we've got to cross."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't really," said Guy, vaulting over the fence that ran round the
+confines of the Abbey wood.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, now you've spoilt it," she exclaimed. But Margaret did not pause a
+moment to regret the ruffling of that sheeted expanse and they walked on
+silently, watching the toes of their boots juggle with the snow.</p>
+
+<p>"It generally is a pity," said Guy after a while.</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Impressing one's existence on so lovely and inviolate a thing as this."
+He indicated the untrodden field in front of them.<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a></p>
+
+<p>"But look behind you," said Margaret. "Don't you think our footprints
+look very interesting?"</p>
+
+<p>"Interesting, perhaps," Guy admitted. "Yet footprints in snow never seem
+to be going anywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Now I know quite well what you're doing," Margaret protested. "You're
+making that poor little wobbly track of ours try to bear all sorts of
+mysterious and symbolic intensities of meaning. Just because you're
+feeling annoyed with a sonnet, footprints in the snow mustn't lead
+anywhere. Why, Guy, if I told you what sentimental import my 'cello
+sometimes gives to a simple walk before lunch.... I mean of course when
+I've been playing badly."</p>
+
+<p>She sighed, and Guy wondered if the violoncello had been used with as
+little reference as a sonnet to the real cause of the mood.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you sigh just now?" he asked after another minute or two of
+silent progress.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder whether I'll tell you. No, I don't think I will. And yet...."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet perhaps after all you will," said Guy eagerly. "And if you do,
+I'll tell you something in turn."</p>
+
+<p>"That's no bribe," said Margaret laughing. "You foolish creature, don't
+you think I know what you'll tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>Guy shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you do. You may suspect. But for that matter, so may I.
+Isn't what you might have told me something that might most suitably be
+told on the way to Fairfield?"</p>
+
+<p>"You've been talking about me to Pauline," said Margaret angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"Never," he declared. "But you don't suppose you can have all these
+mysterious allusions to Richard without my guessing that his father is
+Vicar of Fairfield. Dear Margaret,<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a> forgive me for guessing and tell me
+what you were going to tell."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard I was engaged to Richard Ford?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard he was in love with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh he is, he is," she murmured, and Guy thinking of Richard in India
+wondered if he ever dreamed of Margaret walking like this in a snowy
+England. The clock in Fairfield church struck eleven with an icy tinkle
+that on the muted air sounded very thinly. "But the problem for me,"
+Margaret went on, "is whether I'm in love with him, or if Richard is
+merely the nicest person who has been in love with me so far."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you'd asked me that three months ago," Guy said, "I would have
+answered decidedly that you weren't in love with him if you had one
+doubt. But now ... well, you know really now I'm rather in the state of
+mind that wants everybody to be in love. And why do you think you're not
+in love with him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't really explained well," said Margaret. "What I'm sure of is
+that I'm not as much in love with him as I want to be in love."</p>
+
+<p>"You're living opposite a looking-glass," said Guy. "That's what is the
+matter."</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the stile leading over into the high road, and Margaret
+gazed back wistfully at the footprints in the snow, before they crossed
+it and went on their way.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said. "I am conceited. But my conceit is really cowardice. I
+long for admiration, and when I am admired I despise it. I lie in bed
+thinking how well I play the 'cello, and when I have the instrument by
+me I don't believe I can play even moderately well. I am really fond of
+him, but the moment I think that anybody else is thinking about my being
+fond of him I almost hate his name. I can't bear the idea of going to
+live in India and I detest<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a> bridges&mdash;you know he builds bridges&mdash;and yet
+I couldn't possibly write to him and say that he must think no more
+about me. I'm really a mixture of Monica and Pauline, and so I'm not as
+happy as either of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I suppose Pauline is very happy," said Guy in a depressed voice.</p>
+
+<p>"What am I to do?" Margaret asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you're much more in love than you think," he declared quickly,
+for he had the ghost of a temptation to tell her she was foolish to
+think any more of a love so uncertain as hers. There was enough jealousy
+of his standing at the Rectory to give him the impulse to rob Richard of
+his foothold, but the meanness destroyed itself on this virginal morning
+almost before Guy realized it had tried to exist. "Yes, I'm sure you're
+really in love," he repeated. "I think I can understand what you feel."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you?" said Margaret shaking her head a little sadly. "I'm afraid
+it's only a very willing sympathy on your part, for I'm sure I don't
+understand myself. That's why I'm conceited, perhaps. I'm trying to
+build up a Margaret Grey for other people to look at, which I admire
+like any pretty thing one makes oneself, and perhaps why I can't fall
+really in love is because I'm afraid of someone's understanding me and
+showing me to myself."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd have to be very clever to disappoint that person," said Guy. "And
+why shouldn't Richard Ford be the one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he'll never discover me," said Margaret. "That's what's so dull."</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you a little unreasonable?" Guy asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I am. Now don't let's talk about me any more: I'm really not
+worth discussing&mdash;only just because my family is so exquisite and
+because I adore them, I never talk about Richard to them. Here's the old
+woman's cottage. I shan't be more than a few minutes."</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a>Guy felt honoured by Margaret's confidence, but his heart was so full
+of Pauline that he transferred all the substance of what she had been
+saying to suit his own case. Would Pauline never know if she were in
+love? Would he be doomed to the position of Richard? Or worse, would
+Pauline fly from his love in terror of anything so disturbing to the
+perfection of her life at present? On the whole he was inclined to think
+that this was exactly what she would do; and he felt he would never have
+the courage to startle her with the question. When he thought of the
+girls to whom in the past of long vacations he had made protestations of
+devotion that were light as the thistledown in the summery meadows where
+they were uttered, it was incredible that the asking of Pauline should
+speed his heart like this. With other girls he had always imagined them
+slightly in love with him, but for Pauline to be in love with him seemed
+hopeless, though he qualified his humility by assuring himself that she
+could be in love with nobody. Did Margaret really have a suspicion that
+he was in love with Pauline? If she had, why had she not drawn his
+confidence before she gave her own? She came out from the cottage as he
+propounded this, and he told her, when their faces were set towards
+Wychford and a chilly wind that was rising, how he had been thinking
+about her confidence all the while she was in the cottage. Moreover, he
+was under the impression this was the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"But don't think about me any more," she commanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Never?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not until I speak first. Isn't it cold? You must have been frozen
+waiting for me."</p>
+
+<p>They hurried along talking mostly, though how the topic arose Guy never
+knew, about whether Alice in Wonderland were better than Alice Through
+the Looking-glass or not. The quotations that went to sustain the
+argument were so many that they arrived back very quickly, it seemed, at
+the stile leading into the snowy field.<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Will you go home the same way?" Guy suggested. "Look, nobody has spoilt
+our tracks. They're jollier than ever, and do you see those rooks
+farther down the field? It will snow again this afternoon and our
+footprints will vanish."</p>
+
+<p>By the time they reached the Abbey wood Guy had made up his mind that as
+they walked up through the shrubbery, unless people were listening
+there, he would tell Margaret how deeply he was in love with Pauline.
+The resolution taken, his throat seemed to close up with nervousness,
+and vaulting over the fence he tripped and fell in a snow drift.</p>
+
+<p>"Why this violent activity all of a sudden?" Margaret asked.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed gloomily and vowed it was the exhilarating weather. Up the
+broad walk they went slowly, and every yard was bringing them dreadfully
+nearer to Wychford High Street and the profanation of this snowy
+silence. Abruptly a robin began to sing from a bough almost overhead;
+and, Guy realizing half-unconsciously that unless he told Margaret now,
+his words would die upon that robin's rathe melody, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret, you'll probably be angry, but I must tell you that I'm in
+love with your sister."</p>
+
+<p>He drove his stick deep into the snow to give his eyes the excuse of
+looking down.</p>
+
+<p>"With Pauline," she said softly.</p>
+
+<p>He congratulated himself upon the cunning with which he had at least
+thrown something on Margaret of the responsibility, as he almost called
+it. Had she said Monica, it would have killed his hope at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I know it must sound ridiculous, but...."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she in love with me?" asked Margaret with tender mockery. "Well, I
+think she may be. Perhaps I'm almost sure she is."</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret," said Guy seizing her hand. "I hope you'll<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a> be the happiest
+person in the world always. You know, don't you, that I'm dying for you
+to be happy."</p>
+
+<p>There may have been tears in her eyes as she responded with faintest
+pressure of her hand to his affection.</p>
+
+<p>"And you won't forget all about me and take no more interest in what
+will seem my maddening indecision, when you and Pauline are happy?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, as if I could," he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Lovers can forget very easily," said Margaret. "You see I've thought
+such a lot about being in love that I've got everyone else's conduct
+clearly mapped out in my mind."</p>
+
+<p>Guy stopped dead; and, as he stopped, the robin now far behind them
+ceased his song, and even the flute of the wind sounding on distant
+hollows and horizons cracked in the frost so that the stillness was
+sharp as ice itself.</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret, what makes you think Pauline cares for me? How dare I be so
+fortunate?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you know you are fortunate," said Margaret, nor could falling
+snow have touched his arm more lightly than she. "Why do you suppose I
+told you about Richard if it was not because I thought you appreciated
+Pauline?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, how I shall always love the snow," Guy exclaimed, grinding the
+slippery ball upon his heel to powder.</p>
+
+<p>"But now I've got a disappointment for you," said Margaret. "Pauline and
+Monica are going into Oxford to-day for a week."</p>
+
+<p>"You won't tell anybody what I've told you?" he begged.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. Secrets are much too fascinating not to be kept as long
+as possible."</p>
+
+<p>He opened the wicket, and presently they parted in the High Street.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall come in this afternoon," he called after her. "Unless you're
+bored with me."</p>
+
+<p>She invited him with her muff and seemed to float out of<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a> sight.
+Suddenly Guy remembered that sometime this morning (it seemed as long
+ago as when Wychford Abbey was alive) Bob had been with him. He was glad
+of an excuse to go back and look for the dog in those now consecrated
+arbours. There the robin still sang his rather pensive tune; and there
+from a high ash-bough a missel-thrush, wearing full ermine of the
+Spring, saluted the vestal day.<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>February</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">P</span>AULINE started to Oxford with Monica, feeling rather disappointed she
+had not seen Guy before she went; for Margaret had come home with news
+of having walked with him to Fairfield, and it was tantalizing, indeed a
+little disturbing, to leave him behind with Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing is said to Margaret," Pauline protested at lunch, "when <i>she</i>
+goes out for a walk with Guy. Father, don't you think it's unfair?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, darling Pauline," interrupted Mrs. Grey with an anxious glance
+towards her second daughter. "You see, Margaret is in a way engaged."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not engaged," Margaret declared.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm asking Father," Pauline persisted. "Father, don't you think
+it's unfair?"</p>
+
+<p>The Rector was turning over the pages of a seed-catalogue and answered
+Pauline's question with that engaging irrelevancy to which his family
+and parish were accustomed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's disgraceful for these people to offer seeds of Incarvillea Olgae.
+My dears, you remember that anaemic magenta brute, the colour of a
+washed-out shirt? Ah," he sighed, "I wish they'd get that yellow
+Incarvillea over. I am tempted to fancy it might be as good as Tecoma
+Smithii, and of course coming from that Yang-tse-kiang country, it would
+be hardy."</p>
+
+<p>"Francis dear!" Pauline cried. "Don't you think it's unfair?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline," said her mother. "You must <i>not</i> call your father Francis in
+the dining-room."<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a></p>
+
+<p>The Rector oblivious of everything continued to turn slowly the pages of
+his catalogue.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, bother going to Oxford," said Monica looking out of the window to
+where Janet with frozen breath listened for the omnibus under gathering
+snow clouds.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, really," Pauline exclaimed, diverted from her complaint of
+Margaret's behaviour by another injustice. "Isn't Monica too bad? She's
+grumbling, though it was she who made the plan to stay with the
+Strettons. And though they're her friends and not mine, I've been made
+to go too."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I hate staying with people," Monica explained.</p>
+
+<p>"So do I," said Pauline. "And you accepted the invitation for me that
+day you were in Oxford buying Christmas presents, when you forgot to buy
+the patience-cards I wanted to give poor Miss Verney, so that I had to
+give her a horrid little china dog though she hates dogs."</p>
+
+<p>"Now I'm sure it'll be charming, yes, charming, when you get there,"
+Mrs. Grey affirmed hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how glad I am I'm not going," said Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you ought to go instead of me," Pauline told her.</p>
+
+<p>"They're not my friends," Margaret replied with a shrug.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but they're more your friends than mine," Pauline argued. "Because
+you're nearer to Monica. They're four years off being my friends and
+only two from being yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Monica," said Janet coming into the room. "The bus has come out
+from the King's Head yard, and you'll be late."</p>
+
+<p>There was instantly a confusion of preparation by Mrs. Grey and Pauline,
+while Monica sighed at the trouble of departure and Margaret with
+exasperating indifference sat warm and triumphant by the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious," the Rector exclaimed, flinging the<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a> catalogue down and
+speaking loud enough to be heard over the feverish search for Pauline's
+left glove. "These people have the impudence to advertize Penstemon
+Lobbii as a novelty when it's really our old friend Breviflorus. What on
+earth is to be done with these scoundrels?"</p>
+
+<p>The horn of the omnibus sounded at the end of Rectory Lane; and the fat
+guard was marching through the snow with the girls' luggage. The
+good-byes were all said; and presently Pauline with her muff held close
+to her cheeks against the North wind was sitting on top of the omnibus
+that was toiling up the Shipcot road. As she caught sight of Plashers
+Mead etched upon the white scene, she wished she had left a message with
+Margaret to say in what deep disgrace Guy was. On they laboured across
+five miles of snow-stilled country with sparse flakes melting upon the
+horses' flanks and never a wayfarer between Wychford and Shipcot to
+pause and stare at them.</p>
+
+<p>On the second night of their stay with the Strettons, Monica, when she
+and Pauline were going to bed, suddenly turned round from the
+dressing-table and demanded in rhetorical dismay why they had come.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," said Pauline. "We've only got five more evenings."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's nearly a week," Monica sighed. "And I'm tired to death of
+Olive already."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm much worse off," Pauline declared dolefully. "Because I have to
+sit next to the Professor, who does frighten me so. You see, he will
+include me in the conversation. Last night at dinner, after he'd been
+talking to that don from Balliol who knew Guy and whom I was dying to
+ask ... to talk to myself, I mean, he turned round to me and said, 'I am
+afraid, Miss Pauline, that Aramaic roots are not very interesting to
+you.' Well, of course I got muddled between Aramaic and aromatic, and
+said that Father had just been given a lot which were very poisonous."<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a></p>
+
+<p>Monica laughed that sedate laugh of hers, which always seemed to Pauline
+like a clock striking, so independent was it of anybody's feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"Monica darling, I don't want to be critical," said Pauline. "But you
+know sometimes your laugh sounds just a little&mdash;a very little
+self-satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I am rather self-satisfied," Monica agreed, combing her golden
+hair away from her high pale forehead. "And Margaret is conceited, and
+you're twice as sweet as both of us put together."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no I'm not, oh, no, no, Monica dearest, I'm not," Pauline
+contradicted hurriedly. "No, really I'm very horrid. And, you know, when
+I'm bored I'm sure I show it. Oh dear, I hope the Strettons didn't
+notice I was bored. Mrs. Stretton was so touching with the things they
+had brought back from Madeira, and I do hate things people bring back
+from places like Madeira."</p>
+
+<p>"And when you're not bored with anybody," said Monica, "you're rather
+apt to make that too obvious also."</p>
+
+<p>"Monica, why are you saying that?" Pauline asked with wide-open eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Even supposing Guy is in love with you," said Monica, slowly blowing
+out the candles on the dressing-table as she spoke, so that nothing was
+left but the rosy gas, "I don't think it's necessary to show him quite
+so clearly that you're in love with <i>him</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Monica!"</p>
+
+<p>"Darling little sister, I do so want you ... oh, how can I put it? Well,
+you know, when you break the time in a trio, as you sometimes do...."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm not in love with Guy," Pauline interrupted. "At least, oh,
+Monica, why do you choose a house like this to tell me such things?" she
+asked with tears and blushes fighting in her countenance.<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, it's only that I want you to keep in time."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't possibly stay with the Strettons another five days," declared
+Pauline in deepest gloom. "You ought not to say things like that here."</p>
+
+<p>She was looking round this strange bedroom for the comfort of familiar
+pictures, but there was nothing on these pink walls except a view of the
+Matterhorn. Monica was kneeling to say her prayers, and in the stillness
+the frost outside seemed to be pressing against the window-panes.
+Pauline thought it was rather unfair of Monica to fade like this into
+unearthly communications; and she knelt down to pray somewhat vagrant
+prayers into the quilted eiderdown that symbolized the guest-room's
+luxurious chill. She longed to look up in aspiration and behold Saint
+Ursula in that tall bed of hers or cheerful Tobit walking with his dog
+in the angel's company, and in the corner her own desk that was full of
+childish things. She rose from her knees at the same moment as Monica,
+who at once began to talk lightly of the tiresome people at dinner and
+seemed utterly unconscious of having wounded Pauline's thoughts. Yet
+when the room was dark, for a long while these wounded thoughts danced
+upon the wintry air that breathed of Wychford. '<i>Even supposing Guy is
+in love with you.</i>' It was curious that she could not feel very angry
+with Monica. '<i>Even supposing Guy is in love with you.</i>' It really
+seemed a pity to fall asleep: it was like falling asleep when music was
+being played.</p>
+
+<p>The subject of Guy was not mentioned again, but during the days that
+remained of the visit, Pauline scarcely felt that she was living in the
+Strettons' house, and was so absent in her demeanour that Monica was
+disturbed into what was for her a positive sociableness to counteract
+Pauline's appearance of inattention. To consummate the vexation of the
+visit there came a sudden thaw two days before they left, and Oxford was
+ankle-deep in slush. Finally Pauline<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a> and Monica were dragged through
+the very nadir of depression when on their last night they were taken
+out to dinner in trams and goloshes through such abominable conditions
+of weather.</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy not ordering a cab," whispered Monica with cold disapproval.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps they can't afford it," Pauline suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"They can afford to go to Madeira," answered Monica, "and buy all those
+stupid knick-knacks."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Monica, they are your friends, you know," said Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>However, the first of February arrived next morning, and Oxford was left
+behind. Pauline sighed with relief when they were seated in the train,
+and the twenty miles of country to Shipcot that generally seemed so dull
+were as green and welcome as if they were returning from a Siberian
+exile.</p>
+
+<p>"You know, Monica, I really don't think we ought to stay with people. I
+don't think it's honest to spend such a hateful week as that in being
+pleasant," she declared.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't notice that you were taking much trouble to hide your
+boredom," said Monica. "It seems to me that I was always in a state of
+trying to steer people round your behaviour."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but Professor Stretton loves me," said Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>She was trying not to appear excited as the omnibus swished and slapped
+through the mud towards Wychford. She was determined that in future she
+would lead that enclosed and so serene life which she admired in her
+eldest sister. Nobody could criticize Monica except for her coldness,
+and Pauline knew that herself would never be able to be really as cold
+as that however much she might assume the effect.</p>
+
+<p>"Grand weather after the snow," said the driver.</p>
+
+<p>The roofs of Wychford were sparkling on the hillside,<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a> and earth seemed
+to be turning restlessly in the slow winter sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"This mud'll all be gone with a week of fine days like to-day," said the
+driver.</p>
+
+<p>Plashers Mead was in sight now, but it was Monica who pointed to where
+Guy and his dog were wandering across the meadows that were so vividly
+emerald after the snow.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it is," agreed Pauline indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>In the Rectory garden a year might have passed, so great was the
+contrast between now and a week ago. Now the snowdrops were all that was
+left of the snow; and a treasure of aconites as bright as new guineas
+were scattered along the borders. Hatless and entranced the Rector was
+roaming from one cohort of green spears to another, each one of which
+would soon be flying the pennons of Spring. Pauline rushed to embrace
+him, and he without a word led her to see where on a sunny bank Greek
+anemones had opened their deep-blue stars.</p>
+
+<p>"Blanda," he whispered. "And I've never known her so deep in colour.
+Dear me, poor old Ford tells me he hasn't got one left. I warned him she
+must have sun and drainage, but he would mix her with Nemorosa just to
+please his wife, which is ridiculous&mdash;particularly as they are never in
+bloom together."</p>
+
+<p>He bent over and with two long fingers held up a flower full in the
+sun's eye, as he might have stooped to chuck under the chin a little
+girl of his parish.</p>
+
+<p>Monica had brought back a new quartet, which they practised all that
+Candlemas Eve. When it was time to go to bed Mrs. Grey observed in a
+satisfied voice that after all it must have been charming at the
+Strettons.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, Mother, it was terribly dull," Pauline protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, dear Pauline, how could it have been dull, when you've brought
+back this exquisite Schumann quartet?"<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a></p>
+
+<p>Margaret came to Pauline's room to say good-night, sat with her while
+she undressed and tucked her up so lovingly that Pauline was more than
+ever delighted to be back at home.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Margaret, how sweet you are to me. Why? Is it because you really do
+miss me when I go away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Partly," said Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you smiling so wisely? Have you put something under my pillow?"
+Pauline began to search.</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing under your pillow, except all the thoughts I have
+to-night for you."</p>
+
+<p>Once more Margaret leaned over and kissed her, and Pauline faded into
+sleep upon the happiness of being at home again.</p>
+
+<p>Next day after lunch her mother and sisters went to pay a long postponed
+call upon a new family in the neighbourhood, because Margaret insisted
+they must take advantage of this glorious weather which would surely not
+last very long.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline spent the early afternoon with the Rector and Birdwood, writing
+labels while they sowed a lot of new sweet-peas which had been sent to
+the Rector for an opinion upon their merits. The clock was striking four
+when Guy strolled into the garden. Somehow Pauline's labels were not so
+carefully written after his arrival, and at last the Rector advised her
+to take Hazlewood and show him Anemone Blanda. They left the big
+wall-garden and went across the lawn in front of the house to the second
+wall-garden, where most of the Rector's favourites grew as it pleased
+them best.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they've all gone to bed," said Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>Guy knelt down, and opened the petals of one.</p>
+
+<p>"They're exactly the colour of your eyes," he said looking up at her.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline was conscious that the simple statement was<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a> fraught with a
+significance far greater than anything which had so far happened in her
+life. It was ringing in her ears like a bugle-call that sounded some
+far-flung advance, and involuntarily she drew back and began to talk
+nonsense breathlessly, while Guy did not speak. Nor must she let him
+speak, she told herself, for behind that simple comparison how many
+questions were trembling.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wonder if the others are back yet," she finally exclaimed, and
+forthwith hurried from the garden toward the house. She wished she must
+not look back over her shoulder to see Guy following her so gravely. Of
+course, when they were standing in the hall, the others had not come
+back; and the house in its silence was a hundred times more portentous
+than the garden. And what would Guy be thinking of her for bringing him
+back to this voicelessness in which she could not any longer talk
+nonsense? Here the least movement, the slightest gesture, the most
+ordinary word would be weighted for both of them with an importance that
+seemed unlimited. For the first time the Rectory was strangely
+frightening; and when through the silent passages they were walking
+toward the nursery, it was the exploration of a dream. Yet, however
+undiscoverable the object that was leading them, she was glad to see the
+nursery door, for there within would surely come back to her the ease of
+an immemorial familiarity. Yet in that room of childhood, that room the
+most bound up with the simple progress of her life, she found herself
+counting the birds, berries and daisies upon the walls, as if she were
+beholding them vaguely for the first time. Why was she unpicking
+Margaret's work or folding into this foolish elaboration of triangles
+Monica's music? And why did Guy behave so oddly, taking up all sorts of
+unnatural positions, leaning upon the rickety mantelshelf, balancing
+himself upon the fender, pleating the curtains and threading his way
+with long legs in and out, in and out of the chairs?<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Pauline!"</p>
+
+<p>He had stopped abruptly by the fireplace and was not looking at her when
+he spoke. Oh, he would never succeed in lifting even from the floor that
+match which with one foot he was trying to lift on to the other foot.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline!"</p>
+
+<p>Now he was looking at her; and she must be looking at him, for there was
+nothing on this settee which would give her a good reason not to look at
+him. The room was so still that beyond the closed door the hoarse tick
+of the cuckoo-clock was audible; and what was that behind her which was
+fretting against the window-pane? And why was she holding with each hand
+to the brocade, as if she feared to be swept altogether out of this
+world?</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline!"</p>
+
+<p>Was it indeed her voice on earth that said 'yes'?</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, I suppose you know I love you?"</p>
+
+<p>And she was saying 'yes.'</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, do you love me?"</p>
+
+<p>And again she had said 'yes.'</p>
+
+<p>Outside in the corridor the cuckoo snapped the half-hour: then it seemed
+to tick faster and a thousand times faster. She must turn away from Guy,
+and as she turned she saw that what had been fretting the window-pane
+was a spray of yellow jasmine. Upon the cheek that was turned from him
+the dipping sun shed a warm glow, but the one nearer was a flame of
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline!"</p>
+
+<p>He had knelt beside her in that moment; and leaning over to his
+nearness, Pauline looked down at her hand in his, as if she were gazing
+at a flower which had been gathered.<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="SPRING" id="SPRING"></a>SPRING</h2>
+
+<p><a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>March</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE doubts and the joys of the future broke upon Guy with so wide and
+commingled a vision, that before the others got home and even before
+Janet came in with tea he hurried away from that nursery, where over the
+half-stilled echoes of childhood he had heard the sigh of Pauline's
+assent. The practical side of what he had done could be confronted
+to-morrow, and with a presage of hopelessness the word might have lain
+heavily upon his mind, if on the instant of sinking it had not been
+radiantly winged with the realization of the indestructible spirit that
+would henceforth animate all the to-morrows of time. No day could now
+droop for him, whatever the difficulties it brought, whatever the
+hazards, when he had Pauline and Pauline's heart: and like disregarded
+moments the years of their life went tumbling down into eternity, as the
+meaning of that sighed out assent broke upon his conscience with fresh
+glory.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll tell your mother to-night?" he asked. "I think Margaret will
+know when she sees your shining eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"Are my eyes shining?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, don't you know they are, when you look into mine?"</p>
+
+<p>Guy could have proclaimed that he and she were stars flashing to one
+another across a stupendous night; but there were no similes that did
+not seem tawdry when he threw them round Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>"Child, child, beloved child," he whispered; and his voice faltered for
+the pitiful inadequacy of anything that he could call her. What words
+existed, with whatever<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a> tenderness uttered, with whatever passion
+consecrated by old lovers, that would not still be words, when they were
+used for Pauline? Guy watched for a moment the cheek that was closer to
+his lips write in crimson the story of her love. He wished he could tell
+his love for her with even the hueless apograph of such a signal; and
+yet, since anything he said was only worthy of utterance in so far as
+she by this ebb and flow of response made it worthy, why should he
+trouble that cheek which, sentient now as a rose of the sun, hushed all
+but wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>He bent over and touched her hand with his lips. Then the Rectory stairs
+had borne him down like a feather: the Rectory door had assumed a kind
+of humanity, so that the handle seemed to relinquish his grasp with an
+affectionate unwillingness. Out in the drive, where the purple trees
+were washed by the February dusk, he stood perplexed at himself because
+in a wild kiss he had not crushed Pauline to his heart. Had it been from
+some scruple of honour in case her father and mother should not
+countenance his love? Had it sprung out of some impulse to postpone for
+a while a joy that must be the sharpest he would ever know? Or was it
+that in the past he had often kissed too lightly so that now, when he
+really loved, he could not imagine the kiss unpassionate and fierce that
+would seal her immortally to love, yet leave her still a child?</p>
+
+<p>As he paused in that golden February dusk, Guy rejoiced he had told his
+love in such an awe of her girlhood; and when from the nursery window
+Pauline blew one kiss and vanished like a fay at mortal trespassing, he
+floated homeward upon the airy salute, weighing no more than a seed of
+dandelion to his own sense of being. Upon his way he observed nothing,
+neither passer-by nor carts in the muddy roads. As he crossed the
+bridge, the roar of the water into the mill-pool was inaudible, nor did
+he hear his melodious<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a> garden ways. And when Miss Peasey came to his
+room with the lamp, he could not realize for a moment who she was or
+what she was talking about. The hour or two before dinner went by as one
+tranced minute; in a dream he went down to dinner; in a dream he began
+to carve; in a dream the knife remained motionless in the joint, so that
+Miss Peasey coming to enquire after his appetite thought it was stuck in
+a skewer. Upstairs in the library again, he dreamed the evening away;
+and when the lamp hummed slowly and oilily to extinction he still sat
+on, till at last the fire perished and from complete darkness he roused
+himself and went to bed.</p>
+
+<p>Guy was under the cloud of a reaction when he rang the Rectory bell on
+the morning after. The door looked less amicable, and the dragon-headed
+knocker stared balefully while he was waiting to be let in. He wondered
+for whom of the family he ought to ask, but Mrs. Grey came nervously
+into the hall and invited him into the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline has gone over to Fairfield," she began in jerky sentences.
+"Charming ... yes, charming, you came this morning."</p>
+
+<p>The sun had not yet reached the oriel of the drawing-room, that with
+shadows and fragrance was welcoming Guy where he sat in a winged
+armchair beside the fire. Time was seeming to celebrate the
+momentousness of his visit by standing still as in a picture, and he
+knew that every word and every gesture of Mrs. Grey would in his memory
+rest always enambered. He was glad, and yet in the captivating quiet a
+little sorry, that she began to speak at once:</p>
+
+<p>"Of course Pauline told me about yesterday. And of course I would sooner
+she were in love with a man she loved than with a man who had a great
+deal of money. But of course you mustn't be engaged at once. At least
+you can be engaged; you are engaged. Oh, yes, of course, if you weren't
+engaged, I shouldn't allow you to see each other,<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a> and you shall see
+each other occasionally. Francis has not said anything. The Rector will
+probably be rather doubtful. Of course I told him; only he happened to
+be very busy about something in the garden. But he would want Pauline to
+be happy. Of course she is my favourite&mdash;at least I should not say that.
+I love all my daughters, but Pauline is&mdash;well, she has the most
+beautiful nature in the world. My darling Pauline!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grey's eyes were wet, and Guy was so full of affectionate gratitude
+that it was only by blinking very hard at a small picture of Pauline
+hanging beside the mantelpiece he was able to keep his own dry.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a nicer picture than that, which I will give you," Mrs. Grey
+promised. "The one that I am fondest of, the one I keep beside my bed.
+Perhaps you would like a picture of her when she was seventeen? She's
+just the same now, and really I think she'll always be the same."</p>
+
+<p>"You are too good to me, Mrs. Grey," he sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"We are all so fond of you ... even the Rector, though he is not likely
+to show it. Pauline is perhaps more like me. Her impulsiveness comes
+from me."</p>
+
+<p>"Ought I to talk to the Rector about our engagement?" Guy asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, no ... it would disturb him, and I don't think he'll admit that
+you are engaged. In fact he said something about children: but I would
+rather ... at least, of course, you are children. But Margaret says you
+can't be quite a child or you would not be in love with Pauline. And now
+if you go along the Fairfield road, you'll meet her. But that is only an
+exception. Not often. I think to-day she might be disappointed if you
+didn't meet her. And come to lunch, of course. Poetry is a little
+precarious, but at any rate for the present we needn't talk about the
+future. I wish your mother were still alive. I think she would have
+loved Pauline."<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a></p>
+
+<p>"She would have adored her," said Guy fervently.</p>
+
+<p>"And your father? Of course you'll bring him to tea, when he comes to
+stay with you. That will be charming ... yes, charming. Now hurry, or
+you'll miss her."</p>
+
+<p>Guy had no words to tell Mrs. Grey of the devotion she had inspired; but
+all the way down the Fairfield road he blessed her and hoped that
+somehow the benediction would make itself manifest. Then, far away,
+coming over the brow of a hill he saw Pauline. It was one of those hills
+with a suggestion of the sea behind them, so sharply are they cut
+against the sky. This was one of those hills that in childhood had
+thrilled him with promise of the faintly imaginable; and even now he
+always approached such a hill with a dream and surmise of new beauty.
+Yet more wonderful than any dream was the reality of Pauline coming
+towards him over the glistening road. She was shy when he met her, and
+the answers she gave to his eager questions were so softly spoken that
+Guy was half afraid of having exacted too much from her yesterday. Did
+she regret already the untroublous time before she knew him? Yet it was
+better that she should walk beside him in still unbroken enchantment,
+that the declaration of his love should not have damaged the wings
+seeming always unfolded for flight from earth: so would he wish to keep
+her always, that never this Psyche should be made a prisoner by him. The
+elusive quality of Pauline which was shared in a slighter degree by her
+sisters kept him eternally breathless, for she was immaterial as a cloud
+that flushes for an instant far away from the sunset. And yet she was
+made with too much of earth's simple beauty to be compared with clouds.
+Her sisters had the ghostly serenity and remoteness that might more
+appropriately be called elusive. Pauline gave more the effect of an
+earthly thing that transcends by the perfection of its substance even
+spirit; and rather was she seeming, though poised for airy regions,
+still sweetly content with earth.<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a> She had not been more elusive than
+eglantine overarching a deep lane at Midsummer, for he had pulled down
+the spray, and it was the fear of a petal falling too soon from the
+tremulous flowers that gave him this sense of awe as he walked beside
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Yet once again Guy found his comparisons poor enough when he looked at
+Pauline, and he exclaimed despairingly:</p>
+
+<p>"There <i>are</i> no words for you. I wanted to say to your mother what I
+thought about you. Oh, she was so charming."</p>
+
+<p>"She is a darling," said Pauline. "And so is Father."</p>
+
+<p>They were come to the stile where he and Margaret had watched their
+footprints on the snow.</p>
+
+<p>"And Margaret was very sympathetic, you know," he went on. "Really, if
+it hadn't been for her, I should never have dared to tell you I loved
+you. We talked about her and Richard...."</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret does love him. She does," Pauline declared. "Only she will ask
+herself questions all the time."</p>
+
+<p>How she changed when she was speaking of Richard, thought Guy a little
+jealously. Why could she not say out clearly like that her love for him?</p>
+
+<p>"You do love me this morning?" he asked. She was standing on the step of
+the stile, and he offered his hand to help her down. "Won't you say 'I
+love you'?"</p>
+
+<p>But only with her eyes could she tell him, and as, her finger-tips on
+his, she jumped from the step, she was imponderable as the blush upon
+her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"In the summer," said Guy, "you and I will be on the river together.
+Will you be shy when Summer comes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Monica says I'm not nearly shy enough."</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth does Monica expect?"</p>
+
+<p>They were under the trees of Wychford Abbey, and Guy told her of the
+days he had spent here, thinking of her and of the hopelessness of her
+loving him.<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I could not imagine you would love me. Why do you?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"One day we'll explore the inside of the house together, shall we?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, I hate that place. Oh, no, Guy, we'll never go there. Come
+quickly, I hate that house. Margaret loves it and says I'm morbid to be
+afraid. But I shudder when I see it."</p>
+
+<p>They hurried through the dark plantation; and Guy under the influence of
+Pauline's positive terror felt strangely as if, were he to look behind,
+he would behold the house leering at them sardonically.</p>
+
+<p>People too eyed them, as they went down High Street and turned into
+Rectory Lane. Guy had a sensation of all the inhabitants hurrying from
+their business in the depths of their old houses to peer through the
+casements at Pauline and him; and he was glad when they reached the
+Rectory drive and escaped the silent commentary.</p>
+
+<p>When she was at home again Pauline's spirits rose amazingly; and all
+through lunch she was so excited, that her mother and sisters were
+continually repressing her noisiness. Guy on the contrary felt woefully
+self-conscious and was wondering all the while with how deep a dislike
+the Rector was regarding him and if after lunch he would not call him
+aside and solemnly expel him from the house. As they got up from the
+table, the Rector asked if Guy were doing anything particular that
+afternoon and on receiving an assurance that he was not, the Rector
+asked if he would help with the sweet-peas that still wanted sorting.
+Guy in a bodeful gloom said he would be delighted.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be in the garden at two," said the Rector.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I come as well and help?" Pauline offered.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I want you to take some things into the town for me," said the
+Rector.<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a></p>
+
+<p>Guy's heart sank at this confirmation of his fears. Out in the hall
+Margaret took him aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, are you happy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret, you've been beyond words good to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Always be happy," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Even Monica whispered to him that he was lucky, and Guy was so deeply
+impressed at being whispered to by Monica that it gave him a little
+courage for his interview. He joined the Rector in the garden punctually
+at two, and worked hard with labels and classifications.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>A7,</i>" the Rector read out. "<i>A lavender twice as big as Lady Grizel
+Hamilton.</i> <i>D21</i>. <i>An orange that will not burn.</i> Humph! I don't believe
+it. Do you believe that, Birdwood?"</p>
+
+<p>The gardener shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"There never was an orange as didn't burn like a house on fire the
+moment the sun set eyes on it."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it'll burn, and anyhow there's no such thing as an orange
+sweet-pea. If there is, it's Henry Eckford."</p>
+
+<p>"Henry isn't orange," said Birdwood. "Leastways not an orange like you
+get at Christmas."</p>
+
+<p>"More buff?"</p>
+
+<p>"Buff as he can be," said Birdwood. "What do you think, Mr. Hazlenut?"
+he went on, turning to Guy and winking very hard.</p>
+
+<p>"I really don't know him ... it...." said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>O5,</i>" the Rector began again. "<i>A cream and rose picotee Spenser.</i>
+Yes, I daresay," he commented. "And with about as much smell as
+distilled water."</p>
+
+<p>So the business went on, with Guy on tenterhooks all the while for his
+own summing-up by the Rector. He thought the moment was arrived when
+Birdwood was sent off on an errand and when the Rector getting up from
+his kneeler began to shake the trowel at him impressively. But all he
+said was:<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Tingitana's plumping up magnificently. And we'll have some flowers in
+three weeks&mdash;the first I shall have had since the Diamond Jubilee. Sun!
+Sun!"</p>
+
+<p>Guy jumped at the apostrophe, so nearly did it approximate to
+'son-in-law.' But of this relation nothing was said, and now Pauline was
+calling out that tea was ready.</p>
+
+<p>"Go in, my dear fellow," said the Rector. "I've still a few things to do
+in the garden. By the way was your father at Trinity, Oxford?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, he was at Exeter."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, then, I didn't know him. I knew a Hazlewood at Trinity."</p>
+
+<p>The Rector turned away to business elsewhere, and Guy was left to puzzle
+over his casual allusion. Perhaps he ought to have raised the subject of
+being in love with Pauline, for which purpose the Rector may have given
+him an opening. Or did this enquiry about his father portend a letter to
+him from the Rector about his son's prospects? He certainly ought to
+have said something to make the Rector realize how much tact would be
+necessary in approaching his father. Pauline called again from the
+nursery window, and Guy hurried off to join the rest of the family at
+tea.</p>
+
+<p>In the drawing-room Mrs. Grey, Monica and Margaret all seemed anxious to
+show their pleasure in Pauline's happiness; and Guy in the assurance
+this old house gave him of a smooth course for his love ceased to worry
+any longer about parental problems and was content to live in the merry
+and intimate present. He realized how far he was advanced in his
+relation to the family when Brydone, the doctor's son, came in to call.
+Guy took a malicious delight in his stilted talk, as for half-an-hour he
+tried to explain to Monica, a grave and abstracted listener, how the
+pike would in March go up the ditches and the shallow backwaters and
+what great sport it was to snare them with a copper noose suspended from
+a long pole.<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a> There was, too, that triumphant moment he had long
+desired, when Brydone, rising to take his leave, asked if Guy were
+coming and when he was able to reply casually that he was not coming
+just yet.</p>
+
+<p>After tea Guy and Pauline, as if by an impulse that occurred to both of
+them simultaneously, begged Margaret to come and talk in the nursery.
+She seemed pleased that they wanted her; and the three of them spent the
+time till dinner in looking at the old familiar things of childhood; at
+photographs of Monica and Margaret and Pauline in short frocks; at
+tattered volumes scrawled in by the fingers of little girls.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I'd known you when you were small," sighed Guy. "How wasted all
+these years seem."</p>
+
+<p>The gong went suddenly, and Margaret said that of course to-night he
+would stay to dinner.</p>
+
+<p>So once again he was staying to dinner and now on such terms as would
+make this an occasion difficult to forget. As he waited alone in the
+lamplit nursery, while Margaret and Pauline were dressing, he kissed
+Pauline in each faded picture stuck in those gay scrap-books of Varese.
+Nor did he feel the least ashamed of himself, although at Oxford his
+cynicism had been the admiration even of Balliol, where there had been
+no one like him for tearing sentiment into dishonoured rags. When the
+Rector came in to dinner, carrying with him a dusty botanical folio that
+swept all the glass and silver from his end of the table to huddle in
+the centre, Guy tried to make out if he were very much depressed by his
+not having yet gone home.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me," said the Rector. "I was sure I had seen it in here."</p>
+
+<p>"Seen what, Francis?" asked his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"A plant you wouldn't know. A Cilician crocus."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't Father sweet?" said Pauline. "Because of course Mother never
+knows any plant."<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a></p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense, Pauline. Of course I know a crocus."</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of dinner Mrs. Grey said rather nervously:</p>
+
+<p>"Francis dear, wouldn't you like to drink Pauline's health?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, with pleasure," said the Rector. "Though she looks very well."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline jumped in her chair with delight at this, but Mrs. Grey waved
+her into silence and said:</p>
+
+<p>"And Guy's health too?"</p>
+
+<p>The Rector courteously saluted him; but the guest feared there was an
+undernote of irony in the bow.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner when Monica, Margaret and Pauline were preparing for a
+trio, Mrs. Grey said confidentially to Guy:</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't expect Francis&mdash;the Rector to realize at once that you and
+Pauline are engaged. And of course it isn't exactly an engagement yet.
+You mustn't see her too often. You're both so young. Indeed, as Francis
+said, children really."</p>
+
+<p>Then the trio began, and Guy in the tall Caroline chair lived every note
+that Pauline played on her violin, demanding of himself what he had done
+to deserve her love. He looked round once at Mrs. Grey in the other
+chair, and marked her beating time while like his own her thoughts were
+all for Pauline. In the heart of that music Guy was able to say anything
+and he could not resist leaning over and whispering to Mrs. Grey:</p>
+
+<p>"I adore her."</p>
+
+<p>"So do I," said the mother, breaking not a bar in her beat and gazing
+with soft eyes at that beloved player.</p>
+
+<p>When the music stopped, Guy felt a little embarrassed by the remembrance
+of his unreserved avowal; yet evidently it had seemed natural to Mrs.
+Grey, for when he was saying good-bye in the hall, she whispered to
+Pauline that she<a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a> could walk with Guy a short way along the drive. His
+heart leapt to the knowledge that here at last was the final sanction of
+his love for her. Pauline flung round her shoulders that white frieze
+coat in which he had first beheld her under the moon, misty, autumnal, a
+dream within a dream; and now they were actually walking together. He
+touched her arm half-timidly, as if even so light a gesture could
+destroy this moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, Pauline!"</p>
+
+<p>He saw her clear eyes in the February starshine and folding her close he
+kissed her mouth. When he woke, he was at home; and for hours he sat
+entranced, knowing that never again for as long as he lived would he
+feel upon his lips as now the freshness of Pauline's first kiss.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of that February went by with lengthening eves that died on the
+dusky riot of blackbirds in the rhododendrons. Here and there in mossy
+corners primroses were come too soon, seeming all aghast and wan to
+behold themselves out of the cloistral earth, while the buds of the
+daffodils were still upright and would not hang their heads till driven
+by the wooing of the windy March sun.</p>
+
+<p>The grey-eyed virginal month, that is of no season and must as often
+bear the malice of Winter's retreat as the ruffianly onset of Spring,
+had now that very seriousness which suited Guy's troth.</p>
+
+<p>Rules had been made with which neither he nor Pauline were discontented,
+and so through all that February Guy went twice a week to the Rectory
+and counted himself rich in Mrs. Grey's promise that he and Pauline
+should sometimes be allowed, when the season was full-fledged, to go for
+walks together. At present, however, the Rectory garden must be a
+territory large enough for their love.</p>
+
+<p>These first encounters were endowed with perhaps not much more than the
+excitement of what were in a way<a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a> superficial observations, since
+neither of them was yet attempting to sound any deeps in the other's
+character. Guy was engaged with driving a wedge into that past of the
+Rectory whose least events he now envied, and he was never tired of the
+talks about Pauline's childhood, so much of a fairy-tale she still
+seemed and fit for endless repetition. And if Guy was never tired of
+being told, her family was never tired of telling. Never, he thought,
+was lover so fortunate in an audience as he in the willingness with
+which he was accorded a confirmation of all his praises. Sometimes,
+indeed, he had to look reproachfully at Monica or Margaret when Pauline
+seemed hurt at being checked for some piece of demonstrativeness. If he
+did so, the sisters would always take an opportunity to draw him aside
+and explain that it was only Pauline's perfection which made them so
+anxious for its security. Indeed they guarded her perpetually and with
+such a high sense of the privilege of wardship that Guy always had to
+forgive them at once. Moreover, he was so conscious of their magnanimity
+in considering him as a lover that he was almost afraid to claim his
+right.</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret," he said one day. "I don't know how you can bear to
+contemplate Pauline married. Why, when I think of myself, I'm simply
+dumb before the&mdash;what word is there&mdash;audacity is much too pale and, oh,
+what word is there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I could contemplate her married to anybody but you," said
+Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>"But why me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, because you are young enough to make love beautiful and right,"
+Margaret told him. "And yet you seem old enough to realize Pauline's
+exquisite nature. So that one isn't afraid of her being squandered for a
+young man's experience."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm not rich," said Guy, deliberately leading Margaret<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a> on to
+discuss for the hundredth time this topic of himself and Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline wouldn't be happy with riches. They would oppress her. She
+isn't luxurious like me."</p>
+
+<p>So round and round, backward and forward, on and on the debate would go,
+until Margaret had arranged for Guy and Pauline a life so idyllic that
+Shelley would scarcely have found a flaw in her conception.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline, however demonstrative in the presence of her family, was still
+shy when she was alone with her lover. Her mirth was turned to a
+whisper, and her greatest eloquence was a speech of drooping silences
+and of blushes rising and falling. Guy never tired of watching these
+flowery motions that were the response of her cheeks to his love. Each
+word he murmured was a wind to stir her countenance or ruffle her eyes,
+so that they too responded with cloudy deeps and shadows and sudden
+veilings.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing more was mentioned of the practical side of the engagement, for
+Mrs. Grey, Monica and Margaret were all too delightfully enthralled with
+the progress of an idyll that was to each of them her own secret poem of
+Pauline in love; while as for the Rector he remained outwardly oblivious
+of the whole matter.</p>
+
+<p>March came crashing into this peace without disturbing the simple
+pattern into which the existence of Guy and Pauline had now resolved
+itself&mdash;a pattern, moreover, that belonged to Pauline's mother and
+sisters for their own pleasure in embroidery, so that the lovers were,
+as it might be, carried about from room to room. Sometimes indeed, when
+Guy came to the Rectory, there was a pretence of leaving him and Pauline
+alone; but mostly they were in the company of the others, and Guy was
+now as deep in the family life as if he were a son of the house. Since
+he and Pauline never went for walks together, perhaps Wychford
+speculation had died down&mdash;at any rate there was no<a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a> gossip to disturb
+Mrs. Grey; although, as she had by now given up the theory of a sort of
+engagement, yet without consenting to anything in the shape of a final
+announcement, it might not have mattered much.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, it began to dawn on Guy that the time was coming when he
+would have to make up his mind to do something definite, and on these
+bleak mornings of early March, as he watched the scanty snowflakes
+withering against the panes, he asked himself if there was any
+justification for staying on at Plashers Mead in the new circumstances
+of his life there. At night, however, when the wind piped and whistled
+round the house, he used to dream upon the firelight and shrink from the
+idea of abandoning all that Plashers Mead had stood for and all that now
+still more it must stand for in the future. If only a plan could be
+devised by which the house were secured against sacrilege; and
+half-fantastically he began to imagine a monastic academy for poets, of
+which he would be Warden. Perhaps Michael Fane would like this idea, and
+since he had money he might come forward with an offer of endowment.
+Then he and Pauline could be married; for £150 a year would be an ample
+income, if there were no rent to pay and no wages. He of course would
+earn his living as superintendent of the academic discipline; and
+really, as he dreamed over his plan, such an establishment would be an
+admirable corollary to Oxford. It might gain even a sort of official
+recognition from the University. Plainly some sort of institution was
+wanted where in these commercial days young writers could retreat to
+learn their craft less suicidally than by journalism. What should he
+call his academy? With marriage as the reason for inventing this economy
+he could hardly give it too monastic a complexion. The louder the wind
+beat against the house, the more feasibly in the lamplit quiet within
+did the scheme present itself; and Michael Fane, who was always
+searching for an object in life, would<a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a> be the very person to involve in
+the materialization. He would say nothing to anybody else; not even
+would he mention the idea to Pauline herself. These sanguine dreams
+occupied his evenings prosperously enough, while March swept past with
+searing winds from Muscovy that skimmed the rich earth of the
+ploughlands with a dusty pallor, tarnished the daffodils and seemed to
+crack the very bird-song. Guy, however, with every day either a day
+nearer to seeing Pauline again or the day itself, did not care about the
+wind that blew, and he was as happy walking on the uplands as the
+spindleshanked hares that sported among the turfy mounds.</p>
+
+<p>Later, the shrilling wind from the East surrendered to the booming of
+the equinox. Louder than before the weather beat against Guy's house
+from the opposite quarter. Chimneys groaned like broken horns, and after
+a desperate gale even deaf Miss Peasey complained that she had heard the
+wind once or twice in the night and that her bedroom had seemed a bit
+draughty. Guy discovered that several tiles had been blown from the
+roof, so that through the lath and plaster above her head there was a
+sound of demoniac fife-playing. Then the wind dropped: the rain poured
+down: but at last on Lady Day morning Guy woke up to see a rich sky
+between white magnificent clouds, a gentle breeze, and a letter from his
+father.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">Fox Hall,&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+Galton,&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+Hants.&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+<i>March 24.</i></p>
+
+<p class="nind"><i>Dear Guy</i>,</p>
+
+<p><i>I send you this with the third instalment of the £150. Please let
+me have a prompter acknowledgement than last time when, I remember,
+you kept me waiting nearly three weeks. I<a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a> am glad to have news of
+successful experiments in verse-making, but I should be much more
+glad to hear that you had made up your mind to make them as an
+accessory to a regular profession. You will notice that I do not
+attempt to influence your choice in this matter, and so I hope you
+will not retort with invidious comparisons between literature and
+the teaching of small boys.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>No, I do not remember a man called Grey in my time at Oxford, but I
+do remember a man of the same name as ours at Trinity. He came to
+grief, I believe, later on. You must assure your friend that this
+was not myself. I am glad you find the Rector and his wife such
+pleasant people. Have they any children? I wish I could say as much
+for the new Vicar of Galton, who is a pompous nincompoop and has
+introduced a lot of this High Church frippery which so annoys some
+of the parents. Your friend is lucky to be able to afford so much
+leisure for gardening. I am of course far too busy to think about
+anything like that except in the summer holidays, when flowers
+would scarcely give me the change of air I want. This year I hope
+to come and see you for a week or two, and we shall be able to
+discuss the future. Don't work too hard and please oblige me by
+acknowledging the enclosed cheque.</i></p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Your affectionate father&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+John Hazlewood.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Guy went out in the orchard to meditate upon the advisableness of
+telling his father at once about Pauline. If he were coming to stay here
+next August, he ought to know beforehand, for it would be horrid to have
+the atmosphere of Plashers Mead ruined by acrimonious argument. August,
+however, was still a long way off, and now there was going to be fine
+weather for a while, which must not be spoilt. Besides, perhaps in the
+end his father would not come, and anyway himself would be having to
+decide presently upon a more definite step. He would tell Pauline,<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a> when
+he saw her to-morrow, that he ought to go up to London and get some
+journalistic work so as to bring the time of their marriage nearer. Or
+should he wait until he had sounded Michael about that academy? Plashers
+Mead enlarged itself for Guy's vision until the orchard was a quadrangle
+framed with grey cloisters, along which Parnassian aspirants walked in
+meditation. Would any of them be married except himself and Pauline? On
+the whole he decided that they would not, though of course, if Michael
+were to find the capital he must be allowed to marry. How the Balliol
+people would laugh at these fantastic plans, thought Guy, and he stopped
+for a moment from the architectonics of his academy to laugh at himself.
+Certainly it would be better not to publish his plans even to Pauline
+until they showed a hint of conceivable maturity. Guy fell back into the
+comfort of spacious dreams, wandering up and down the orchard; and round
+about him the starlings pranked in metallic plumage of green and bronze
+quarrelled over the holes in the apple-trees they coveted for their
+nests.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Guy heard his name called and looking up he saw across the
+mill-stream Margaret and Pauline standing in the churchyard.</p>
+
+<p>"We've been to church," said Pauline. "And a dead bat fell down nearly
+on to Father's head when he was giving the Blessing. So he and the
+sacristan have gone up in the tower to see what can be done about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I come and help?" Guy suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't be able to do any more than they will," said Margaret
+laughing. "But if you want to come and help, you'd better. Hasn't your
+canoe arrived yet?"</p>
+
+<p>Guy shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"It's such a glorious morning that I could almost swim the river," he
+declared.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Margaret, don't let him," Pauline exclaimed.<a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a></p>
+
+<p>Guy said he would be in the churchyard before they were back in Rectory
+Lane to meet him, and with Bob barking at his heels he ran at full speed
+through the orchard, through the garden, over the bridge and down
+Rectory Lane just as the two girls reached the lych-gate. They all went
+into the big church, even Bob, though he slunk at their heels as
+modestly as might the Devil. High up over the chancel they could see the
+Rector and the shiny-pated sacristan leaning from the windows of the
+bell-ringers' chamber and scratching with wands at some blind arches
+where bats might most improbably lurk.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go to the top of the tower," Guy proposed.</p>
+
+<p>"Father isn't on the top of the tower," said Margaret. "But you go up
+with Pauline. I'll wait for you."</p>
+
+<p>So Guy and Pauline went through a low door beaked by Normans centuries
+ago, and climbed the stone stairs until they reached the bell-ringers'
+chamber where they paused to greet the Rector, who waved a vague arm in
+greeting. The stairs grew more narrow and musty as they went higher; but
+all the way at intervals there were deep slits in the walls, framing
+thin pictures of the outspread country below the tower. Still up they
+went past the bell-ropes, past the great bells themselves that hung like
+a cluster of mighty fruit, until finally they came out through a small
+turret to meet the March sky. The spire, that rose as high again as they
+had already come, occupied nearly all the space and left only a yard of
+leaded roof on which to walk; but even so, up here where the breeze blew
+strongly, they seemed to stand in the very course of the clouds with the
+world at their feet. Northward they looked across the brown mill-stream;
+across Guy's green orchard; across the flashing tributary beyond; across
+the meadows, to where the Shipcot road climbed the side of the wold.
+Westward they looked to Plashers Mead and Miss Peasey flapping a
+table-cloth; to Guy's mazy garden and the grey<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> wall under the limes;
+and farther to the tree-tops of Wychford Abbey; to the twining waters of
+the valley and the rounded hills. Southward they looked to Wychford town
+in tier on tier of shining roofs; and above the translucent smoke to
+where the telegraph-poles of the long highway went rocketing into
+Gloucestershire. And lastly Eastward they looked through a flight of
+snowy pigeons to the Rectory asleep in gardens that already were painted
+with the simple flowers of Spring.</p>
+
+<p>Guy took Pauline's hand where it rested on the parapet.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, Spring is here," he said. "And this is our world that you and
+I are looking at to-day."<a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>April</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">P</span>AULINE in the happiness which had come to her lately had forgotten Miss
+Verney; and when one morning she met that solitary spinster, whose pale
+and watery eyes were uttering such reproach, she promised impulsively to
+come to tea that very afternoon and bring with her a friend.</p>
+
+<p>"You've certainly quite deserted me lately," said Miss Verney in that
+wavering falsetto of hers through which the echoes maybe of a once
+admired soprano could still be distinctly heard.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I've been so busy, Miss Verney."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I daresay. Well, I used to be busy once myself. Here's lovely
+weather for the first of April. Quite a treat to be out of doors. Now,
+don't make an April fool of your poor old Miss Verney by forgetting to
+come this afternoon. Who's the friend you are anxious to bring?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Hazlewood. He's living at Plashers Mead, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, a gentleman? Then he won't enjoy coming to see me."</p>
+
+<p>"But he will, Miss Verney, because he writes poetry, and you know you
+told me once that you used to write poetry."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well, dear me, that's a secret I should never have let out. Well,
+good-bye, my dear, and pray don't forget to come, for I shall be having
+cakes, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Verney, whose unhappy love-affair in a dim past had been Pauline's
+cherished secret since the afternoon of her seventeenth birthday, bowed
+with much dignity; and Pauline, lest she should offend her again, had to
+turn round<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a> several times to smile and wave farewells before Miss Verney
+disappeared into the confectioner's shop.</p>
+
+<p>When she got home, Pauline asked her mother if she thought it mattered
+taking Guy to tea with Miss Verney.</p>
+
+<p>"Because, of course, she's sure to guess that we're engaged."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear child, you're not really engaged, at least not publicly.
+You must remember that."</p>
+
+<p>"But I could tell Miss Verney as a great secret. And I know she won't
+tell anyone because once she told me a great secret about herself.
+Besides, she's gone to buy cakes for tea, and if I don't take Guy she'll
+be so dreadfully disappointed."</p>
+
+<p>"Why can't you take Guy without saying anything about being engaged?"
+asked Mrs. Grey.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, because Miss Verney is so frightfully sharp, especially in matters
+of love. I think you don't like her much, Mother darling, but really,
+you know, she <i>is</i> sympathetic."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grey looked hopelessly round for advice, but as neither Margaret
+nor Monica were in the room, she had to give way to Pauline's entreaty,
+and the leave was granted.</p>
+
+<p>When Guy arrived at the Rectory about three o'clock, he seemed delighted
+at the notion of going out to tea with Pauline, though he looked a
+little doubtfully at the others, as if he wondered at the permission's
+being accorded. However, they set out in an atmosphere of good-will, and
+Pauline was happy to have him beside her walking up Wychford High
+Street. Miss Verney's house was at the very top of the hill, which meant
+that the eyes of the whole population had to be encountered before they
+reached it. They could see Miss Verney watching for them, as they walked
+across the slip of grass that with white posts and a festoon of white
+chains warded off general traffic. The moment they reached the gate, her
+head vanished from the window; and<a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a> they had scarcely rung the bell,
+when the maid had opened the door. And they were scarcely inside the
+hall, when Miss Verney came grandly out of the drawing-room (which was
+not the front room) to greet them.</p>
+
+<p>"How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Miss Grey will have told you that I rarely
+have visitors. And therefore this is a great pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline threw sparkling blue glances at Guy for the Miss Grey, while
+they followed her into the drawing-room full of cats and ornaments. The
+cats all marched round Guy in a sort of solemn quadrille, so that what
+with the embarrassment they caused to his legs and the difficulty that
+the rest of him found with the ornaments, Pauline really had to lead him
+safely to a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you been long in Wychford, Mr. Hazlewood?" enquired Miss Verney.
+"I fear you'll find the valley very damp. We who live at the top of the
+hill consider the air up here so much more bracing. But then, you see,
+my father was a sailor."</p>
+
+<p>So the conversation progressed, conversation that was cut as thinly and
+nicely as the lozenges of bread and butter, fragments of which on
+various parts of the rug the cats were eating with that apparent
+difficulty cats always find in mastication.</p>
+
+<p>"I sadly spoil my pets," said Miss Verney. "For really, you see, they
+are my best friends, as I always say to people who look surprized at my
+indulgence of them.... Would you mind telling Bellerophon he's left a
+piece of butter just by your foot, that you might otherwise tread into
+the carpet. You'll forgive my fussiness, but then, you see, my father
+was a sailor."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline was longing to know what Miss Verney thought of Guy, and
+presently when tea was over she suggested that he should be shown the
+garden, the green oblong of which looked so inviting from the low
+windows.<a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, the garden," said Miss Verney. "Rather early in the year,
+don't you think, for the garden? My shoes. For though my father was a
+sailor, I do not, alas, inherit his constitution. I really think,
+Pauline, we must wait for the garden. But perhaps Mr. Hazlewood would
+care...."</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, you must see the garden," Pauline declared.</p>
+
+<p>So Guy rose and, having listened to Miss Verney's instructions about the
+key in the garden-door, went out followed by several cats. A moment
+later they saw him still with two cats in attendance bending with an
+appearance of profound interest over the narrow flower-beds that fringed
+the grass.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare that Pegasus and dear Bellerophon have taken quite a fancy to
+him. Most remarkable and gratifying," said Miss Verney, watching from
+the window through which the western sun flaming upon her thin hair
+kindled a few golden strands from the ashes that seemed before entirely
+to have quenched them.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Verney, can you keep a secret?" asked Pauline breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, you forget my father was a sailor," replied Miss Verney
+supporting with each arm a martial elbow.</p>
+
+<p>"He and I are engaged," Pauline whispered through a blush.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, you amaze me," the old maid exclaimed. "My dear child, I hope
+you'll let me wish you happiness." She came to Pauline and kissed with
+cold lips her cheek. "You have always been so kind and considerate to
+me. Yes, I am sure, without irreverence I can say you have been to me as
+welcome as the sun. I pray that you will always be happy. Ah, the dear
+fellow," exclaimed Miss Verney, looking with the utmost affection to
+where Guy was now completing the circuit of her borders. "The dear
+fellow, how droll he must have thought it when I referred to you as Miss
+Grey. Though to this flinging about of Christian names without<a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a> regard
+for the sacredness of real intimacy, which is so common nowadays, I
+shall never submit."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Verney tapped upon the window to summon Guy within again. When he
+was back in the drawing-room, she fluttered toward him and took his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Mr. Hazlewood, for my father having been a sailor I must always
+be rather blunter than most people, I have to congratulate you. This
+dear child! My greatest friend in Wychford, and indeed really, so
+scattered now are all the people I have known, I might almost say, my
+greatest friend anywhere! You are a most enviable young man. But the
+secret is safe with me. No one shall know."</p>
+
+<p>"I had to tell Miss Verney," Pauline explained.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm delighted for Miss Verney to know," said Guy. "I only wish the time
+were come when everybody could know."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Verney was in a state of the greatest excitement, and made so many
+references to her nautical paternity that Pauline half expected her to
+hitch up her skirt and dance a triumphant hornpipe in the middle of the
+cats' slow waltzing.</p>
+
+<p>"This dear child," Miss Verney went on, clasping rapturous hands. "I
+have known her since she was twelve. The dearest little thing! I really
+wish you had known her; you would have fallen in love with her then, I
+do declare." And Miss Verney laughed in a high treble at her joke.
+"Lately I have been rather worried because I had an idea I was being
+deserted. But now I understand the reason. Oh, the secret is perfectly
+safe. In me you have a true sympathizer. Pauline will tell you that with
+the people she loves, there is no one so sympathetic as I am." Suddenly
+Miss Verney stopped and looked very suspicious. "You're not making an
+April fool of me?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Verney!" Pauline gasped. "How could you think I would joke about
+love?"<a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a></p>
+
+<p>The old maid's forehead cleared.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you wouldn't, my dear, but really this morning I have been so
+pestered by some of the boys ringing the bell and saying my chimney is
+on fire that ... ah, but, I am ashamed of myself. You must forgive me,
+Pauline. And is it not the thing to drink the health of lovers? There is
+a bottle of sherry, I feel sure. I brought several bottles that were
+left from my father's cellar, when I first came to Wychford eight years
+ago, and they have not all been drunk yet."</p>
+
+<p>She rang the bell, and when the maid came in said:</p>
+
+<p>"Mabel, if you take my keys and open the store-cupboard, you will find
+some bottles of wine on the top shelf. Pray open one, and having
+carefully decanted it, bring it as carefully in with three glasses on
+the silver tray."</p>
+
+<p>Mabel naturally looked very much astonished at this order, and while she
+was gone Miss Verney thought one after another of all the reasons that
+Mabel could possibly ascribe to her request for wine.</p>
+
+<p>"But she will never guess the real one," said Miss Verney.</p>
+
+<p>The wine was brought in and poured out. Miss Verney coughed a great deal
+over her glass, and two small pink spots appeared on her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure," she said, "that when my dear father brought this wine back
+from Portugal, he would have been happy to know that some of it would be
+drunk to the health of two young people in love. For he was, if I may
+say so without impropriety, a great lady's man."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline and Guy drank Miss Verney's health in turn and thanked her for
+the good omens she had wished for their love.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Pauline," said Miss Verney. "Do you think? I wonder if I dare.
+You know what I mean? Do you think I could show it to Mr. Hazlewood?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean the miniature?" whispered Pauline.<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a></p>
+
+<p>Miss Verney nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do, Miss Verney, do! Guy would so appreciate it," Pauline declared.</p>
+
+<p>The old maid went to her bureau and from a small locked drawer took out
+a leather case which she handed to Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"The spring is broken. It opens very easily," she said in a gentle
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline forgot her shyness of Guy and leant over his shoulder, while he
+looked at the picture of a young man rosy with that too blooming youth
+which miniatures always portray.</p>
+
+<p>"We were engaged to be married," said Miss Verney. "But circumstances
+alter cases; and we were never married."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline looked down at Guy with tears in her eyes and felt miserable to
+be so happy when poor Miss Verney had been so sad.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you very much for showing me that," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>Soon it was time to say good-bye to Miss Verney and, having made many
+promises to come quickly again, they left her and went down the steep
+High Street, where in many of the windows of the houses there were
+hyacinths and on the old walls plum-trees in bloom.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline," said Guy. "Let's go for a walk to-morrow morning and see if
+the gorse is in bloom on Wychford down. There are so many things I want
+to tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think Mother will let us?"</p>
+
+<p>"If we can go to tea with Miss Verney," said Guy, "we shall be able to
+go for a walk. And I never see you alone in the Rectory."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll ask Mother," said Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>"You want to come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. Of course."</p>
+
+<p>"You see," said Guy. "It's one of the places where I<a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a> nearly told you I
+loved you. And it wouldn't be fair not to tell you there, as soon as I
+can."</p>
+
+<p>In the Rectory everybody was anxious to know how Guy liked Pauline's
+Miss Verney.</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret, you are really unkind to laugh at her," protested Pauline.
+"Guy understands, if you don't, how frightfully sympathetic she is. She
+is one of the people who really understands about being in love."</p>
+
+<p>Margaret laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't I?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed, Margaret, sometimes I don't think you do," said Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I?" asked Monica.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't at all!" Pauline declared.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if it means being like Miss Verney, I hope I never shall," said
+Monica.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, children, children," interrupted Mrs. Grey. "You must not be cross
+with one another."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mother, Margaret and Monica are not to laugh at Miss Verney,"
+Pauline insisted. "And to-morrow Guy and I want as a great exception to
+go for a walk to Wychford down. May we?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as a great exception, yes," said Mrs. Grey; and Guy with
+apparently an access of grateful industry said he must go home and work.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline wondered what Guy would have to tell her to-morrow, and she fell
+asleep that night, hoping she would not be shy to-morrow; for, since Guy
+was still no more to Pauline than the personification of a vague and
+happy love just as Miss Verney's miniature was the personification of
+one that was not happy, she always was a little alarmed when the
+personification became real.</p>
+
+<p>Wychford down seemed to rest on billowy clouds next morning, so light
+was Pauline's heart, so light was the earth on which she walked; and
+when Guy kissed her the larks in<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a> their blue world were not far away, so
+near did she soar upon his kiss to the rays of their glittering plumes.</p>
+
+<p>"Every time I see you," said Guy, "the world seems to offer itself to us
+more completely. I never kissed you before under the sky like this."</p>
+
+<p>She wished he would not say the actual word, for it made her realize
+herself in his arms, and brought back in a flood all her shyness.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's dry enough to sit on this stone," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>So they sat on one of the outcrops of Wychford freestone that all around
+were thrusting themselves up from the grass like old grey animals.</p>
+
+<p>"Now tell me more about Miss Verney," he went on. "Why was her
+love-affair unhappy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she never told me much," said Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>"You and I haven't very long," said Guy. "Love travels by so fast. You
+and I mustn't have secrets."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't any secrets," said Pauline. "I had one about Richard, but you
+know about him. And that was Margaret's secret really. Why do you say
+that, Guy?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking of myself," he answered. "I was thinking how little you
+know about me&mdash;really not much more than you know of Miss Verney's
+miniature."</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, how strange," she said. "Last night I thought that."</p>
+
+<p>Then he began to talk in halting sentences, turned away from her all the
+time and digging his stick deep down in the turf, while Bob looked on
+with anxious curiosity for what these excavations would produce.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, I so adore you that it clouds everything to realize that
+before I loved you, I should have had love-affairs with other girls. Of
+course they meant nothing, but now they make me miserable. Shall I tell
+you about them or shall I ... can I blot them for ever out of my mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't tell me about them, don't tell me about<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a> them," Pauline
+murmured in a low hurried voice. She felt that if Guy said another word
+she would run from him in a wild terror that would never let her rest,
+that would urge her out over the down's edge in desperate descent.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to tell you about them," said Guy. "But, they've stood so
+at the back of my thoughts whenever I have been with you; and yesterday
+at Miss Verney's, I had a sense of guilt as if I were responsible in
+some way for her unhappiness. I had to tell you, Pauline."</p>
+
+<p>She sat silent under the song of the larks that in streams of melodious
+light poured through their wings.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you say nothing?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't let's talk about it any more. Promise me never to talk about
+it. Oh, Guy, why 'of course'? Why 'of course'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course?" he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"'Of course they meant nothing.' That seems so dreadful to me. Perhaps
+you won't understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Pauline, isn't that 'of course' the reason they torment me?" he
+said. "It isn't kind of you to assume anything else."</p>
+
+<p>She forgave him in that instant; and before she knew what she had done
+had put her hand impulsively on his. To the Pauline who made that
+gesture he was no more the unapproachable lover but someone whom she had
+wounded involuntarily.</p>
+
+<p>"My heart of hearts, my adored Pauline."</p>
+
+<p>With a sigh she faded to him: with a sigh the dog sat down by his
+master's neglected stick: with a sigh the April wind stole through the
+thickets of gorse and out over the down. And always more and more
+dauntlessly the larks flung before them their fountainous notes to
+pierce those blue spaces that burned between the clouds. No more was
+said of the past that morning, and with April come they were happy
+sitting up there, although, as Guy said, such weather<a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a> could hardly be
+expected to last. And since this walk was a great exception to the rule
+of their life, they were back at the Rectory very punctually, so that by
+propitiating everybody with good behaviour they might soon demand
+another exception.</p>
+
+<p>That night there recurred to Pauline when she was in her room a sudden
+memory of what Guy had said to her about girls with whom he had had
+love-affairs; and with the stark forms of shadows they made a procession
+across her walls in the candlelight. She wished now she had let Guy tell
+her more, so that she could give distinguishing lineaments of humanity
+to each of these maddening figures. What were they like and why, taken
+unaware, was she set on fire with rage to know them? For a long while
+Pauline tossed sleeplessly on that bed to which usually morning came so
+soon; and even when the candle was put out, she seemed to feel these
+forms of Guy's confession all about her. To-morrow she must see him
+again; she could no longer bear to think of him alone. These shapes that
+from his past vaguely jeered at her were to him endowed, each, with what
+memories. Oh, she could cry out with exasperation even in this silent
+house where she had lived so long unvexed.</p>
+
+<p>"What is happening to me? What is happening to me?" asked Pauline, as
+the darkness drew nearer to her. "Why doesn't Margaret come?"</p>
+
+<p>She jumped out of bed and ran trembling to her sister's room.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, what is it?" asked Margaret starting up.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm frightened, Margaret. I'm frightened. My room seemed full of
+people."</p>
+
+<p>"You goose. What people?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Margaret, I do love you."</p>
+
+<p>She kissed her sister passionately; and Margaret, who was usually so
+lazy, got out of bed and came back with her to her room; where she read
+aloud Alice in Wonderland,<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a> sitting by the bed with her dark hair fallen
+about her slim shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning the impression of the night's alarm remained sharply
+enough with Pauline to make her anxious to see Guy, without waiting for
+the ordained interval to which they should submit; and all that day,
+when he did not come, for the first time she felt definitely the
+clamorous and persistent desire for his company, the absence of which
+the old perfection of her home was no longer able to counteract. For the
+first time in her life the Rectory had a sort of emptiness; and there
+was not a room on this tediously beautiful day, nor any nook in the
+garden, which could calm her with the familiar assurance of home. When
+the time for music came round, that night, it seemed to Pauline not at
+all worth while to play quartets in celebration of a day that had been
+so barren of events.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you want to play?" they asked her in surprize.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should we play?" she countered. "But I'll listen to you, if you
+like."</p>
+
+<p>Of course she was persuaded into taking her part, and never had she been
+so often out of tune and never had her strings snapped so continuously.
+Always until to-night the performance of music had brought to her the
+peaceful irresponsibleness of being herself in a pattern: now this sense
+of design was irritating her with an arduous repression, until at last
+she put down her violin and refused to play any more. Pauline felt that
+the others knew the cause of her ill-temper, but none of them said
+anything about Guy and, with her for audience in one of the Caroline
+chairs, they played trios instead.</p>
+
+<p>Next day when Guy did come, it was wet; and Pauline wished Margaret
+would leave them together, so that they could talk: but Margaret stayed
+all the afternoon in the nursery, and Pauline made up her mind that
+somehow she must go for another walk with Guy.<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a></p>
+
+<p>She found her mother alone in the drawing-room before dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, don't you think, Guy and I might go for a walk to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Pauline, you only went for a walk together the day before
+yesterday. And you really must remember you're not engaged. The Wychford
+people will gossip so, and that will make your father angry."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why can't we be engaged openly?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not yet. Now, please don't ask me. Pauline, I beg you will say no
+more about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I can go to-morrow," said Pauline. "Oh, Mother, you are so sweet
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grey looked rather perplexed and as if she were vainly trying to
+determine what she had said to make Pauline suppose that leave for walks
+had been given. However, she evidently supposed it had; and when next
+Guy came to the Rectory, Pauline whispered to him they could go for a
+walk if they did not have to go through Wychford. She could not
+understand herself when she found it so difficult to tell Guy this
+delightful news, for it was she who had managed it; and yet here she was
+blushing in the revelation.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that Wychford was out of bounds really made their walk more
+magical, for Pauline and Guy went past the lily-pond and the lawn in
+front of the house and slipped through the little wicket in the high
+grey wall, as it were, in the very eye of the nursery-window. They
+dallied for a while in the paddock, peering for fritillary buds; then
+they crossed the rickety bridge to the water-meadows, a territory not
+spied upon, silver-rosed with lady-smocks. To-day they would visit the
+peninsula where under the moon they first had met.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline, as they walked over the meads, no longer had the desire to ask
+Guy more about his tale of old loves. His<a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a> presence beside her had
+rested her fears; and she made up her mind that the disquiet of the
+other evening had been mere fatigue after the excitement of the day.
+This secluded world from which they were now approaching the even
+greater seclusion of their peninsula gave itself all to her and Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"How often have I been here without you," said Guy. "How often have I
+wished you were beside me, and now you are beside me."</p>
+
+<p>They were standing in a wreath of snowy blackthorn, that almost veiled
+even the narrow entrance to this demesne they held in fief of April.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you think about me that night we met?" Guy asked.</p>
+
+<p>And for perhaps the hundredth time she whispered how she had liked him
+very much.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you ask me what I thought about you?"</p>
+
+<p>"What did you?" she whispered again.</p>
+
+<p>"I went to sleep thinking of you," he said. "I did not know your name. I
+loved you then, I think. Pauline, when next September comes, we'll pick
+mushrooms together, shall we? And I shall never gather any mushrooms,
+because I shall always be gathering your hands. And the September
+afterward. Pauline! Shall we be married? Pauline Hazlewood! Say that."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Whisper it."</p>
+
+<p>But she could not, and yet in her heart the foolish names were singing
+together.</p>
+
+<p>"How can I leave you?" Guy demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me?" she echoed.</p>
+
+<p>"I ought. I ought. You see, if I don't, I shall never persuade my father
+that we must be married next year. I must go to London and show that I'm
+in earnest."</p>
+
+<p>"But when will you go?" said Pauline in deep dismay.<a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Is your voice sad?" he asked. "Pauline, don't you want me to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I don't," she replied, turning up to his a face so miserable
+that he held her to him and vowed he would not go.</p>
+
+<p>"My dearest, I only thought it was my duty, but if you will believe in
+me, then let me stay in Wychford. After all, you are young. I am young.
+Why, you won't be twenty till May morning. And I shan't be twenty-three
+till next August. Even if we wait three years to be married, we shall be
+always together, and it won't seem so long."</p>
+
+<p>So with her arm in his Pauline walked on through the lady-smocks,
+thinking that never had anyone a lover so wonderful as this long-legged
+lover beside her.</p>
+
+<p>Holy Week was at hand, and in the variety of functions that Monica
+insisted her father should hold and her family attend Pauline saw little
+of Guy, although he came very often to church, sitting as stiff and
+awkward, she thought, as a brass knight on a tomb. However, it pleased
+her greatly Guy should come to church, since it pleased her family. Yet
+that was least of all the true reason, and Pauline used to send the
+angels that came to visit her down through the church to visit Guy; her
+simple faith glowed with richer illumination when she thought of him in
+church, and while her mother and Monica tried to pull the Wychford choir
+through the notation of Solesmes, and while Margaret knelt apart in
+carved abstraction, Pauline prayed that Guy would all his life wish to
+keep Holy Week with her like this.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline hurried through a shower to church on Easter Morning, and shook
+mingled tears and raindrops from herself when she saw that Guy was come
+to Communion. So then that angel had travelled from her bedside last
+night to hover over Guy and bid him wake early next morning, because it
+was Easter Day. With never so holy a<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a> calm had she knelt in the jewelled
+shadows of that chancel or retired from the altar to find her pew
+imparadised. When the people came out of church the sun was shining, and
+on the trees and on the tombstones a multitude of birds were singing.
+Never had Pauline felt the spirit of Eastertide uplift her with such a
+joy, joy for her lover beside her, joy for Summer close at hand, joy for
+all the joy that Easter could bring to the soul.</p>
+
+<p>There were Easter eggs at breakfast dyed yellow, blue and purple. There
+were new white trumpet daffodils for the Rector to gaze at. There was
+satisfaction for Monica in having defeated for ever Anglican chants, and
+for Margaret a letter from Richard, though, to be sure, she did not seem
+so glad of this as Pauline would have wished. There was all that happy
+scene and a new quartet for her mother; and for Guy and herself there
+was a long walk this afternoon to wherever they wanted to go.</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of the week Monica and Margaret went away on a visit,
+to which they set out with the usual lamentations now redoubled because
+they suddenly realized it was universal holiday time. With her two
+eldest daughters away from the Rectory, Mrs. Grey was no match for
+Pauline; so she and Guy had a week of freedom, wandering over the
+country where they willed.</p>
+
+<p>Wychford down saw them, and the water-meadows of the western valley. The
+road to Fairfield knew their footsteps, and they even went to tea with
+Mr. and Mrs. Ford, who talked of Richard out in India and bemoaned the
+inferiority of their garden to the Rector's. They wandered by treeless
+roads that led to the hills, and to the grassy solitudes that seemed
+made to be walked over hand in hand. Once they went as far as the forest
+of Wych, a wild woodland that lay remote from any village and where
+along the glades myriads of primroses stared at them. Yet, though that
+day had seemed to Pauline almost more delicately fair than any of<a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a> their
+days, it ended dismally with April in black misfeature, and before they
+reached home they were wet through.</p>
+
+<p>By ill luck her mother met her just as she was hurrying up to her room.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline," she said with a good deal of agitation. "I must forbid these
+walks with Guy every day. Wet to the skin! Oh dear, how careless of him
+to take you so far. You must be reasonable and unselfish. It's so
+difficult for me. Father asked where you were this afternoon, and I had
+to pretend to be deaf. He notices more than you think. Now really Guy
+must not come for a week, and there must be no more walks."</p>
+
+<p>Guy however came the next afternoon, and not only was he reproved by
+Mrs. Grey for yesterday's disaster, but actually he and Pauline were
+only allowed a quarter of an hour together in the garden.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go into Oxford for a week," said Guy with inspiration. "And then
+we shan't be tempted to see each other this week, and if we don't see
+each other this week, perhaps next week we shall be able to go out
+again. Besides, I want to make arrangements about bringing the canoe
+down. My friend Fane has wired to me to go and stay with him. He's up
+for the Easter vac, working. Shall I go?"</p>
+
+<p>Pauline wanted to say no, but she was even after all these walks still
+too shy to bid him stay.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you'd better go," she agreed. "But Guy, come back for my
+birthday."</p>
+
+<p>"As if I should stay away for that! Pauline, will you write to me? At
+least in letters you won't be shy to say you love me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, Guy, no. My writing is so horrid."</p>
+
+<p>"But you must write. Pauline, if you want to know why I'm really going
+away, it's simply to have a letter from you."<a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a></p>
+
+<p>"You must write to me first then," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>In truth Pauline felt terrified to think how she would even begin a
+letter to Guy. He would cease to love her any more after she had written
+to him. He would hate her stupid letters.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be glad to see Michael again," said Guy. "But I suppose I must
+not say anything about you. No, I won't talk about you. Oxford will be
+wonderfully quiet without undergraduates, and I shall have letters from
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grey came out into the garden.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Guy, I think you ought to go. Because really the Rector is getting
+worried about you and Pauline."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going into Oxford, Mrs. Grey."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that is a charming idea&mdash;charming, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'll be back for Pauline's birthday."</p>
+
+<p>"Charming&mdash;charming," Mrs. Grey still declared. "The Rector will have
+forgotten all about it by then."</p>
+
+<p>So Guy left Pauline for a week, and perhaps for more than a week.
+Margaret and Monica came home next day, and really, she thought, it was
+upsetting all the old ways of her life, when she found herself not very
+much interested in what they had been doing. Miss Verney with her
+ecstatic praise of Guy was better company; but next morning her first
+love-letter arrived, and she could not resist peeping into it at
+breakfast.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">99 S<small>T</small>. G<small>ILES</small>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+O<small>XFORD</small>&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+<i>April 18</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="nind"><i>My adored Pauline,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>It's really all I can do to stay in Oxford. Even Fane seems dull
+and though his rooms are jolly, I long for you.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Have I told you what you are to me? Have I once been able to tell
+you....</i></p></div>
+
+<p><a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a></p>
+
+<p>Ah, there were pages crammed full and full of words that she must read
+alone. She could not read them here with her mother and sisters looking
+at her over the table. She must read them high in her white fastness at
+the top of the house. There all the morning she sat, and when she had
+read of his love once, she read of it again and then again, and once
+again. How foolish her answering letter would be: how disappointed Guy
+would be; but since she had promised, she must write to him: and,
+sitting at her desk that was full of childish things, she curled herself
+over the note paper.<a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>May</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span> PLEASANT company of thoughts travelled with Guy and his bicycle on the
+road to Oxford. In this easy progress the material hindrances to
+marriage were not seeming very important, and as he thought of his love
+for Pauline it spread before him, untroublous like the road down which
+he was spinning before a light breeze. With so much to compensate for
+their brief parting it was impossible to feel depressed; and as Guy drew
+near the city he felt he was an undergraduate again; and when he greeted
+Michael Fane in St. Giles he could positively hear his own Oxford drawl
+again. It was really delightful to be sitting here in view of his old
+college; and when after lunch he and Michael started for Wytham woods,
+more and more Guy was in an Oxford dream and carrying off the fantastic
+notion of the Parnassian academy with all the debonair confidence of his
+second year. Yet Guy knew that the scheme was absurd and when Michael
+argued against it in his solemn way he found himself taking the other
+side from a mere undergraduate pleasure in argument. Indeed, Michael
+declared he had become a freshman since he went down, which made Guy
+stop dead, ankle-deep in kingcups, and laugh aloud for his youth, with
+hidden thoughts of Pauline to make him rejoice that he was young. He
+laughed again at Michael's seriousness and flung his scheme to the broad
+clouds, for on this generous day he and Pauline were enough, and neither
+anybody else's opinion nor anybody else's help was worth a second
+thought. The heartening warmth, however, did not last; and when toward
+evening the sun faded in a<a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a> blanche of watery clouds with a cold wind
+for aftermath, Guy felt Michael might have been more sympathetic. Rather
+silently they walked back from Godstow, with Pauline between them; so
+that after all, Guy thought, Michael was still an undergraduate, whereas
+he had embarked upon life.</p>
+
+<p>That night, however, when the curtains were drawn across Michael's
+bay-window that overhung the whispering and ancient thoroughfare; when
+the fire burned high and the tobacco-smoke clouded the glimmer of the
+books on the walls; when his chair creaked with that old Oxford
+creaking, Guy forgave Michael for any lack in his reception of the great
+plan. After all, he was writing to Pauline, while his host was reading
+the Constitutional History of England at a table littered with heavy
+volumes, on which he brooded like a melancholy spectator of ruins. He
+must not be hard on Michael, who had not yet touched life, when for
+himself the vision of Pauline was wreathing this old room with starry
+blooms of wild rose. The letter was finished, and Guy went out to drop
+it in the pillar-box. His old college brooded at him across the road;
+to-morrow he must go and look up some of the dons; to-morrow Pauline
+would get his letter; to-night there would be rain; to-morrow Pauline
+would get his letter! The envelope, as it shuffled down into the
+letter-box, seemed to say 'yes'.</p>
+
+<p>When Guy was back in the fumy St. Giles room, he decided there was
+something rather finely ascetic about Michael seated there and reading
+imperturbably in the lamp-light. His courteously fatigued manner was
+merely that of the idealist who had overreached himself; there was
+nothing bilious about him, not even so much cynicism as had slightly
+chilled Guy's own career at Oxford; rather did there emanate from
+Michael a kind of mediaeval steadfastness comparable only to those stone
+faces that look calmly down upon the transitory congregations of their
+church. Michael had this solemn presence that demanded an upward<a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a> look,
+and once again an upward look, until without conversation the solemnity
+became a little disquieting. Guy felt bound to interrupt with
+light-hearted talk of his own that slow still gaze across the lampshine.</p>
+
+<p>"Dash it, Michael, don't brood there like a Memento Mori. Put away Magna
+Charta and talk to me. You used to talk."</p>
+
+<p>"You talk, Guy. You've been living alone all this time. You must have a
+great deal to say."</p>
+
+<p>So Guy flung theories of rhyme and metre to overwhelm Magna Charta; and,
+next day, he and Michael walked all over Oxford in the rain, he himself
+still talking. The day after, there came with the sun a letter from
+Pauline which he took away with him to read in the garden of St. John's,
+leaving Michael to Magna Charta.</p>
+
+<p>There was nobody on the lawn, and Guy sat down on a wooden seat in air
+that was faintly perfumed by the precocious blooms of a lilac breaking
+to this unusual warmth of April. Unopened the letter rested in his hand:
+for his name written in this girlish charactery took on the romantic
+look of a name in an old tale. A breathlessness was in the air, such as
+had brooded upon Pauline's first kiss; and Guy sat marmoreal and rapt in
+an ecstasy of anticipation that he would never have from any other
+letter; so still he was, that an alighting blackbird slipt over the
+grass almost to his feet before it realized the mistake and shrilled
+away on startled wings into the bushes behind. The trance of expectation
+was spoilt, and Guy with a sigh broke the envelope.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="c">W<small>YCHFORD</small> R<small>ECTORY</small>
+O<small>XON</small>.</p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Wednesday.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I am writing to you at my desk. I began this morning but it was
+time to go out when I began. Now it's after tea. Margaret came in
+just now and said I looked all crinkled up<a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a> like a shell: it's
+because I simply don't know how to write to you. I have read your
+letter over and over and over again. I never thought there could be
+such a wonderful letter in the world. But I feel very sorry for
+poor Richard who can't write letters as exquisite as yours. I
+really feel miserable about him. And this letter to you makes me
+feel miserable because I can't write letters even as well as
+Richard. Mother was glad you thought of going to Oxford because she
+says we are a great responsibility to her. Isn't she sweet? She
+really is you know. So I talked to Father myself very seriously. I
+explained to him that I was quite old enough to know my own mind,
+and he listened to all the things I told him about you. He said he
+supposed it was innevvitable, which looks very funny somehow. Are
+you laughing at my spelling? And then he said it was nothing to do
+with him. So of course I rushed off to Mother and told her and when
+you come back we are to be allowed to go out twice a week and in
+three more months we can be engaged properly. Are you happy? Only,
+dear Guy, Mother doesn't want you to come back till my birthday.
+She thinks the idea of you and me will be better when Father has
+got an Iris Lorti or some name like that. He has never had a flower
+of it before and he's so excited about it's coming out just when my
+birthday is. Every day he goes down and pinches the stalk of it. He
+says it's the loveliest flower in the world and grows on Mount
+Lebanon. So if it comes out on my birthday, you and I can certainly
+be engaged in August. Guy, I do hate my handwriting.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Your loving
+Pauline.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>It was a letter of gloriously good news, thought Guy, though he was a
+little disappointed not to have had the thrill of Pauline's endearment.
+Then, on the blank outside page, he saw scrawled in writing that went
+tumbling head<a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a> over heels down the paper: <i>My darling Guy, I love you
+and underneath I have kissed the letter for you.</i></p>
+
+<p>The sentence died out in faint ink that seemed to show forth the whisper
+in which it had been written. For Guy the tumbledown letters were
+written in fire; and with the treasure in his heart of that small
+sentence, read a hundred times, he did not know how he should endure ten
+long days without Pauline, and in this old college garden, on this
+sedate and academic lawn, he cried out that he adored her as if indeed
+she were beside him in this laylocked air. At the sound of his voice the
+birds close at hand were all silent: they might have stopped to listen.
+Then a green-finch called 'sweet! sweet!', whose gentle and persistent
+proclamation was presently echoed by all the other birds twittering
+together again in the confused raptures of their Spring.</p>
+
+<p>The days with Michael at St. Giles went by slowly enough, and their
+fairness was a wasted boon. Guy wrote many long letters to Pauline and
+received from her another letter in which she began with '<i>My dearest</i>'
+as he had begged her. Yet when he read the herald vocative, he wished he
+had not tried to alter that old abrupt opening, for never again would
+she write in the faint ink of shyness such a sentence as had tumbled
+down the back of her first letter.</p>
+
+<p>Michael seemed to divine that he was in love, and Guy wondered why he
+could not tell him about it. Once or twice he nearly brought himself to
+the point, but the thought of describing Pauline kept him mute: Michael
+must see her first. The canoe would be ready at the end of the week, and
+Guy announced he should paddle it up to Wychford, travelling from the
+Isis to the upper Thames and from the upper Thames turning aside at
+Oldbridge to follow the romantic course of the Greenrush even to his own
+windows.<a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Rather fun," said Michael. "If the weather stays all right."</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove," Guy exclaimed, "I believe it was at Oldbridge Inn that I
+first met you."</p>
+
+<p>"On May Day three years ago," Michael agreed.</p>
+
+<p>And, thought Guy with a compassionate feeling for mere friendship, what
+a much more wonderful May Day should be this when Pauline was twenty.
+There was now her birthday present to buy, and Guy set out on the quest
+of it with as much exaltation as Percival may have sought the Holy
+Grail. He wished it were a ring he could buy for her; and indeed
+ultimately he could not resist a crystal set on a thin gold circlet that
+she, his rose of girls, would wear like a dewdrop. This ring, however,
+could not be his formal gift, but it would have to be offered when they
+were alone, and it must be worn nowhere but in the secret country they
+haunted with their love. The ring, uncostly as it was, took nearly all
+Guy's spare money, and he decided to buy a book for her, because in
+Oxford bookshops he still had accounts running. The April afternoon wore
+away while in his own particular bookshop kept by Mr. Brough, an ancient
+man with a white beard, he took down from the shelves volume after
+volume. At last he found a small copy of Blake's Lyrics bound in faded
+apple-green calf and tooled in a golden design of birds, berries and
+daisies. This must be for Pauline, he decided, since someone must have
+known the pattern of that nursery wall-paper and, loving it, have wished
+it to be recorded more endurably. What more exquisite coincidence could
+assure him that this book was meant for Pauline? Yet he was half-jealous
+of the unknown designer who had thought of something of which himself
+might have thought. Oh, yes, this must be for Pauline; and, as Guy
+rescued it from the dust and darkness of the old shop, he ascribed to
+the green volume an emotion of relief and was half-aware of promising to
+it a new and<a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a> dearer owner who with cherishing would atone for whatever
+misfortune had brought it to these gloomy shelves.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, when Guy was ready to start, Michael presented him with a
+glazier's diamond pencil.</p>
+
+<p>"When you fall in love, Guy, this will serve to scribble sonnets to your
+lady on the lattices of Plashers Mead. I shall probably come there
+myself when term's over."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you'd come and live there with me," said Guy in a last effort to
+persuade Michael. "You see, if you shared the house, it wouldn't cost so
+much."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I will," said Michael. "Who knows? I wonder what your Rectory
+people would think of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Pauline would like you. Pauline's the youngest, you know," added
+Guy. "And I'm pretty certain you'd like Monica."</p>
+
+<p>Michael laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Guy, I must tell them in Balliol that, since you went down,
+you've become an idle matchmaker. Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye. You're sure you won't mind the fag of forwarding my bicycle?
+I'll send you a postcard from Oldbridge."</p>
+
+<p>Guy, although there was still more than a week before he would see
+Pauline, felt, as he hurried towards the boat-builder's moorings, that
+he would see her within an hour, such airy freedom did the realization
+of being on his way give to his limbs.</p>
+
+<p>The journey to Wychford seemed effortless, for whatever the arduousness
+of a course steadily upstream, it was nullified by the knowledge that
+every time the paddle was dipped into the water it brought him by his
+own action nearer to Pauline. A railway journey would have given him
+none of this endless anticipation, travelling through what at this time
+of the year before the season of boating was a delicious solitude. Guy
+could sing all the way if he<a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a> wished, for there was nothing but
+buttercups and daisies, lambs and meadows and greening willows to
+overlook his progress. He glided beneath ancient bridges and rested at
+ancient inns, nearer every night to Pauline. Scarcely had such days a
+perceptible flight, and were not May Morning marked in flame on his
+mind's calendar, he could have forgotten time in this slow undated
+diminution.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O mistress mine, where are you roaming?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That can sing both high and low:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trip no further, pretty sweeting;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Journeys end in lovers meeting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Every wise man's son doth know.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This was the song Guy flung before his prow to the vision of Pauline
+leading him.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What is love? 'tis not hereafter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Present mirth hath present laughter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What's to come is still unsure:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In delay there lies no plenty;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Youth's a stuff will not endure.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This was the song that Guy felt Shakespeare might have written to suit
+his journey now, as he paddled higher and higher up the stream that
+flowed toward Shakespeare's own country.</p>
+
+<p>The banks of the Greenrush were narrower than the banks of the Thames:
+and all the way they were becoming narrower, and all the way the stream
+was running more swiftly against him. It was Sunday evening when he
+reached Plashers Mead; and so massively welded was the sago on his
+Sheraton table that Guy wondered if Miss<a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a> Peasey to be ready for his
+arrival had not cooked it a week ago. But what did sago matter, when in
+his place there was laid a note from Pauline?</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind"><i>My dearest,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I've had all your letters and I've been very frightened you'd be
+drowned. To-morrow you've got to come to breakfast because I always
+have breakfast in the garden on my birthday unless it pours. I'm
+going to church at eight. I love you a thousand times more and I
+will tell you so to-morrow and give you twenty kisses.</i></p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Your own&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+Pauline.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Do you like 'your own' better than 'your loving'?</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Guy went to bed very early and resolved to wake at dawn that he might
+have the hours of the morning for thoughts of Pauline on her birthday.</p>
+
+<p>It was after dawn when Guy woke, for he had fallen asleep very tired
+after his week on the river; still it was scarcely six when he came down
+into the orchard, and the birds were singing as Guy thought he had never
+heard them sing before. The apple trees were already frilled with a foam
+of blossom; and on quivering boughs linnets with breasts rose-burnt by
+the winds of March throbbed out their carol. Chaffinches with flashing
+prelude of silver wings flourished a burst of song that broke as with
+too intolerable a triumph: then sought another tree and poured forth the
+triumphant song again. Thrushes, blackbirds and warblers quired
+deep-throated melodies against the multitudinous trebles of those
+undistinguished myriads that with choric paean saluted May; and on
+sudden diminuendoes could be heard the rustling canzonets of the
+goldfinches, rising and falling with reedy cadences.<a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a></p>
+
+<p>Guy launched his canoe, which crushed the dewy young grass in its track
+and laded the morning with one more fragrance. He paddled down the
+mill-stream and, landing presently in the Rectory paddock now in full
+blow with white and purple irises, he went through the wicket into the
+garden. When he reached the lily-pond the birds on the lawn flew away
+and left it green and empty. He stood entranced, for the hush of the
+morning lay on the house, and in the wistaria Pauline's window dreamed,
+wide open. Deep in the shrubberies the birds still twittered
+incessantly. Why was he not one of these birds, that he might light upon
+her sill? Upon Guy's senses stole the imagination of a new fragrance,
+that was being shed upon the day by that wide-open window; a fragrance
+that might be of flowers growing by the walks of her dreams. And surely
+in those flowery dreams he was beside her, since he had lost all sense
+of being still on earth. A bee flew out from Pauline's room, an enviable
+bee which had been booming with indefinite motion for how long round and
+round the white tulips on her sill. Presently another bee flew in; and
+Guy's fancy, catching hold of its wings hovered above Pauline where she
+lay sleeping. So sharp was the emotion he had of entering with the bee,
+that he was aware of brushing back her light brown hair to lean down and
+kiss her forehead; and when the belfry-clock clanged he was startled to
+find himself back upon this green and empty lawn. He must not stay here
+in front of her window, because if she woke and came in her white
+nightgown to greet the day, she would be shy to see him standing here.
+Reluctantly Guy turned away and would have gone out again by the wicket
+in the wall, if he had not come face to face with Birdwood.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I'm a bit early," he said in some embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think you are a bit early, sir," the gardener agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"Breakfast won't be till about half past eight?" Guy suggested.<a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a></p>
+
+<p>"And it's just gone the half of six," said Birdwood.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like to see my canoe?" Guy asked.</p>
+
+<p>Birdwood looked round the lawn, seeming to imply that, such was Guy's
+liberty of behaviour, he half expected to see it floating on the
+lily-pond.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is it then?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Guy took him through the paddock to where the canoe lay on the
+mill-stream.</p>
+
+<p>"Handy little weapon," Birdwood commented.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll see you later, I expect," said Guy embarking again. "I'm
+coming to breakfast at the Rectory."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," the gardener answered cheerfully. "In about another hour and
+a half I shall be looking for the eggs."</p>
+
+<p>Guy waved his hand and shot out into midstream where he drifted idly.
+Should he go to church this morning? Pauline must have wanted him to
+come, or she would not have told him in her note that she was going.
+They had never discussed the question of religion. Tacitly he had let it
+be supposed he believed in her simple creed, and he knew his appearance
+of faith had given pleasure to the family as well as to Pauline herself.
+Was he being very honest with her or with them? Certainly when he knelt
+at the back of the church and saw Pauline as he had seen her on Easter
+Day, it was not hard to believe in divinity. But he did not carry away
+Pauline's faith to cheer his own secret hours. The thought of herself
+was always with him, but her faith remained as a kind of vision upon
+which he was privileged to gaze on those occasions when, as it were, she
+made of it a public confession. Had he really any right to intrude upon
+such sanctities as hers would be to-day? No doubt every birthday morning
+she went to church, and the strangeness of his presence seemed almost an
+unhallowing of such rites. Even to attend her birthday breakfast began
+to appear unjustifiable, as he thought of all the birthday breakfasts
+that for so many years had passed by<a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a> without him and without any idea
+of there ever being any necessity for him. No doubt this morning he,
+miserable and unworthy sceptic, would be dowered with the half of her
+prayers, and in that consciousness could he bear to accept them,
+kneeling at the back of the church, unless he believed utterly they were
+sanctified by something more than her own maidenhood? Yet if he did not
+go to church, Pauline would be disappointed, because she would surely
+expect him. She would be like the blessed damozel leaning out from the
+gold bar of Heaven and weeping because he did not come. There was no
+gain from honesty, if she were made miserable by it. It were better a
+thousand times he should kneel humbly at the back of the church and pray
+for the faith that was hers. And why could he not believe as she
+believed? If her faith were true, he suffered from injustice by having
+no grace accorded to him. Or did there indeed lie between him and her
+the impassable golden bar of Heaven? A cloud swept across the morning
+sun, and Guy shivered. Then the church-bell began to clang and, urging
+his canoe towards the churchyard, he jumped ashore and knelt at the back
+of the church.</p>
+
+<p>Guy had been aware during the service of the saintly pageant along the
+windows of the clerestory slowly dimming, and he was not surprized, when
+he came out, to see that clouds were dusking the first brilliance of the
+day. Mrs. Grey, Monica and Margaret had prayed each in a different part
+of the church; but now in the porch they fluttered about Pauline with an
+intimate and happy awareness of her birthday, almost seeming to wrap her
+in it, so that she in flushed responsiveness wore all her twenty years
+like a bunch of roses. Guy was sensitive to the faint reluctance with
+which her mother and sisters resigned her to him on this birthday
+morning; but yet to follow them back from church with Pauline beside him
+in a trepidation of blushes and sparkles was too dear a joy for him in
+turn to resign.<a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a> Half-way to the house Pauline remembered that her
+father had been left alone. This was too wide a breach in her birthday's
+accustomed ceremony, and much dismayed she begged Guy to go back with
+her. At that moment the rest of the family had disappeared round a curve
+in the walk, and Guy caught Pauline to him, complaining she had not
+kissed him since he was home.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but Father!" she said breathlessly tugging. "He'll be so hurt if
+we've gone on without him."</p>
+
+<p>Guy felt a stab of jealousy that even a father should intrude upon his
+birthday kiss for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very well," he said half coldly. "If to see me again after a
+fortnight means so little...."</p>
+
+<p>"Guy," said Pauline, "you're not cross with me? And Father was so sweet
+about you. He said, 'Is Guy coming to breakfast?' Guy, you mustn't mind
+if I think a lot about everybody to-day. You see, this is my first
+birthday when there has been you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't remind me of the years before we met," said Guy. "I hate them
+all. No, I don't," he exclaimed in swift penitence. "I love them all.
+Hurry, darling girl, or we shall miss him."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline's eyes were troubled by a question, behind which lurked a
+fleeting alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss me," she murmured. "I was horrid."</p>
+
+<p>A kind of austerity informed their kiss of reconciliation, an austerity
+that suited the sky of impending rain under which they were standing in
+the light of the last wan sunbeam. Then they hurried to the churchyard
+where in the porch the Rector was looking vaguely round for the company
+he expected.</p>
+
+<p>"Lucky my friend Lorteti came out yesterday. This rain will ruin him.
+You must take Guy to see that iris, my dear. Fancy, twenty-one to-day,
+dear me! dear me! most remarkable!"<a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a></p>
+
+<p>Pauline danced with delight behind the Rector's back.</p>
+
+<p>"He thinks I'm twenty-one," she whispered. "Oh, Guy, isn't he sweet? And
+he called you Guy. Oh, Francis," she cried. "Do let me kiss you."</p>
+
+<p>There was a short debate on the probability of the rain's coming before
+breakfast was done, but it was decided, thanks to Birdwood's optimism,
+to accept the risk of interruption by sitting down outside. The table
+was on the lawn, Pauline's presents lying in a heap at the head. As one
+by one she opened the packets, everybody stood round her, not merely her
+mother and father and sisters and Guy, but also Birdwood and elderly
+Janet and Mrs. Unger the cook and Polly who helped Mrs. Unger.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so excited," said Pauline. "Oh, I do hope it won't rain. Oh,
+thank you, Mrs. Unger. What a beautiful frame!"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope yaw'll find someone to put in it, miss," said Mrs. Unger with a
+glance of stately admiration toward her present and a triumphant side
+look at Janet, who after many years' superintendence of Pauline's white
+fastness had brought her bunches of lavender and woodruff tied up with
+ribbons. All the presents were now undone, among them Guy's green
+volume, a paste buckle from Margaret, a piece of old embroidery from
+Monica and from Richard in India a pair of carved bellows, at the
+prodigal ingenuity of whose pattern Margaret looked a little peevish.
+When all the other presents had been examined, Birdwood stepped forward
+and with the air of a conjuror produced from under his coat a pot of
+rose-coloured sweet-peas that exactly matched the frail hue of Pauline's
+cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast was eaten, with everybody's eyes watching the now completely
+grey sky. How many such birthday breakfasts had been eaten on this cool
+lawn by these people who in their simplicity were akin to the birds in
+their shrubberies and the flowers in their borders; and Guy thought of
+an<a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a> old photograph taken by an uncle of Pauline's tenth birthday
+breakfast, when the table was heaped high with dolls and toys and
+Pauline in the middle of them, while Monica and Margaret with legs as
+thin as thrushes' stood shy and graceful in the background. He sighed to
+himself with amazement at the fortune which like a genie had whisked him
+into this dear assemblage.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast was over just as the rain began to fall with the tinkling
+whisper that forebodes determination. There was not a leaf in the garden
+that was not ringing like an elfin bell to these silver drops; but,
+alas, the unrelenting windless rain gave no hope to Guy and Pauline of
+that long walk together they had expected all a fortnight. There was
+nothing to do but sit in the nursery and wonder if it would ever stop.</p>
+
+<p>"I used to love rain when it kept me here," said Guy. "Now it has become
+our enemy."</p>
+
+<p>Worse was to come, for it rained every day faster and faster, and there
+were no journeys for Guy's new canoe. He and Pauline scarcely had ten
+minutes to themselves, since when they were kept in the house all the
+family treated them with that old proprietary manner. The unending rain
+began to fret them more sharply because Spring's greenery was in such
+weather of the vividest hue and was reproaching them perpetually for the
+waste of this lovely month of May.</p>
+
+<p>The river was rising. Already Guy's garden was sheened with standing
+moisture, and the apple-blossom lay ruined. People vowed there had never
+been such rain in May, and still it rained. The river was running
+swiftly, level with the top of its banks, and many of the meadows were
+become glassy firmaments. Very beautiful was this green and silver
+landscape, but oh, the rain was endless. Guy grew much depressed and
+Miss Peasey got rheumatism in her ankles. Then in the middle of the
+month, when Guy was feeling<a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a> desperate and when even Pauline seemed sad
+for the hours that were being robbed from them, it cleared up.</p>
+
+<p>Guy had been to tea, and after tea he and Pauline had sat watching the
+weather. Margaret had stayed with them all the afternoon, but had left
+them alone now, when it was half-past six and nearly time for Guy to go.
+The clouds, which all day had spread their pearly despair over the
+world, suddenly melted in a wild transplendency of gold.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do let's go for a walk before dinner," said Guy. "Don't let's tell
+anybody, but let's escape."</p>
+
+<p>"Where shall we go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anywhere. Anywhere. Out in the meadows by the edge of the water. Let's
+get sopping wet. Dearest, do come. We're never free. We're never alone."</p>
+
+<p>So Pauline got ready; and they slipped away from the house, hoping that
+nobody would call them back and hurrying through the wicket into the
+paddock where the irises hung all sodden. They walked along the banks of
+a river twice as wide as it should be, and found they could not cross
+the bridge. But it did not matter, for the field where they were walking
+was not flooded, and they went on toward the mill. Here they crossed the
+river and, hurrying always as if they were pursued, such was their sense
+of a sudden freedom that could not last, they made a circuit of the
+wettest meadows and came to the hill on the other side. Everywhere above
+them the clouds were breaking, and all the West was a fiery mist of rose
+and gold.</p>
+
+<p>The meadow they had found was crimsoned over with ragged robins that in
+this strange light glowered angrily like rubies. Pauline bent down and
+gathered bunches of them until her arms were full. Her skirt was wet,
+but still she plucked the crimson flowers; and Guy was gathering them
+too, knee-deep in soaking grass. What fever was in the sunset to-night?</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline," he cried flinging high his bunch of ragged<a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a> robins to scatter
+upon the incarnadined air. "I have never loved you, as I love you now."</p>
+
+<p>Guy caught her to him; and into that kiss the fiery sky entered, so that
+Pauline let fall her ragged robins and they lay limp in the grass and
+were trodden under foot.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, I have a ring for you," he whispered. "Will you wear it when
+we are alone?"</p>
+
+<p>She took the thin circlet set with a crystal, and put it on her finger.
+Then with passionate arms she held him to her heart: the caress burned
+his lips like a flaming torch: the crystal flashed with hectic gleams, a
+basilisk, a perilous orient gem.</p>
+
+<p>"We must go home," she whispered. "Oh, Guy, I feel frightened of this
+evening."</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, my burning rose," he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>And all the way back into the crimson sunset they talked still in
+whispers, and of those rain-drenched ragged robins there was not one
+they carried home.</p>
+
+<p><i>'La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!'</i></p>
+<p><i>'La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!'</i></p>
+<p><i>'La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!'</i></p>
+
+<p>The words did not cool Guy's pillow that night, but they led him by
+strange ways into a fevered sleep.<a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="SUMMER" id="SUMMER"></a>SUMMER</h2>
+
+<p><a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>June</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN Pauline reached the Rectory dinner had already begun in the mixture
+of candlelight and rosy dusk that seemed there more than anything to
+mark Summer's instant approach, and as with flushed cheeks she took her
+place at table, she was conscious of an atmosphere that was half
+disapproval, half anxiety; or was it that she disapproving of herself
+expected criticism? Positively there was an emotion of being on her
+defence; she felt propitiatory and apologetic; and for the first time
+she was sharply aware of herself and her family as two distinct facts.
+It was to dispel this uneasy sense of potential division that she took
+up her violin with a faintly exaggerated willingness and that, instead
+of dreaming of Guy in a corner of the room, she played all the evening
+in the same spirit of wanting to please.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother asked if she had enjoyed her walk, and Pauline had positively
+to fight with herself before she could answer lightly enough that the
+walk had been perfect. Why was her heart beating like this, and why did
+her sisters regard her so gravely? It must be her fancy, and almost
+defiantly she continued:</p>
+
+<p>"There was no harm in my going out with Guy, was there? We've not been
+together at all lately."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should there be any particular harm this evening?" Monica enquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not, Monica," and again her heart was beating furiously. "I
+only asked because I thought you all seemed angry with me for being a
+little late for dinner."<a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I don't know why we should suddenly be sensitive about punctuality in
+this house," said Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline had never thought her own white fastness offered such relief and
+shelter as to-night; and yet, she assured herself, nobody had really
+been criticizing her. It must have been entirely her fancy, that air of
+reproach, those insinuations of cold surprize. People in this house did
+not understand what it meant to be as much in love as she. It was all
+very well for Margaret and Monica to lay down laws for behaviour,
+Margaret who did not know whether she loved or not, Monica who
+disapproved of anything more directly emotional than a Gregorian chant.
+Yet they had not theorized to-night, nor had they propounded one rule of
+behaviour; it was she who was rushing to meet their postulates and
+observations, arming herself with weapons of offence before the attack
+had begun. Yet why had neither Monica nor Margaret, nor even her mother,
+come to say good-night to her? They did not understand about love, not
+one of them, not one of them.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline?"</p>
+
+<p>It was her mother's voice outside her door, who coming in seemed
+perfectly herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Not undressed yet? What's the matter, darling Pauline? You look quite
+worried, sitting there in your chair."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not worried, Mother. Really, darling, I'm not worried. I thought
+you were cross with me."</p>
+
+<p>Now she was crying and being petted.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know why I'm crying. Oh, I'm so foolish. Why am I crying? Are
+you cross with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, what is the matter? Have you had a quarrel with Guy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious, no! What makes you ask that? We had an exquisite walk,
+and the sunset was wonderful, oh, so wonderful! And we picked ragged
+robins&mdash;great bunches<a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a> of them. Only I forgot to bring them home. How
+stupid of me. Monica and Margaret aren't angry with me, are they? They
+were so cold at dinner. Why were they? Mother, I do love you so. You do
+understand me, don't you? You do sympathize with love? Mother, I do love
+you so."</p>
+
+<p>When Pauline was in bed her mother fetched Margaret and Monica, who both
+came and kissed her good-night and asked what could have given her the
+idea that they were angry with her.</p>
+
+<p>"You foolish little thing, go to sleep," said Monica.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't let your being in love with Guy spoil the Rectory," said
+Margaret. "Because, you know, the Rectory is so much, much better than
+anything else in the world."</p>
+
+<p>Her mother and sisters left her, going gently from the room as if she
+were already asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline read for awhile from Guy's green volume of Blake; then taking
+from under her pillow the crystal ring, she put it on her third finger
+and blew out the light.</p>
+
+<p>Was he thinking of her at this moment? He must be, and how near they
+brought him to her, these nights of thoughts, for then she seemed to be
+floating out of her window to meet him half-way upon the May air. How
+she loved him; and he had given her this ring of which no one knew
+except themselves. It was strange to have been suddenly frightened in
+that sunset, for now, as she lay here looking back upon it, this evening
+was surely the most wonderful of her life. He had called her his burning
+rose. His burning rose ... his burning rose? Why had she not brought
+back a few of those ragged robins to sit like confidantes beside her
+bed? Flowers were such companions; the beautiful and silent flowers. How
+far away sleep was still standing from her: and Pauline got out of bed
+and leaned from the window with a sensation of resting upon<a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a> the buoyant
+darkness. The young May moon had already set, and not a sound could be
+heard; so still indeed was the night that it seemed as if the stars
+ought to be audible upon their twinkling. If now a nightingale would but
+sing to say what she was wanting to say to the darkness! Nightingales,
+however, were rare in the trees round Wychford, and the garden stayed
+silent. Perhaps Guy was leaning from his window like this, and it was a
+pity their lights could not shine across, each candle fluttering to the
+other. If only Plashers Mead were within view, they would be able to sit
+at their windows in the dark hours and sometimes signal to one another.
+Or would that be what Margaret called 'cheapening' herself? Had she
+cheapened herself this evening, when she had kissed him for the gift of
+this ring? Yet could she cheapen herself to Guy? He loved her as much as
+she loved him; and always she and he must be equal in their love. She
+could never be very much reserved with Guy: she did not want to be. She
+loved him, and this evening for the first time she had kissed him in the
+way that often in solitude she had longed to kiss him.</p>
+
+<p>"I only want to live for love," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally Margaret did not know what love like hers meant; and perhaps
+it was as well, for it was sad enough to be parted from Guy for two
+days, when there was always the chance of seeing him in the hours
+between; but to be separated from him by oceans for two years, as
+Richard and Margaret were separated, that would be unbearable.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose Margaret would call it 'cheapening' myself to be standing at
+my window like this. Good-night, dearest Guy, good-night. Your Pauline
+is thinking of you to the very last moment of being the smallest bit
+awake."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice set out to Plashers Mead, no louder than a moth's wing; and,
+turning away from the warm May night, Pauline went back to bed and fell
+asleep on the happy contemplation of a love that between them was
+exactly equal.<a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a></p>
+
+<p>The floods went down rapidly during the week; green Summer flung her
+wreaths before her: the cuckoo sang out of tune and other birds more
+rarely: chestnut-blossom powdered the grass: and the pinks were breaking
+all along the Rectory borders. These were days when not to idle down the
+river would have been a slight upon the season. So Pauline and Guy, with
+their two afternoons a week, which were not long in becoming four, spent
+all their time in the canoe. The Rectory punt could only be used on the
+mill-stream; and Pauline rejoiced, if somewhat guiltily, that they could
+not invite either of her sisters to accompany them. She and Guy had now
+so much to say to each other, every day more it seemed, that it was
+impossible any longer not to wish to be alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret says we are becoming selfish, are we?" she asked, dragging her
+fingers through the water and perceiving the world through ranks of
+fleurs-de-lys.</p>
+
+<p>Guy from where in the stern he sat hunched over his paddle asked in what
+way they were supposed to be selfish.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it is true that I'm dreadfully absent-minded all the time. You
+know, I can't think about anything but you. Then, you see, we used
+always to invite Margaret to be with us, and now we hurry away in the
+canoe from everybody."</p>
+
+<p>"One would think we spent all our time together," said Guy. "Instead of
+barely four hours a week."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Guy darling, it's more than that. This is the fourth afternoon
+running that we've been together; and we weren't back yesterday till
+dinner-time."</p>
+
+<p>Guy put a finger to his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! We're coming to the bend in the river that flows round the place
+we first met," he whispered. "Hush! if we talk about other people, it
+will be disenchanted."</p>
+
+<p>He swung the canoe under the bushes, tied it to a hawthorn bough and
+declared triumphantly, as they climbed<a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a> ashore up the steep bank, that
+here was practically a desert island. Then they went to the narrow
+entrance and gazed over the meadows which in this sacred time of growing
+grass really were impassable as the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Not even a cow in sight," Guy commented in well satisfied tones. "I
+shall be sorry when the hay is cut, and people and cattle can come here
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"People and cattle! How naughty you are, Guy. As if they were just the
+same!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, practically you know, as far as we're concerned, there isn't very
+much difference."</p>
+
+<p>For a long while they sat by the edge of the stream in their fragrant
+seclusion.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest," Pauline sighed. "Why can I listen to you all day, and yet
+whenever anybody else talks to me, why do I feel as if I were only half
+awake?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because even when you're not with me," said Guy, "you're still really
+with me. That's why. You see you're still listening to me."</p>
+
+<p>This was a pleasant explanation; but Pauline was anxious to be reassured
+about what Margaret had hinted was a deterioration in her character
+lately.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps we are a little selfish. But we won't be, when we're married."</p>
+
+<p>Guy had been scribbling on an envelope which he now handed to her; and
+she read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="c"><i>Mrs. Guy Hazlewood<br />
+Plashers Mead<br />
+Wychford<br />
+&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Oxon.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>"Oh, Guy, you know I love to see it written: but isn't it unlucky to
+write it?"<a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you ought to be so superstitious," he scoffed.</p>
+
+<p>She wished he were not obviously despising the weakness of her beliefs.
+This was the mood in which she seemed farthest away from him; when she
+felt afraid of his cleverness; and when what had been simple became
+maddeningly twisted up like an object in a nightmare.</p>
+
+<p>Yet worries that were so faint as scarcely to have a definite shape
+could still be bought off with kisses; and always when she kissed Guy
+they receded out of sight again, temporarily appeased.</p>
+
+<p>June, which had come upon them unawares, drifted on toward Midsummer,
+and the indolent and lovely month mirrored herself in the stream with
+lush growth of sedges and grasses, with yellow water-lilies budding,
+with starry crowfoot and with spongy reeds and weeds that kept the canoe
+to a slow progress in accord with the season. At this time, mostly, they
+launched their craft in the mill-stream, whence they glided under
+Wychford bridge to the pool of an abandoned mill on the farther side.
+Here they would float immotionable on the black water, surrounded by
+tumbledown buildings that rose from the vivid and exuberant growth of
+the thick-leaved vegetation flourishing against these cold and decayed
+foundations. Pauline was always relieved when Guy with soundless paddle
+steered the canoe away from these deeps. The mill-pool affected her with
+the merely physical fear of being overturned and plunged into those
+glooms haunted by shadowy fish, there far down to be strangled by weeds
+the upper tentacles of which could be seen undulating finely to the
+least quiver upon the face of the water. Yet more subtly than by
+physical terrors did these deeps affect her, for the fathomless
+mill-pool always seemed, as they hung upon it, to ask a question. With
+such an air of horrible invitation it asked her where she was going with
+Guy, that no amount<a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a> of self-reproach for a morbid fancy could drive
+away the fact of the question's being always asked, however firmly she
+might fortify herself against paying attention. The moment they passed
+out of reach of that smooth and cruel countenance, Pauline was always
+ashamed of the terror and never confided in Guy what a mixture of
+emotions the mill-pool could conjure for her. Their journey across it
+was in this sunny weather the prelude to a cool time on the stream that
+flowed along the foot of the Abbey grounds. During May they had been
+wont to paddle directly up the smaller main stream, exploring far along
+the Western valley; but on these June afternoons such a course involved
+too much energy. So they used to disembark from the canoe, pulling it
+over a narrow strip of grass to be launched again on the Abbey stream,
+which had been dammed up to flow with the greater width and solemnity
+that suited the grand house shimmering in eternal ghostliness at the top
+of the dark plantation. Pauline had no dread of Wychford Abbey at this
+distance, and she was fond of gliding down this stream into which the
+great beeches dipped their tresses, shading it from the heat of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>Every hour they spent on the river made them long to spend more hours
+together, and Pauline began to tell herself she was more deeply in love
+than anyone she had ever known. Everything except love was floating away
+from her like the landscape astern of the canoe. She began to neglect
+various people in Wychford over whom she had hitherto watched with
+maternal solicitude: even Miss Verney was not often visited, because she
+and Guy could not go together, the one original rule to which Mrs. Grey
+still clung being a prohibition of walking together through the town.
+And with the people went her music. She did not entirely give up playing
+but she always played so badly that Monica declared once she would
+rather such playing were given up. In years gone by Pauline had kept
+white<a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a> fantail pigeons: but now they no longer interested her and she
+gave them away in pairs. Birdwood declared that the small bee-garden
+which from earliest childhood had belonged to her guardianship was a
+'proper disgrace.' Her tambour-frame showed nothing but half-fledged
+birds from which since Winter had hung unkempt shreds of blue and red
+wool. And even her mother's vague talks about the poor people in
+Wychford had no longer an audience, because Margaret and Monica never
+had listened, and now Pauline was as inattentive as her sisters. Nothing
+was worth while except to be with Guy. Not one moment of this June must
+be wasted, and Pauline managed to set up a precedent for going out on
+the river with him after tea, when in the cool afternoon they would
+float down behind Guy's house under willows, under hawthorns, past the
+golden fleurs-de-lys, past the scented flags, past the early meadowsweet
+and the flowering rush, past comfrey and watermint, figwort,
+forget-me-not and blue cranesbill that shimmered in the sun like steely
+mail.</p>
+
+<p>On Midsummer Day about five o'clock Pauline and Guy set out on one of
+these expeditions that they had stolen from regularity, and found all
+their favourite fields occupied by haymakers whose labour they resented
+as an intrusion upon the country they had come to regard as their own.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wish I had money," Guy exclaimed. "I'd like to buy all this land
+and keep it for you and me. Why must all these wretched people come and
+disturb the peace of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I used to love haymaking," said Pauline, feeling a little wistful for
+some of those simple joys that now seemed uncapturable again.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I should like haymaking," Guy assented, "if we were married. It's
+the fact that haymakers are at this moment preventing us being alone
+which makes me cry out against them. How can I kiss you here?"<a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a></p>
+
+<p>A wain loaded high with hay and laughing children was actually standing
+close against the ingress to their own peninsula. The mellow sun of
+afternoon was lending a richer quality of colour to nutbrown cheeks and
+arms; was throwing long shadows across the shorn grass; was gilding the
+pitchforks and sparkling the gnats that danced above the patient horses.
+It was a scene that should have made Pauline dream with joy of her
+England: yet, with Guy's discontent brooding over it, she did not care
+for these jocund haymakers who were working through the lustred
+afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"Hopeless," Guy protested. "It's like Piccadilly Circus."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Guy dear, you are absurd. It's not a bit like Piccadilly Circus."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see the use of living in the country if it's always going to be
+alive with people," Guy went on. "We may as well turn round. The
+afternoon is ruined."</p>
+
+<p>When they reached the confines of Plashers Mead, he exclaimed in deeper
+despair:</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline! I must kiss you; and, look, actually the churchyard now is
+crammed with people, all hovering about over the graves like ghouls. Why
+does everybody want to come out this afternoon?"</p>
+
+<p>They landed in the orchard behind the house, and Pauline was getting
+ready to help Guy push the canoe across to the mill-stream, when he
+vowed she must come and kiss him good-night indoors.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I will; though I mustn't stay more than a minute, because I
+promised Mother to be back by seven."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't deserve you," said Guy, standing still and looking down at her.
+"I've done nothing but grumble all the afternoon, and you've been an
+angel. Ah, but it's only because I long to kiss you."</p>
+
+<p>"I long to kiss you," she murmured.<a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Do you? Do you?" he whispered. "Oh, with those ghouls in the churchyard
+I can't even take your hand."</p>
+
+<p>They crossed the bridge from the orchard and came round to the front of
+the house into full sunlight, and thence out of the dazzle into Guy's
+hall that was filled with watery melodies and the green light of their
+own pastoral world. Close they kissed, close and closer in the coolness
+and stillness.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline! I shall go mad for love of you."</p>
+
+<p>"I love you. I love you," she sighed, nestling to his arms' enclosure.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline!"</p>
+
+<p>"Guy!"</p>
+
+<p>Each called to the other as if over an abyss of years and time.</p>
+
+<p>Then Pauline said she must go back, but Guy reminded her of a book she
+had promised to read, and begged her just to come with him to the
+library.</p>
+
+<p>"I do want to talk to you once alone in my own room," he said. "The
+evenings won't seem so empty when I can think of you there."</p>
+
+<p>She could not disappoint him, and they went upstairs and into his green
+room that smelt of tobacco-smoke and meadowsweet. They stood by the
+window looking out over their territory, and Guy told for the hundredth
+time how, as it were, straight from this window he had plunged to meet
+her that September night.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo," he exclaimed suddenly, reading on the pane that was scrabbled
+with mottoes cut by himself in idle moments with the glazier's pencil:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="c"><i>The fresh green lap of fair King Richard's land.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Michael Fane. &nbsp; &nbsp; June 24.</span></i></p></div>
+
+<p>"That's to-day! Then Michael must be here. What an extraordinary
+thing!"<a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a></p>
+
+<p>Guy looked round the room for any sign of his friend; but there was
+nothing except the Shakesperean record of his presence. Pauline felt
+hurt that he should be so much interested in a friend, when but a moment
+ago he had brought her here as if her presence were the only thing that
+counted for his evening's pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"I must find out where he is," exclaimed Guy.</p>
+
+<p>Now he wanted to be rid of her, thought Pauline, and for the first time,
+when he had kissed her, she kissed him coldly in response. More bitter
+still was the thought that he did not remonstrate: he had not noticed.
+Pauline said she must hurry away, and Guy did not persuade her to stop.
+Oh, how she hated this friend of his; she had no one in whom she would
+be even mildly interested when she was with Guy. He took her home in the
+canoe, speculating all the way about Michael Fane's whereabouts; and as
+Pauline went across the Rectory paddock there were tears of
+mortification in her eyes that sometimes burnt as hotly even as with
+jealousy's rage.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother was on the lawn, when she got back, and Pauline blinked her
+eyes a good deal to throw the blame of tears upon the sun.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you're back. Let's take a little walk round the garden," said Mrs.
+Grey in the nervous manner that told of something on her mind.</p>
+
+<p>They went into the larger wall-garden and walked along the wide
+herbaceous borders through a blaze of snapdragons that here all day had
+been swallowing the sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you go with Guy?" her mother asked.</p>
+
+<p>"We went down the river, and they're cutting the grass in the big meadow
+and then afterwards...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Pauline, afterwards you went into Guy's house with him?"</p>
+
+<p>Pauline nodded.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a>"I know. I was just going to tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, how could you do such a thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"I only went to say good-night. I wasn't there five minutes."</p>
+
+<p>Why should an action so simple be vexing her mother?</p>
+
+<p>"Are you angry with me for going?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must never do such a thing again," said Mrs. Grey more crossly than
+Pauline had ever heard her. "Monica saw you go in as she was walking
+down Shipcot hill, and she has just this moment come and told me."</p>
+
+<p>"But why shouldn't I go in and say good-night?" Pauline asked. "There
+were people in the churchyard. I thought it was better to say good-night
+in the house."</p>
+
+<p>Her mother was tremulously pink with vexation, and Pauline looked at her
+in surprize. It was really unaccountable that such a trifling incident
+as going into Guy's house could have made her as angry as this. She must
+have offended her in some other way.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, what have I done to annoy you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't think what made you do anything so stupid as that. I can't
+think. I can't think. So many people may have seen you go in."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mother darling, surely by this time," said Pauline, "everybody
+must know we are really engaged."</p>
+
+<p>Her mother stood in an access of irritation.</p>
+
+<p>"And don't you understand how that makes it all the worse? Please never
+do such an inconsiderate thing again. You can imagine how much it upset
+Monica, when she ran back to tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't she come in and fetch me?" asked Pauline. "That would have
+been much easier. I think she thoroughly enjoyed making a great fuss
+about nothing. Everybody has been criticizing me lately. I know you all
+disapprove of anybody's being in love."</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, when you are to blame, you shouldn't say such unkind things
+about Monica."<a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I have to say what I think sometimes," Pauline replied rebelliously.</p>
+
+<p>"And as for Guy," Mrs. Grey went on, "I am astonished at his
+thoughtlessness. I can't understand how he could dream of letting you
+come into his house. I can't understand it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but why shouldn't I go in?" Pauline persisted. "Darling Mother,
+you go on being angry with me, but you don't tell me why I shouldn't go
+in."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you understand what the Wychford people might think?"</p>
+
+<p>Pauline shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I shan't say any more about it," Mrs. Grey decided. "But you must
+promise me never never to do such a foolish thing again."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll promise you never to go to Guy's house," said Pauline. "But I
+can't promise never to do foolish things, when such perfectly ordinary
+things are called foolish."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grey looked helplessly round her, but as neither of her two elder
+daughters was present she had nothing to say; and Pauline, who thought
+that all the fuss was due to nothing but Monica's unwarranted
+interference, had nothing to say either; so they walked along the
+herbaceous borders each with a demeanour of reproach for the other's
+failure to understand. The snapdragons lolled upon the sun with
+gold-bloomed anthers, and drank more and still more colour until they
+were drenched beyond the deepest dyes of crimson, extinguishing the
+paler hues of rose and chrome which yet at moth-time would show like
+lamps when the others had dulled in the discouragement of twilight.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't think anything more about it," said her mother after a long
+silence. "I'm sure it was only heedlessness. I don't think you can say
+I'm too strict with you and Guy. Really, you know, you ought to have had
+a<a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a> very happy June. You've been together nearly all the time."</p>
+
+<p>"Darling," said Pauline utterly penitent for the least look that could
+have wounded her mother's feelings. "You're sweet to us. And Guy loves
+you nearly as much as I do."</p>
+
+<p>The gong sounded upon the luteous air of the evening; and Pauline with
+her arm closely tucked into her mother's arm walked with her across the
+lawn toward the house.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no good looking crossly at me," she said when like a beautiful
+ghost Monica came into the dining-room. "I've explained everything to
+Mother."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very glad you have," Monica answered austerely; and because she
+would not fall in with her own forgiving mood, Pauline took the gentle
+revenge of not expostulating with her that evening when there was an
+opportunity. Nor would she let Margaret refer to the subject. Her
+sisters were very adorable, but they knew nothing about love and it
+would only make them more anxious to lay down laws if she showed that
+she was aware of their disapproval. She would be particularly charming
+to them both this evening, but her revenge must be never to mention the
+incident to either.</p>
+
+<p>The principal result of her mother's rebuke had been to drive away
+Pauline's anger with Guy and the jealousy of his friend. All she thought
+now was of the time when next they would meet and when she would be able
+to laugh with him over the absurdity of other people pretending to know
+anything about the ways of love or of lovers like themselves. She
+decided also that, as a penance for having been angry with Guy, she
+would take care to enquire the very first thing about the mystery of the
+inscription on the window. Oh, but how she hoped his friend had not come
+to stay at Plashers Mead, for that would surely spoil this Summer of
+theirs.<a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a></p>
+
+<p>The next afternoon, when Pauline went into the paddock, Guy was waiting
+for her on the mill-stream, her place in the canoe all ready as usual.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you found your friend?" she asked, faithful to her resolution.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a sign of him," said Guy. "What on earth he came for, I can't
+think. Miss Peasey never saw him and of course she never heard him. He
+must have been bicycling. However, don't let's waste time in talking
+about Michael Fane."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline smiled at him with all her heart. How wonderful Guy was to
+reward her so richly for the little effort it had cost to enquire about
+his friend.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been prospecting this morning," he announced as they shot along in
+the direction of the bridge. "They haven't started to make hay on the
+other side, so I'm going to paddle you furiously upstream until we find
+some secret and magical meadow where we can hide and forget about
+yesterday's fiasco."</p>
+
+<p>They glided underneath the bridge and left it quivering in the empty
+sunlight behind them; they swept silently over the mill-pool while
+Pauline held her breath. Then the banks closed in upon their canoe and
+Guy fought his way against the swifter running of the river, on and on,
+on and on between the long grasses of the uncut meadows, on and on, on
+and on past the waterfall where the Abbey stream joined the main stream
+and gave it a wider and easier course.</p>
+
+<p>"Phew, it's hot," Guy exclaimed. "Sprinkle me with water."</p>
+
+<p>She splashed him laughing; and he seized her hand to kiss her dabbled
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Laugh, my sweet sweet heart," he said. "It was your laugh I heard
+before I ever heard your voice, that night when I stood and looked at
+you and Margaret as if you<a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a> were two silver people who had fallen down
+from the moon."</p>
+
+<p>Again she sprinkled him laughing, and again he seized her hand and
+kissed her dabbled fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"They're as cool as coral," he said. "Why are you wrinkling your nose at
+me? Pauline, your eyes have vanished away!"</p>
+
+<p>He plucked speedwell flowers and threw them into her lap.</p>
+
+<p>"When I haven't got you with me," he said, "I have to pretend that the
+speedwells are your eyes, and that the dog-roses are your cheeks."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is my nose?" she asked, clapping her hands because she was
+sure he would not be able to think of any likeness.</p>
+
+<p>"Your nose is incomparable," he told her: and then he bent to his paddle
+and made the canoe fly along so that the water fluted to right and left
+of the bows. Ultimately they came to an island where all the afternoon
+they sat under a willow that was pluming with scanty shade a thousand
+forget-me-nots.</p>
+
+<p>Problems faded out upon the languid air, for Pauline was too well
+content with Guy's company to spoil the June peace. At last, however,
+she disengaged herself from his caressing arm and turned to him a
+serious and puzzled face. And when she was asking her question she knew
+how all the afternoon it had been fretting the back of her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Why was Mother angry with me yesterday because I came into Plashers
+Mead to say good-night to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Was she angry?" asked Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Monica saw us and got home before me and told her, and she was
+worried at what people would think. What would they think?"</p>
+
+<p>Guy looked at her: then he shook his fist at the sky.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God, why must people try...."<a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a></p>
+
+<p>She touched his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, don't swear. At least not ... you'll call me superstitious and
+foolish," she murmured dismayfully, "but really it hurts me to hear you
+say that."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you anything but the most lovely and perfect thing on
+earth," he vowed passionately. "And it drives me mad that people should
+try to spoil your naturalness ... but still ... it was thoughtless of
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"But why, why?" she asked. "That's the word Mother used about you. Only,
+why, why? Why shouldn't I go and say good-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear, there was no harm in that. But you see, village people might say
+horrid things.... I was dreadfully to blame. Yes, of course I was."</p>
+
+<p>She flushed like a carnation at dawn; and when Guy put his arms round
+her, she drew away.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Guy," she said brokenly. "I can't bear to think of being alone
+to-night. I shall be asking questions all the night long, I know I
+shall. It's like that horrid mill-pool."</p>
+
+<p>"Mill-pool?" he echoed, looking at her in perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>She sighed and stared sadly down at the forget-me-nots.</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't understand: you'd think I was hysterical and stupid."</p>
+
+<p>Silently they left the island, and silently for some time they floated
+down the stream: then Pauline tossed her head bravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Love's rather cruel in a way."</p>
+
+<p>Guy looked aghast.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, you don't regret falling in love with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course not, of course not. Oh, I love you more than I can say."</p>
+
+<p>When Guy's arms were round her again, Pauline thought that love could be
+as cruel as he chose; she did not care for his cruelty.<a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>July</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">G</span>UY had been conscious ever since that rose-gold evening of the ragged
+robins of new elements having entered into his and Pauline's love for
+each other. All this month, however, June creeping upon them with
+verdurous and muffled steps had plotted to foil the least attempt on
+Guy's part to face the situation. Now the casual indiscretion of
+yesterday brought him sharply against it, and, as in the melancholy of
+the long Summer evening he contemplated the prospect, it appeared
+disquieting enough. In nine months he had done nothing: no quibbling
+could circumvent that deadly fact. For nine months he had lived in a
+house of his own, had accepted paternal help, had betrothed himself; and
+with every passing month he had done less to justify any single one of
+the steps. What were the remedies? The house might be sub-let: at any
+rate his father's bounty came to an end this quarter: engaging himself
+formally to Pauline, he could throttle the Muse and become a
+schoolmaster, and in two years perhaps they could be married. It would
+be a wrench to abandon poetry and the hope of fame, indeed it would
+stagger the very foundations of his pride; but rather than lose Pauline
+he would be content to remain the obscurest creature on earth.
+Literature might blazon his name: but her love blazoned his soul. Poetry
+was only the flame of life made visible, and if he were to sacrifice
+Pauline what gasping and ignoble rushlight of his own would he offer to
+the world?</p>
+
+<p>Yet could he bear to leave Pauline herself? The truth was he should have
+gone in March when she was in a way still remote and when like a star
+she would have shone as<a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a> brightly upon him absent or present. Now that
+star was burning in his heart with passionate fires and fevers and with
+quenchless ardours. It would be like death to leave her now; were she
+absent from him her very name would be as a draught of liquid fire. More
+implacable, too, than his own torment of love might be hers. If he had
+gone in March, she would have been gently sad, but in those first months
+she still had other interests; now if he parted from her she would
+merely all the time be growing older and they would have between them
+and their separation the intolerable wastage of their youth. Pauline had
+surrendered to love all the simple joys which had hitherto occupied her
+daily life; and if she were divided from him, he feared for the fire
+that might consume her. It was he who had kindled it upon that
+rosaureate evening of mid-May, and it was he who was charged with her
+ultimate happiness. The accident of yesterday had reminded him sharply
+how far this was so, and a sense of the tremendous responsibility
+created by his love for her lay heavily upon Guy. He must never again
+give her family an occasion to remonstrate with her: he had been the one
+to blame, and he wished Mrs. Grey had spoken to him without saying
+anything to Pauline. How sad this long evening was, with reluctant day
+even now at half-past-nine o'clock still luminous in the West.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning there was a letter for Guy from his father.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">F<small>OX</small> H<small>ALL</small>,&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+G<small>ALTON</small>,&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+H<small>ANTS</small>.&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+<i>June 25.</i></p>
+
+<p class="nind"><i>My dear Guy,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I enclose the balance of the sum I gave you, and I hope it will
+have been enough to pay all the debts at which you hinted in your
+last letter. I do not think it would be fair to<a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a> you to hamper you
+with any more money. In fact, I trust you have already made up your
+mind not to ask for any.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>You'll be sorry to hear that Wilkinson has fallen ill and must go
+abroad at once. This makes it imperative for me to know at once if
+you are coming to help me next September. If you are, I'm afraid I
+must ask you to come here immediately and take Wilkinson's place
+this term. I'm sorry to drag you away from your country estate, but
+I cannot go to the bother of getting a temporary master and then
+begin again with you in September. It unsettles the boys too much.
+So if you want to come in September, you must come now. You will
+only miss a month of your house and I hope that during the seven
+weeks of the summer holidays you will be able to transfer yourself
+comfortably and abandon it for ever.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Take a day to think over my proposal and telegraph your answer
+to-morrow.</i></p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Your affectionate father,&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+John Hazlewood.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>It seemed fateful, the arrival of this letter on top of the doubts of
+last night. A day was not long in which to make up his mind. And yet,
+after all, a moment was enough. He ought to go: he ought to telegraph
+immediately before he could vacillate: he must not see Pauline first: he
+ought to accept this offer: farewell, fame!</p>
+
+<p>Guy opened the front-door and walked into Birdwood come with a note from
+the Rectory.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Pauline took me away from my work to give you this most particular
+and important and wait for the answer," said the gardener.</p>
+
+<p>Guy asked him to step inside and see Miss Peasey, while he went upstairs
+to write the reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Peasey doesn't think much of your variety, Birdwood. She says the
+garden is entirely blue."<a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a></p>
+
+<p>"What, all those dellyphiniums the Rector raised with his own hand and
+she don't like blue!"</p>
+
+<p>Birdwood shook his head to express another defeat at the hands of
+incomprehensible woman. A moment later, as Guy went up to his room with
+Pauline's note, he heard him bellow in the kitchen:</p>
+
+<p>"What's this I hear, mum, about the garden being too blue?"</p>
+
+<p>Then Guy closed the door of the library and shut out everything but the
+sound of the stream.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind"><i>My darling,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I've got such exciting news. Mr. Delamere who's a friend of ours
+has asked us to stay in his barge&mdash;I mean he's lent us the barge
+for us to stay in. It's called the Naiad and it's on the Thames at
+Ladingford and when we've finished with it we're going to have it
+towed down to Oxford and come back from there by train. Mother
+asked if you would like to come and stay with us for a fortnight.
+Think of it, a fortnight! Margaret is coming and Monica is going to
+stay with Father, who can't leave the garden. Oh, Guy, I'm wild
+with happiness. We're to start on the first of July about. Do send
+me a little note by Birdwood. Of course I know there's no need. But
+I would love to have a little note especially as we shan't see each
+other till after lunch.</i></p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Your own adoring&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+Pauline.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Guy wrote the little note to Pauline and to his father he wrote a long
+letter explaining that it was impossible to give up what he was doing to
+be a schoolmaster.</p>
+
+<p>It was peerless weather when they set out in Godbold's wagonette on the
+nine miles to Ladingford. Guy was thrilled to be travelling like this
+with Mrs. Grey, Margaret<a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a> and Pauline. The girls were in flowered muslin
+dresses, seeming more airy than he had ever thought them: and the
+luggage piled up beside Godbold had the same exquisite lightness, so
+that it appeared less like luggage than a store of birds' feathers. The
+thought of nearly having missed this summery pilgrimage made Guy catch
+his breath.</p>
+
+<p>They arrived at Ladingford toward tea-time and found the barge lying by
+an old stone bridge about a mile away from the village. Apart from the
+spire of Ladingford church nothing conspicuously broke the horizon of
+that flat green country stretching for miles to a shadowy range of
+hills. Whichever way they looked, these meads extended with here and
+there willows and elms; close at hand was the quiet by-road that crossed
+the bridge and meandered over the low lands, as still and traffickless
+as the young Thames itself.</p>
+
+<p>The Naiad was painted peacock blue; owing to the turreted poops the
+owner had superimposed and the balustrade with rail of gilt gadroons, it
+almost had the look of a dismasted Elizabethan ship.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything more you'll want?" Godbold enquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing more, thank you, Mr. Godbold," said Mrs. Grey. "Charming ...
+charming ... such a pleasant drive. Good afternoon, Mr. Godbold."</p>
+
+<p>The carrier turned his horse; and when the sound of the wagonette had
+died away, there was silence except where the stream lapped against the
+barge and where very far off some rooks were cawing.</p>
+
+<p>Guy and Pauline had resolved that they would give Margaret no chance of
+calling them selfish during this fortnight; and since they were together
+all the time, it was much easier now not to wish to escape from
+everybody. The first week went by in such a perfection of delight as Guy
+had scarcely thought was possible. Indeed it remained ultimately
+unimaginable, this dream life on the Naiad.<a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a> A pleasant woman in a
+sunbonnet came to cook breakfast and dinner; and Pauline and Margaret
+went to Ladingford and bought sunbonnets, a pink one for Pauline and for
+Margaret one of watchet blue. In the fresh mornings Guy and the sisters
+wandered idly over the meads; but in the afternoon Margaret generally
+read a book in the shade while Guy and Pauline went for walks, walks
+that ended always in sitting by the river's edge and telling each other
+the tale of their love. The nights with a clear moon waxing to the full
+were entrancing. There was a small piano on the barge, the notes of
+which had been brought by damp almost to the timbre of an exhausted
+spinet. It served however for Mrs. Grey to accompany Pauline while she
+played on a violin simple tunes. Guy used to lie back on deck and count
+the stars above Pauline's pavans and galliards: then from the silence
+that followed he would see her coming, shadowy, light as the dewfall, to
+sit close beside him, to sit, her hand in his, for an hour while the
+moon climbed the sky and the fern-owls croaked in their hunting. And as
+the romantic climax of the day, it was wonderful to fall asleep with the
+knowledge that Pauline slept nearer to him than she had ever slept
+before.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy ought to go and see the Lamberts at the Manor," Mrs. Grey announced
+at the end of the second week. "I've written to Mrs. Lambert. It will be
+interesting for him."</p>
+
+<p>Guy was thrilled by the notion of visiting Ladingford Manor, which had
+been one of the great fortresses of romance held against the devastating
+commercial morality of the Victorian prime with its science and
+sciolism, and which possessed already some of the fabulous appeal of the
+mediaeval songs and tapestries John Lambert had created there. An
+invitation came presently to walk over any afternoon. Margaret said at
+first she would not go; but Guy who was in a condition of excited
+reverence declared she must come; and so the three of them set out
+across a<a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a> path in the meads that Guy populated with romantic figures of
+the mid-Victorian days. On this stile Swinburne may have sat; here
+Burne-Jones may have looked back at the sky; and surely it were
+reasonable to suppose that Rossetti might have tied up his shoe on this
+big stone by this brook, even as Guy was tying up his shoe now. Soon
+they saw a group of elms and the smoke of clustered chimneys; there
+golden-grey in front of them stood Ladingford Manor.</p>
+
+<p>"There's the sort of stillness of fame about it," Guy whispered.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered if Mrs. Lambert would now resemble at all the famous
+pictures of her he had seen. And would she talk familiarly of the famous
+people she had known? They came to the gate, entering the garden along a
+flagged path on either side of which runnels flowed between borders of
+trim box. Mrs. Lambert was sitting in a yew parlour under a blue silk
+umbrella that was almost a pavilion, and she received them with many
+comments upon the energy of walking so far on this hot afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"You would like some beer, I'm sure. There is a bell in that mulberry
+tree. If you toll the bell, Charlotte will bring you beer."</p>
+
+<p>Guy tolled the bell, and Charlotte arrived with a pewter tray and pewter
+mugs of beer. Margaret would not be thirsty, but Pauline was afraid of
+hurting Mrs. Lambert's feelings, and she pretended to drink, lancing
+blue eyes at Guy over the rim of her mug.</p>
+
+<p>"It's home-brewed beer," said Mrs. Lambert placidly, and then she leaned
+back and sighed at the dome of her blue silk umbrella. She was still
+very beautiful, and Guy had a sensation that he was sitting at the feet
+of Helen or Lady Flora the lovely Roman. She was old now, but she wore
+about her like an aureole the dignity of all those inspirations of
+famous dead painters.<a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Home-brewed beer," Mrs. Lambert repeated dreamily, and seemed to fall
+asleep in the past; while in the bee-drowsed yew parlour Pauline,
+Margaret and Guy sat watching her. The throat of Sidonia the sorceress
+was hers; the heavy lids of Hipparchia were hers; the wrist of
+Ermengarde or Queen Blanche was hers; and the pewter tray on the grass
+at her feet held Circe's wine.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mrs. Lambert woke up and asked if they would like to see the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Toll the bell in the mulberry-tree, and Charlotte will come. You must
+excuse my getting up."</p>
+
+<p>They followed Charlotte round the rooms of Ladingford Manor. There on
+the walls were the tapestries that had inspired John Lambert, and there
+were the tapestries even more beautiful that he himself had woven. On
+the tables were the books John Lambert had printed, which gave
+positively the aspect of being treasures by the discretion of their
+external appearance. In other rooms hung the original pictures of
+hackneyed mezzotints; and how rare they looked now with their velvety
+pigments of emerald and purple, of orange, cinnabar and scarlet glowing
+in the tempered sunlight. Margaret, as she moved from room to room,
+seemed with her weight of dusky hair and fastidious remoteness to belong
+to the company of lovely women whose romances filled these splendid
+scenes; but Pauline was life, irradiating with her joy each picture and
+giving to it the complement of its own still beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Lambert keeps very well, miss," said Charlotte as they came out
+again from the house. "But of course she doesn't get about much now. Yet
+we can't really complain, especially with this fine weather."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like some more beer?" Mrs. Lambert asked, when they joined
+her again in the yew parlour.</p>
+
+<p>They said they were no longer thirsty; and, having thanked her for the
+pleasures of the visit, they left her<a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a> in the past, returning by the
+pale green path across the meadows to where the Naiad lay by the old
+bridge.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I did want some tea," sighed Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>"I love Mrs. Lambert," cried Pauline, dancing through the meads. "Wasn't
+it touching of her to offer Margaret beer? Oh, Guy, when we're married
+and when you die and I receive young poets at Plashers Mead, shall I
+offer their future sisters-in-law home-brewed beer? Oh, but I'm sure I
+shall forget to offer them anything."</p>
+
+<p>Was there any reason, thought Guy, why Plashers Mead should not become a
+second Ladingford Manor? Friends long ago took that house together:
+perhaps Michael Fane would after all see the necessity of a second
+Ladingford Manor and share Plashers Mead with himself and Pauline. After
+this visit it was impossible to contemplate the prospect of being a
+schoolmaster: it was impossible to imagine Pauline as a schoolmaster's
+wife. At all costs their love must be sustained on the pinnacle of
+romance where now it stood. Margaret would sympathize with his desire to
+set Pauline in beauty; she, dreading the idea of marrying an Indian
+engineer, would understand how impossible it was to make Pauline the
+wife of a schoolmaster. Such a declension must somehow be avoided. It
+were better they should wait three years for marriage, five years,
+fourteen years as Tennyson had waited, rather than that he should make
+the monstrous surrender he had been so near to making. At least he would
+put himself and his work to the test and in a year he would be able to
+publish his first volume of poems. Perhaps his father would realize then
+that he deserved to marry Pauline. After all they were together: there
+were maddening restrictions of course, but they were together. This
+visit to Ladingford Manor must be accepted as an omen to persevere in
+his original intention; for he had been granted the vision of a
+perfected beauty, which he knew, by reading the lives of the men who
+made it, had only<a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a> been achieved after desperate struggles and
+disappointments. This enchanted time on the Naiad must be the
+anticipated reward of a tremendous industry when he got back to
+Wychford. He would no more break the rules and fret at the restrictions
+made for him and Pauline. Every hour when they were together should
+henceforth be doubled in the intensity of its capacity for being
+enjoyed. One thing only he would demand, that in August they should be
+formally and openly engaged. Otherwise when Autumn came and made it
+impossible to go on the river, they would be kept to the Rectory; and
+the few hours of her company he would have must at least be free. He
+would talk to Margaret about it, so that she might use her influence to
+procure this favour. Then he would write and tell his father. All would
+be easy; Ladingford had inspired him. He beheld the visit in retrospect
+more and more clearly as an exhortation to endure against whatever the
+world should offer him to betray his ambition. Yet was Pauline the
+world? No, certainly Pauline had no kinship with the world, and
+therefore he was the more straightly bound to disregard the voice of
+material prosperity. She had joked about herself as a Mrs. Lambert of
+the future; but behind the lightness of her jest had stood confidence in
+himself and in his fame. Should he imprison that spirit of mirth and
+fire in the husk of a schoolmaster's wife?</p>
+
+<p>The second week passed: the time at Ladingford was over, and early in
+the morning they must start for the journey of thirty miles down to
+Oxford. The dapple-grey horse that would tow the barge was already
+arrived and now stood munching the long grass in the shade of the
+bridge: the swallows were high in the golden air of the afternoon: the
+long-purples on the banks of the young river seemed to await
+reproachfully the disturbance of their tranquillity. To-morrow came: the
+dapple-grey horse was harnessed to the rope: and then slowly, slowly
+the<a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a> Naiad glided forward, leaving astern the grey bridge, the
+long-purples on the bank and the swallows high in the silver air of the
+morning. There was not yet any poignancy of parting; for the spire of
+Ladingford church remained so long in sight that scarcely did they
+notice the slow recession; and often, when they thought it was gone, the
+winding river would show it to them again; and in the end, when really
+it seemed to have vanished, by standing on the poop they could still
+make out where now it pierced thinly the huge sky. Moreover the
+contentment of that imperceptible evanescence and of their dreaming
+progress down the young Thames was plenary, lulling all regrets for a
+peace that seemed not yet truly to be lost. The hay in the meadows along
+the banks was mostly carried, and the cattle were magically fused with
+the July sunlight, curiously dematerialized like the creatures of a
+mirage. If a human voice was audible, it was audible deep in the green
+distance and belonged to the landscape as gently as the murmurous water
+scalloping the bows. Sometimes indeed they would pass late mowers who
+leaned upon their scythes and waved good fortune to the journey, but
+mostly it was all an emptiness of air and grass.</p>
+
+<p>"If only this young Thames flowed on for ever," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>He and Pauline were leaning over the rail of the barge, and Guy felt a
+sudden impulse to snatch at the bank rich in that moment with yellow
+loosestrife, and by his action arrest for ever the progress of the
+barge, so that for ever they would stay like the lovers on a Grecian
+urn.</p>
+
+<p>"And really," Guy went on, as already the banks of yellow loosestrife
+were become banks of long-purples, "there is no reason why for us in a
+way this river should not flow on for ever. Dear, everything had seemed
+so perishable before I found you. Pauline, you don't think I ought to
+surrender my intention, do you? I mean, you don't think I ought to go
+away from Plashers Mead?"<a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a></p>
+
+<p>Guy went on to tell her about the decision he had taken on the day the
+visit to Ladingford was arranged.</p>
+
+<p>"But it would have been dreadful to miss this time," Pauline declared.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I felt it would be impossible," he agreed. "But even if our
+marriage is postponed for another year, you do think I ought to stick it
+out here, don't you? And really, you know, few lovers can have such
+wonderful hours as the hours we do have."</p>
+
+<p>Easily she reassured him with her confidence in the rightness of his
+decision: easily she assuaged the ache of any lingering doubt with the
+proclamation of that inevitable triumph in the end.</p>
+
+<p>"But we must be engaged openly," said Guy. "You know, I shall be
+twenty-three next month. Do you think we can be engaged properly in
+August?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mother promised in Spring," said Pauline. "Why don't you talk to her
+about it? Why don't you talk to her about it now? She loves you to talk
+to her."</p>
+
+<p>He looked round to where Mrs. Grey was sitting in a deck-chair;
+evidently by the rhythmic motion of her fingers she was restating to
+herself a tune which had formerly pleased her, as the barge glided on
+past a scene that changed perceptibly only in details of flowers and
+trees, while the great sky and the green hollow land and the blue
+distances rested immutable. Guy came and sat beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"I've never enjoyed a fortnight so much in my life," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled at him, but did not speak, for whatever quartet she was
+restating had to be finished first. Soon the last noiseless bars played
+themselves and she turned round to his conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Grey, do you think that Pauline and I can be engaged openly next
+month? It won't mean, if we are, that I shall be worrying to see her
+more often. In fact I'm<a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a> sure I shall worry less. But I want to tell my
+father, so that when he comes here he'll be able to see Pauline. He's a
+conventional sort of man, and I don't think he'd grasp an engagement
+such as ours is at present. Besides, I want to talk to the Rector,
+because I feel that now he regards the whole thing as a childish game.
+So can it be formal next month?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grey sat back, so silent that Guy wondered if she had listened to a
+word he had been saying. He paused for a moment, and then as she did not
+reply, he went on:</p>
+
+<p>"I also want to say how sorry I am that I asked Pauline to come into
+Plashers Mead to say good-night to me last month. I didn't realize,
+until she told me you were angry about it, what a foolish thing I'd
+done. I don't want you to think that, if we are formally engaged, I
+shall be doing stupid things like that all the time. Really, Mrs. Grey,
+I would always be very thoughtful."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," she answered in her nervous way. "Oh, yes. I understood it to
+have been a kind of carelessness. But I had to speak to Pauline about
+it, because she is so very impulsive. It's the sort of thing I might
+have done myself when I was a girl. At least of course I shouldn't
+because the Rector ... yes ... charming ... charming ... yes.... I
+really think you might be engaged next month. It's your birthday next
+month, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you more than I can thank you," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grey waved to Pauline, who drew close.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline darling, I've thought of such a nice birthday present for Guy
+... yes ... charming, charming birthday present ... yes ... for you two
+to be engaged."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline threw her arms round her mother's neck; and Guy in his happiness
+noticed at that moment how Margaret was sitting by herself on the poop
+in the stern. He was wrenched by a sudden compunction, and asked Pauline
+if he should not go and tell Margaret.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a>"Charming of Guy ... yes ... charming," Mrs. Grey enthusiastically
+exclaimed. "Now I call that really charming, and Pauline stays with me."</p>
+
+<p>Guy went up the companion and asked Margaret if she were particularly
+anxious to be alone. She seemed to pull herself from a day-dream, as she
+turned to assure him she did not at all particularly want to be alone.
+Guy announced his good news, and Margaret offered him her slim hand with
+a kind of pathetic grace that moved him very much.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you deserve it," she said. "For you've both been so sweet to me
+all this fortnight. I expect you think I don't notice, but I do ...
+always."</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret," said Guy. "If this summer Pauline and I have seemed to run
+away from people...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but you have," Margaret interrupted. "I don't think I should find
+excuses, if I were you, for perhaps it's natural."</p>
+
+<p>"I've fancied very often," he said, "that you've thought we were
+behaving selfishly."</p>
+
+<p>"I think all lovers are selfish," she answered. "Only in your case you
+began in such an idyllic way that I thought you were going to be a
+wonderful exception. Guy, I do most dreadfully want you not to spoil in
+any way the perfectly beautiful thing that Pauline and you in love is.
+You won't, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have I yet?" asked Guy in rather a dismayed voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want me to be frank? Yes, of course you do, and anyway I must be
+frank," said Margaret. "Well, sometimes you have&mdash;I don't mean in
+wanting always to be alone or in asking her in to Plashers Mead to say
+good-night. No, I don't mean in those ways so much. Of course they make
+me feel a little sad, but smaller things than that make me more uneasy."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean," said Guy as she paused, "my staying on here and apparently
+doing nothing? But, Margaret, really<a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a> I can't leave Pauline to be a
+schoolmaster, and surely you of all people can understand that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, I wasn't thinking of that," said Margaret. "I think in fact
+you're right to stay here and keep at what you're trying to do. If it
+was ever worth doing, it must be doubly worth doing now. Oh, no, the
+only criticism I shall make is of something so small that you'll wonder
+how I can think it even worth mentioning. Guy, you know the photograph
+of Pauline which Mother used to have and which she gave you?"</p>
+
+<p>Guy nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I happened to see it on the table by your bunk, and I wonder why
+you've taken it out of its simple little wooden frame and put it in a
+silver one?"</p>
+
+<p>Guy was taken aback, and when he asked himself why he had done this, he
+could not find a reason. Now that Margaret had spoken of it, the
+consciousness of the exchange flooded him with shame as for an
+unforgivable piece of vandalism. Why indeed had he bought that silver
+frame and put the old wooden frame away, and where was the old wooden
+frame? In one of the drawers in his desk, he thought; resolving this
+very night to restore it to the photograph and fling the usurper into
+the river.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't think why I did," he stammered to Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>"You've no idea how much this has worried me," she said. "I never had
+any doubts about your appreciation of Pauline."</p>
+
+<p>"And now you have," said Guy, biting his lip with mortification.</p>
+
+<p>The landscape fading from the stern of the barge oppressed him with the
+sadness of irreparable acts that are committed heedlessly, but after
+which nothing is ever quite the same. He wished he could tear to pieces
+that silver frame.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I won't have any doubts," said Margaret, offering<a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a> him her hand
+again and smiling. "You've taken my criticism so sweetly that the change
+can't symbolize so much as I feared."</p>
+
+<p>It was very well to be forgiven like this, Guy thought, but the memory
+of his blunder was still hot upon his cheek and he felt a deep
+humiliation at the treachery of his taste. He had meant, when he came
+here to talk to Margaret, to ask her about herself and Richard, to
+display a captivating sympathy and restore to their pristine affection
+her relations with him, which latterly had seemed to diverge somewhat
+from one another. Now haunted by that silver frame, which with every
+moment of thought appeared more and more insistently the vile
+stationer's gewgaw that it was, Guy did not dare to approach Margaret in
+the security of an old intimacy.</p>
+
+<p>It was she, however, with her grace who healed the wound.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not hurt with me for speaking about that little thing?" she
+asked. "You see, you are in a way my brother."</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret, you are a dear!"</p>
+
+<p>And then recurred to him as if from Ladingford Manor the lines of
+Christina Rossetti, which he half whispered to her:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>For there is no friend like a sister</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>In calm or stormy weather;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>To cheer one if one goes astray,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>To lift one if one totters down,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>To strengthen whilst one stands.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>They had the sharper emotion for Guy because he had neither brothers nor
+sisters of his own; and that this lovely girl beside him on this
+dreaming barge should be his sister gave to the landscape one more
+incommunicable beauty.<a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a></p>
+
+<p>And so all day they glided down the young Thames; and when Guy had sat
+long enough with Margaret in the stern, he sat with Pauline at the prow;
+and about twilight they reached Oxford, whence they came to Shipcot by
+train and drove through five miles of moonlight back to Wychford.<a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>August</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">P</span>AULINE 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But we can't all leave Father and Mother," Pauline exclaimed shocked at
+the deserted prospect.</p>
+
+<p>"Now isn't that like people in love?" said Monica.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but anyway I shall only be living at Plashers Mead," Pauline went
+on. "So they won't be left entirely alone."</p>
+
+<p>"And as I probably shan'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 name="page_203" id="page_203"></a> a week it seems probable that everything at the
+Rectory will go on pretty much the same."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I've interfered much with you and Guy," said Margaret.
+"Is it necessary that you should settle my affairs?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Only when you tell us we don't understand about love."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you don't."</p>
+
+<p>"All of us don't want to be in love quite so obviously as you," said
+Margaret. "And Monica agrees with me."</p>
+
+<p>Monica nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"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 me."</p>
+
+<p>Yet, though she resented them at the time, Margaret 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<a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a> Rectory made this easy; and Guy exalted by the notion of the formal
+troth never made it difficult.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 £507,106 14s. 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 surprize for my servant Mabel, who is really a most
+good-hearted girl, tactful with the cats and not too fond of young men."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed, don't thank me at all, for I cannot imagine<a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a> 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&mdash;£280 a year."</p>
+
+<p>"And Guy has some money&mdash;£150 or £115 or it may be only £50."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us call it a hundred pounds," said Miss Verney. "For it would be
+more prudent not to exaggerate. £380 a year. And I've no doubt the
+Rector on his side would be able to manage twenty pounds. £400 a year.
+Surely a very nice little sum on which to marry. Oh, certainly quite a
+pleasant little sum."</p>
+
+<p>"Only the gentleman hasn't given you the seven thousand pounds," said
+Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>"No, exactly, he has not. That's just where it is," Miss Verney agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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 spelt with an E. Now, my own being
+Daisy after the ship which my father <a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a>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 spelt with an E, I daresay 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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Besides I <i>have</i> got a hundred and fifty," said Guy.<a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Guy dear, don't look so cross. Please don't be cross and dreadfully
+in earnest about anything so stupid as money."</p>
+
+<p>"I feel everybody will be pitying you for becoming engaged to a
+penniless pretender like me," he sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my own, I wish we were married now. God! I wish, I wish we were!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 cornfields, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder why I feel as if this were our last walk together," said
+Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Margaret, how can you say a horrid thing like that," Pauline
+exclaimed; and to-morrow drooped before her in the dusty path.</p>
+
+<p>"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."<a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a></p>
+
+<p>Pauline vowed she would go home, not caring on whose wheat she trampled,
+if Margaret talked any more like that.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"But everybody will know you belong to Guy," said Margaret, "instead of
+to all of us."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dears, my dears," Pauline vowed. "I shall always belong to you
+as well. Don't make me feel unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Then her sisters kissed her, and through the golden cornfields they
+walked silently home.</p>
+
+<p>When Pauline was in bed that night her mother lingered after Margaret
+and Monica had left her room.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you glad, darling, you are going to give Guy such a charming
+birthday present to-morrow?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to be my happy Pauline," her mother whispered. "And I think
+that with Guy you will be my happy Pauline."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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<a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a> to-morrow, before he goes out in the garden; then you
+can show him your ring."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mother, tell me what ring it is that Guy has found for me."</p>
+
+<p>"It's charming ... charming ... charming," said her mother
+enthusiastically.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"It's charming ... charming ... and now go to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>Her mother kissed her good-night and when she was gone, Pauline took
+from under her pillow the crystal ring.</p>
+
+<p>"However nice the new one is," she said, "I shall always love you best,
+you secret ring."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"What poetry will he write in you about me, you funny empty book?" she
+asked, and inscribed it:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>For Guy with all of his Pauline's love.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Summer will soon be gone," she whispered, "but nowadays it doesn't
+matter, because all days will be happy."<a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a></p>
+
+<p>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 grey. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<a name="page_211" id="page_211"></a> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, Pauline, don't get too excited," her mother begged. "And
+please don't call your father Francis in the garden."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast Pauline and Guy walked in the inner wall-garden that was
+now brilliant with ten thousand deep-throated gladioli.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline," said Guy, "this morning I learnt Milton's sonnet on his
+twenty-third birthday, and I feel rather worried. Listen,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>My hasting days fly on with full career,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>But my late Spring no bud or blossom shew'th.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="nind">Well, now, if Milton felt like that," he sighed, "what about me?
+Pauline, tell me again that you believe in me."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I believe in you," she vowed.</p>
+
+<p>"And I am right to stay here?" he asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Guy, of course, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest Guy," she said, "if you changed anything for<a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a> 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 anyone, 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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Does my love worry you?" she whispered, faint with all the
+responsibility she felt for the future of this lover of hers.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, my love for you is my life."</p>
+
+<p>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 surprized 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 colour 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a>
+them a cordial invitation to enter, and Pauline fancied that he was
+being quite exceptionally kindly in his tone toward Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"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 armchair to regard them.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," said Pauline coming straight to the heart of her subject.
+"Have you seen my engagement ring?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Very fine. Very fine, my dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, aren't you going to congratulate me?" Pauline asked.</p>
+
+<p>"On what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Father, you are naughty. On Guy of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Bless my heart," said the Rector. "And on what am I to congratulate
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>"On me of course," said Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I wonder if I can honestly do that," said the Rector very
+seriously.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only from to-day?" the Rector asked, a twinkle in his eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course," Pauline explained. "We've been in love for very
+nearly a year."</p>
+
+<p>"And when have you decided to get married?"</p>
+
+<p>Pauline looked at Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Just when you find it convenient in fact," said the Rector still
+twinkling.<a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Well, Father," Pauline interrupted, "have we got your permission?
+Because that's what we've come up to ask."</p>
+
+<p>"You surprize me," said the Rector, starting back with an exaggerated
+look of astonishment such as one might use with children.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, if you won't be serious about it, I shall be very much hurt."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I should never forgive you," Pauline declared. "Besides we're not
+young. Guy is twenty-three."</p>
+
+<p>"Now I thought he was at least fifty," said the Rector.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>The Rector rose and knocked his pipe out.</p>
+
+<p>"I must finish off the perennials. Well, well, Pauline, my dear, you're
+twenty-one...."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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<a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, we are really engaged."</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, Pauline!"</p>
+
+<p>In the dusty room among the ghosts of dead seasons and the mouldering
+store amassed by the suns of other years, they stood locked, heart to
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, do you think he'll like me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, how could he help it? But he may grumble at the idea of my being
+engaged."</p>
+
+<p>"When do you think he'll write?"</p>
+
+<p>"I expect he'll come down here to see me. In the Spring he wrote and
+said he would."</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, I'm sure he's going to make it difficult for you."</p>
+
+<p>Guy shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I know how to manage him," he proclaimed confidently.</p>
+
+<p>Then he opened the door; along the drive the wind moaned, getting up for
+a gusty Bartlemy-tide.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you happy to-night?" asked her mother, bending over Pauline when
+she was in bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mother darling, I'm so happy that I can't tell you how happy I am."</p>
+
+<p>In the candlelight 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<a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a> 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.<a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="ANOTHER_AUTUMN" id="ANOTHER_AUTUMN"></a>ANOTHER AUTUMN</h2>
+
+<h2><i>September</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">G</span>UY 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
+spilt 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 humoured 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 pretences: 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.</p>
+
+<p>His father kept him waiting over a week before he replied to the
+announcement Guy had ultimately decided to send<a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a> him; and when it came,
+the letter did not promise the most favourable prospect.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">F<small>OX</small> H<small>ALL</small>,&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+G<small>ALTON</small>,&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+H<small>ANTS</small>.&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+<i>September 1st.</i></p>
+
+<p class="nind"><i>Dear Guy,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>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 behaviour of a
+thoughtless and wilful young man. I was most anxious, as I clearly
+showed (i) by my gift of £150 (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 favour 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<a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a> your income of £150, 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</i></p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Your affectionate father&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+John Hazlewood.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>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.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>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 savour 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?</p>
+
+<p>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? £4 16s. and
+there was a blank counter-foil which Guy vaguely thought represented a
+cheque for £2. 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<a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a> quarter would have to provide
+fuel. £2 16s. 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 wobbled 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that will make quite a little variety, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Where will he sleep?" Guy asked.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Peasey jumped and said that there, she'd never thought of that.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, think about it now, Miss Peasey."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Peasey thought hard, but unfruitfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Could you borrow a bed in the town?" Guy shouted.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, wouldn't it seem rather funny? Why don't you send in to Oxford
+and buy a bed, Mr. Hazlewood?"</p>
+
+<p>Her pathetic trust in the strength of his financial resources, which Guy
+usually tried to encourage, was now rather irritating.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems hardly worth while to buy a bed for two or three days," he
+objected.<a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we can buy more butter in Wychford, but we can't get a bed," Guy
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he didn't touch the bread," said Miss Peasey. "Trust him for that.
+I never knew a large dog so dainty before."</p>
+
+<p>Guy decided to postpone the subject of the bed and try Miss Peasey more
+personally.</p>
+
+<p>"Could you spare your chest of drawers?" he asked at top voice.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 revelling, 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<a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a> visit, and after lunch on
+Thursday he got into the trap beside Godbold and drove off equably
+enough to meet the train at Shipcot.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, this train is usually pretty punctual," Guy answered, and for a
+minute or two after a self-conscious handshake 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.</p>
+
+<p>Guy introduced his father to Godbold, who greeted him with a kind of
+congratulatory respect and assumed toward Guy a manner that gave the
+impression of sharing with Mr. Hazlewood in his paternity.</p>
+
+<p>"Hope you're going to pay us a good long visit," said Godbold hospitably
+flicking the pony.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you won't see us play Shipcot on Saturday, the last match of the
+season?" said Godbold in disappointed benevolence.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I shan't, I'm afraid. You see, my son is not so busy as I am."<a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>His father shrank perceptibly from a dominical prevision so foreign to
+his nature, and Guy changed the conversation by pointing out features in
+the landscape.</p>
+
+<p>"Extraordinarily inspiring sort of country," he affirmed.</p>
+
+<p>"So I should imagine," said his father. "Though precisely what that
+epithet implies I don't quite know."</p>
+
+<p>Guy was determined not to be put out of humour and, surrendering the
+epithet at once, he substituted 'bracing'.</p>
+
+<p>"So is Hampshire," his father snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"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.
+Surprizingly, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks as if it would be very damp," was his only comment.</p>
+
+<p>Here Godbold, who had perhaps for some time been conscious that all was
+not perfectly well between his passengers, interposed with a defence of
+Plashers Mead.</p>
+
+<p>"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.<a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a> 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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty good old apple-trees, eh? Ribston pippins nearly all of them.
+The blossom was rather spoilt by that wet May, but there's not such a
+bad crop considering. I like this salmon-coloured 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."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course," agreed Mr. Hazlewood dryly.</p>
+
+<p>"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? Hulloa, there's
+my housekeeper. Miss Peasey, here's my father. She's very deaf, so
+you'll have to shout."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 name="page_227" id="page_227"></a></p>
+
+<p>"A little empty, I'm afraid," said Guy, as his father looked round the
+hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that water I hear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the river washes the back of the house."</p>
+
+<p>"And this place isn't damp?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit," Guy declared positively.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it smells of bronchitis and double-pneumonia."</p>
+
+<p>Guy showed his father the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got it rather jolly, I think," he ventured.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my candlesticks and chairs, that your mother lent you for your
+rooms at Balliol, look very well," his father agreed.</p>
+
+<p>Guy led the way to the spare bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I picked it up somehow," said Guy lightly. He had decided on second
+thoughts not to reveal the secret of the Rectory's loan.</p>
+
+<p>When his father had rid himself of the dust from his journey, Guy
+introduced him proudly to his own room.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this is certainly quite a pleasant place," Mr. Hazlewood
+admitted. "If not too draughty with those two windows."</p>
+
+<p>"You must scratch a motto on the pane with the diamond-pencil," Guy
+suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"My motto is hard work."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, write that. Or at any rate put your initials and the date."</p>
+
+<p>His father took up the pencil with that expression of superiority which
+Guy most hated, and scratched his name rather awkwardly on the glass.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope people won't suppose that is my ordinary hand," he said, grimly
+regarding the <i>John Hazlewood</i> of his<a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a> inscription. During tea Guy
+wondered when he ought 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 £150. 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?</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Guy waited anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I've never thought you haven't wanted to be here," his father replied.
+"But between what we want and what we owe there is a wide gap."</p>
+
+<p>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?<a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a></p>
+
+<p>"But sometimes," said Guy desperately, "inclination and duty coincide."</p>
+
+<p>"Very rarely, I'm afraid, in this world."</p>
+
+<p>"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 formulae 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I was merely using a figure of speech," said his father.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I expect you'd like to have a look at some of my work," he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"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 favourable or unfavourable did not matter, his suspense was
+sharp and the inexpression of his father's demeanour, that<a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a> 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.</p>
+
+<p>At last the manuscripts were finished, and Guy sat back for the verdict.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean monetarily?" Guy asked.</p>
+
+<p>His father did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't count as a successful issue recognition from the people
+who care for poetry?" Guy went on.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I should," said his father looking perfectly convinced that he
+would.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't believe you would," said Guy. "How do you know I'm not a
+great man?"</p>
+
+<p>His father laughed dryly.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>great</i> men are generally remarkable for their modesty."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, after they've been accorded the homage of the<a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"For another year at any rate," Guy said. "That is until I have a volume
+of poems ready."</p>
+
+<p>"And your engagement?" asked his father.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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...."</p>
+
+<p>Guy and his father wandered about until dusk, and in the evening after
+dinner they played piquet.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you wouldn't enjoy a walk in the moonlight?" Guy suggested
+after the third hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I have my health to think about. Term begins in a fortnight you know,"
+said Mr. Hazlewood.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a> 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 mother's 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 toward 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.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll tell you all the flowers wrong," Pauline warned him.<a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hazlewood bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I know nothing about flowers."</p>
+
+<p>"Guy has learnt a lot from Father," said Pauline. "Haven't you, Guy?"</p>
+
+<p>She was making the bravest effort, but it was hopeless, utterly
+hopeless, Guy thought.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 enquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I hope you liked Pauline?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Guy, your impulsiveness extends too far. How can I after a few
+minutes' conversation pronounce an opinion?"</p>
+
+<p>"But she's not a pathological case," cried Guy in exasperation.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, she was shy."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;er&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 £150 a year&mdash;too little to make you really
+independent, too much to compel you to relinquish your own mad scheme of
+livelihood."</p>
+
+<p>"I have had the privilege of reading your verse," he continued,
+protesting against an interruption with upraised<a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a> 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 commonsense 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, <i>do</i> something. Don't stay here talking of what you are going to
+do. Say good-bye 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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens!" Guy ejaculated.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there may be other reputable papers, though I confess The
+Spectator is my favourite."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know. It probably would be."</p>
+
+<p>"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."<a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a></p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"In other words," his father interrupted, "to tempt me to support
+you&mdash;or rather as it now turns out to help you to get married."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Guy got up and went to the window, seeking to find from the moonlight a
+coolness that would keep his temper in hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you have preferred that I did not ask Pauline to marry, that I
+made love to her without any intention of marriage?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But why, why? What really good reason can you bring forward against my
+behaviour, except reasons based on a cowardly fear of not being
+prosperous? You have<a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a> 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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But if ... oh, love is not a matter of the will."</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me," his father contradicted obstinately. "Everything is a
+matter of will. That is precisely the point I am trying to make."</p>
+
+<p>Guy marched over to the fireplace and, balancing himself on the fender,
+proclaimed the attainment of a deadlock.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;I don't mean of his work, but of his manner of
+life&mdash;what would have happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"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 toward the worst excesses of human folly."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hazlewood sniffed.</p>
+
+<p>"Destiny is the weak man's canonization of his own vices."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then I <i>will</i> 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<a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a> responsibility. For what you've done for me
+I'm very much obliged. Would you care for a hand at piquet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, certainly," said his father.</p>
+
+<p>Guy hugged himself with another minor triumph. At least it was he who
+had determined when the discussion should be closed.</p>
+
+<p>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.<a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>October</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">"</span><span class="letra">M</span>Y dears, he frightened me to death," Pauline declared to her family
+when Mr. Hazlewood had left the Rectory. "Only I expect, you know, that
+really he's rather sweet."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think he approved of us very much," said Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't approve of him very much," said Monica.</p>
+
+<p>"And where was Francis?" asked Mrs. Grey.</p>
+
+<p>"Francis was a naughty boy," said Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>Since they were sitting in the nursery, her mother allowed the Christian
+name to pass without reproof.</p>
+
+<p>"He was so exactly like Guy," said Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>"Like Guy?" Pauline echoed incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course, didn't you notice that?" Margaret laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You're quite right, Margaret," said Mrs. Grey. "How clever of you to
+see. Now of course I realize how much alike they were ... how clever you
+are!"</p>
+
+<p>"Without Pauline," Margaret went on, "Guy might easily become his father
+all over again."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dears," said Pauline, "that would be terrible. I remember how
+frightened I was of Guy the first day he came to the Rectory, and if he
+grows more like his father, I don't think I shall ever be anything else
+but frightened of him, even if we live for ever. For, though I'm sure
+he's really very sweet, I don't believe one would ever get quite used to
+Mr. Hazlewood."</p>
+
+<p>Yet when Pauline was alone and had an opportunity to look back upon the
+visit, its effect was rather encouraging<a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a> than otherwise. For one thing
+it curiously made Guy more actual, because until the personality of his
+father projected itself upon the scene of their love he had always
+possessed for Pauline a kind of romantic unreality. In the Spring days
+and Summer days which had seemed to dedicate themselves to the service
+of intimacy, Guy had talked a great deal of his life before they met,
+but the more he had told her, the more was she in the state of being
+unable to realize that the central figure of these old tales was not a
+dream. When he was with her, she was often in a daze of wonder at the
+credibility of being loved like this; and there was never an occasion of
+seeing him even after the briefest absence that did not hold in the
+heart of its pleasure a surprize at his return. The appearance of Mr.
+Hazlewood was a phenomenon that gave the pledge of prosaic authority to
+her love, like a statement in print that however absurd or uncomfortable
+has a value so far beyond mere talk. She had often been made rather
+miserable by Guy's tales of the ladies he had loved with airy
+heedlessness, but these heroines had all faded out in the unreality of
+his life apart from her, and they took their place with days of
+adventure described in Macedonia or with the old diversions of Oxford.
+The visit of Mr. Hazlewood with the chilly disapproval it had shed was
+more authentic than, for instance, the idea of Guy's dark-eyed mother,
+who had seemed in his narrations almost to threaten Pauline with her
+son's fairy ancestry, as if from the grave she might at any moment
+summon him away. Mr. Hazlewood had carried with him a wonderful
+assurance of ordinariness. The merely external resemblance between him
+and his son proved that Guy could grow old; and the sense of his
+opposition was a trifling discomfort in comparison with the assurance he
+offered of an imaginable future. She remembered that her first idea of
+Guy had been that of someone dry and cynical; and no doubt this first
+impression of his father was equally wrong.<a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a> She who had been so shy and
+speechless was no doubt much to blame, and the family had done nothing
+to help out the situation. It had been unkind of her father to hide
+himself, since to Mr. Hazlewood, who could not have understood that it
+was the sort of thing her father would be sure to do, such behaviour
+must have presented itself very oddly.</p>
+
+<p>The Rector on Pauline's remonstrating with him was not at all penitent.</p>
+
+<p>"When your marriage, my dear, comes on the horizon&mdash;I don't mind how
+faint a horizon&mdash;of the probable, then it will be time to discuss
+matters in the practical way I suppose Mr. Hazlewood would like them to
+be discussed. Moreover in any case I forgot that the worthy gentleman
+was coming."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline was anxious to make excuses for the Rector to Guy, but Guy when
+he came round next day was only apologetic for his own father's
+behaviour; and he and she came to a conclusion in the end that parents
+must be forgiven on account of their age.</p>
+
+<p>"At the same time," Guy added, "I blame my father for his conventional
+outlook. He doesn't seem able to realize the extraordinary help that you
+are to my work. In fact he doesn't realize that my work <i>is</i> work. He's
+been teaching for so many years that now he can no longer learn
+anything. Your father's behaviour is reasonable. He doesn't take us
+quite seriously, but he leaves the situation to our disentanglement.
+Well, we shall convince him that nothing in the world is so simple as a
+love like ours; but the worst of my father is that even if he were
+convinced he would be more annoying than ever."</p>
+
+<p>"You must make allowances, Guy. For one thing how few people, even when
+they're young, understand about love. Besides, he's anxious about your
+career."</p>
+
+<p>"What right has he to be anxious?" Guy burst out. "If I fail, I pay the
+penalty, not he."<a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a></p>
+
+<p>"But he would be so hurt if you failed," she urged.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, if you can say that, you can imagine that I will fail. Even
+you are beginning to have doubts."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't any doubts," she whispered. "I know you will be famous. And
+yet I have doubts of another sort. I sometimes wonder if I shall be
+enough when you are famous."</p>
+
+<p>The question she had raised launched Guy upon a sea of eloquence. He
+worried no more about his father, but only protested his dependence upon
+Pauline's love for everything that he would ever have accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I think I shall seem dull one day," she persisted with a shake
+of the head.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. How could you seem dull to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm not clever...."</p>
+
+<p>"Avoid that wretched word," he cried. "It can only be applied to
+thieves, politicians and lawyers. I have told you a thousand times what
+you are to me, and I will not tell you again because I don't want to be
+an egotist. I don't want to represent you to myself as a creature that
+exists <i>for</i> me. You are a being to whom I aspire. If we live for ever I
+shall have still to aspire to you and never be nearer than the hope of
+deserving you."</p>
+
+<p>"But your poetry, Guy, are you sure I appreciate it? Are you sure I'm
+not just a silly little thing lost in admiration of whatever you do?"</p>
+
+<p>Guy brushed her doubts aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Poetry is life trembling on the edge of human expression," he declared.
+"You are my life, and my poor verse faints in its powerlessness to say
+so. I always must be alone to blame if the treasure that you are is not
+proved to the world."</p>
+
+<p>How was she to convince him of her unworthiness, how was she to persuade
+this lover of hers that she was too simple a creature for his splendid
+enthronement? Suddenly one<a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a> day he would see her in all her dulness and
+ordinariness, and turning from her in disillusion, he would hold her
+culpable for anything in his work that might seem to have betrayed his
+ambition.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy," she called into the future. "You will always love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will there ever be another Pauline?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there might be so easily."</p>
+
+<p>"Never! Never! Every hour, every moment cries 'never!'"</p>
+
+<p>In her heart she told herself that at least none but she could ever love
+him so well; and in the strange confidence his father's visit had given
+to her she told him in her turn how every hour and every moment made her
+more dependent upon his love.</p>
+
+<p>"I want nothing but you, nothing, nothing. I've given up everything for
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"What have you given up?" he demanded at once, jealously and
+triumphantly regarding her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing really; but all the foolish little interests. Nothing, my
+dearest; only pigeons and music and working woollen birds and visiting
+poor people. Such foolish little things ... and yet things that were
+once upon a time frightfully important."</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't give up your music and your pigeons."</p>
+
+<p>They both laughed at the absurd conjunction.</p>
+
+<p>"How can I play when I'm thinking of you always, every second? Why, when
+I do anything but think of you, every object and every word floats away
+as it does when I'm tired and trying to keep awake in a big room."</p>
+
+<p>"You can play to me," he argued, "even when I'm not there."</p>
+
+<p>"Guy darling, I do, I do; but you've no idea how hopelessly playing to
+an absent lover destroys the time."</p>
+
+<p>The memory of Mr. Hazlewood's visit was soon lost in<a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a> the celebration of
+their anniversary month. As they had promised themselves in Summer, they
+went on moonlit expeditions to gather mushrooms; and at the waning of
+the moon they rose early on many milkwhite dawns instead, when the
+mushrooms at such an hour were veritably the spoil of dew, gleaming in
+their baskets under veils of gossamer. On these serene mornings the
+sound of autumnal birdsong came to them out of misted trees, so that
+they used to talk of the woods in the next Springtime, themselves moving
+about the wan vapours with that very air of people who scarcely live in
+the present. There was in this plaintive music of robins and thrushes a
+regret for the days of Summer spent together that were now passed away,
+and yet a more robust melody might have affronted the wistful air of
+these milkwhite dawns. The frail notes of the birds hinted at silence
+beyond, and through the opalescent and transuming landscape Guy and
+Pauline floated in fancy once more down the young Thames from
+Ladingford. The sad stillness of the year's surrender to decline
+admonished them to garner these hours, making a ghost even of the sun as
+if to warn them of the fleeting world, the covetous and furtive world.
+They wonderfully enjoyed these hours, but Pauline when at breakfast the
+mushrooms came fizzling to the table could never believe that she had
+been with Guy, and she used often to be discontented on being reminded
+by her mother of how much of the day she had already spent in his
+company. Looking back at these immaterial mornings of autumnal mist, she
+saw them upon the confines of sleep: silvery spaces they seemed that
+were not robbed from any familiar time.</p>
+
+<p>There was during all this month a certain amount of congratulation which
+had to be endured, and Margaret was angry one day because Mr. and Mrs.
+Ford came over from Little Fairfield and alluded at tea to their hope of
+Richard and her soon being engaged. Pauline was naturally subject<a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a> to
+the inquisitiveness of everybody, but as she could not without being
+absent-minded talk about anything except Guy, she found the general
+curiosity not very troublesome. Guy, however, resented this atmosphere
+of enquiry and was always more and more anxious to carry her out of
+reach of Wychford gossip.</p>
+
+<p>One day in mid-October they had set out together with the intention of
+taking a long walk to the open upland country on the other side of the
+town, when, as they were going up High Street, they saw two of the local
+chatterboxes.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not stop and talk to Mrs. Brydone and Mrs. Willsher," Guy
+grumbled. "Let's cut up Abbey Lane."</p>
+
+<p>They turned aside and were making their way to the path that led under
+the Abbey wall to the high road, when they saw Dr. Brydone and his son
+coming from that direction.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, there's a conspiracy of Brydones to waylay us this afternoon,"
+Guy exclaimed petulantly. "We shall have to go through the Abbey
+grounds."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline had passed the wicket, which he had impulsively flung open,
+before she realized the violation of one of her agelong rules.</p>
+
+<p>"It's really rather jolly in here to-day," said Guy. "I think we're
+duffers not to come more often, you know."</p>
+
+<p>The autumn wind was booming round the plantation, and sweeping up the
+broad path down the hillside with a skelter of leaves that gave a wild
+gaiety to the usually tristful scene.</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't we explore inside?" suggested Guy. "There's something so
+exhilarating about this great West wind. Almost one could fancy it might
+blow away that ghost of a house."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline hesitated: since earliest childhood the Abbey had oppressed her
+with ill omen, and she could not overcome her prejudice in a moment.<a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a></p>
+
+<p>"You're not really afraid when you're with me?" he persisted.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline surrendered, and they went across the etiolated lawn toward the
+entrance. The wind was roaring through every crevice, and the ivy was
+scratching restlessly at the panes or shivering where through the gaps
+it had crept in with furry tendrils.</p>
+
+<p>"It's rather fun to be walking up this staircase as if this were our own
+house," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline had an impulse to go back, and she made a quick step to descend.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, I think I feel afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid of what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not of anything. Just afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, foolish one," he whispered gently.</p>
+
+<p>And she, though it was against her will, followed him up the echoing
+empty stairs.</p>
+
+<p>They went into every room, and Guy declared how they with their love
+were restoring to each of them the life it had known in the past. Here
+was a pleasant fancy, and Pauline hoped it might be true. In the thought
+that their presence was in a way the bestowal of charity on these
+maltreated halls she lost much of her alarm and began to enjoy the
+solitude spent with Guy. Whether they looked out at the wilderness that
+once was a garden or at the rank lawn in front, the thunderous wind
+surging round the house brought them closer together in the
+consciousness of their own shelter and their own peace in this deserted
+habitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, confess," said Guy. "Haven't we been rather stupid to neglect such
+a refuge?"</p>
+
+<p>"But, Guy, we haven't needed a refuge very often," objected Pauline, who
+for all that she was losing some of her dread of the Abbey was by no
+means inclined to set up a precedent for going there too often.<a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," he admitted. "But with winter coming on and the wet days that
+will either keep us indoors or else prevent us from doing anything but
+walk perpetually along splashy roads, we shan't be sorry to have a place
+like this to which we can retreat in comparative comfort."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Guy," Pauline asked anxiously. "I suppose we ought to come here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why on earth not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be angry. But the idea just flashed through my mind that perhaps
+Mother wouldn't like us to come here very often."</p>
+
+<p>He sighed deeply.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, sometimes I wonder what is the good of being engaged. Are we
+for ever to be hemmed in by the conventions of a place like Wychford?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I expect Mother wouldn't mind really," said Pauline, reassuring
+herself and him. "I'm always liable to these fits of doubt. Sometimes I
+feel quite weighed down by the responsibility of being grown up."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed at herself, and the laughter ringing through the hollow
+house seemed to return and mock her with a mirthless echo.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Guy," she exclaimed. "Oh, Guy, I wish I hadn't laughed then. Did
+you hear how strangely it seemed as if the house laughed back at me?"</p>
+
+<p>She had gripped his arm, and Guy startled by her gesture exclaimed
+rather irritably that she ought to control her nerves.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, don't let's stay in this room. I don't like the green light that
+the ivy is giving your face."</p>
+
+<p>"What next?" he grumbled. "Well, let's go out on the balcony."</p>
+
+<p>They went half way downstairs to the door that opened on a large
+balustraded terrace with steps leading from either end into the ruined
+garden. The wind beat against<a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a> them with such force here that very soon
+they went back into the house, and Guy found a small room looking out on
+the terrace, in which he persuaded Pauline to come and sit for a while.
+All the other rooms in the house had been so dreadfully decayed, so much
+battered by every humiliation time could inflict upon them that this
+small parlour was in contrast positively habitable. It gave the
+impression of being perhaps the last place to which the long vanished
+owners had desperately held. There was a rusty hob-grate and in the
+window a deep wooden seat; while the walls were still painted with
+courtly scenes, and the inlaid wooden floor gave a decency which
+everywhere else had been destroyed by the mouldering boards.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, it would be fun to light a fire some time," said Guy. "This is
+just the room for us."</p>
+
+<p>"It's rather a frightening room," said Pauline doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, you insist on being frightened by everything this afternoon,"
+he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but this room is frightening, Guy," she persisted. "This seems so
+near to being lived in by dead people."</p>
+
+<p>"And what can dead people do to you and me?" he asked with that sidelong
+mocking smile which she half disliked, half loved.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline looked back over her shoulder once: then she came across to
+where he invited her to sit in the window-bay.</p>
+
+<p>"I ought to have brought my diamond pencil," he said. "This is such a
+window for mottoes. Why, I declare! Somebody has scrawled one. Look,
+Pauline. Pauline, look! <i>1770. R.G. P.F.</i> inside a heart. Oh, what a
+pity it wasn't <i>P.G.</i> for Pauline Grey. Still the <i>G</i> can stand for Guy.
+Oh, really, I think it's an extraordinary coincidence! <i>P.F.?</i> We can
+find out which of the Fentons that was. We'll look up in the history of
+the family. Darling, I am so glad we came to this little room. Think of
+those lovers<a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a> who sat here once like us. Pauline, it makes me cherish,
+you so."</p>
+
+<p>She sat upon his knee, because the window seat was dusty and because in
+this place of fled lovers she wanted to be held closely to his heart.</p>
+
+<p>The wind boomed and moaned, and the sun breaking through the clouds lit
+up the walls with a wild yellow light.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Pauline drew away from his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Shadows went by the window," she cried. "Guy, I feel afraid. I feel
+afraid. There's a footstep."</p>
+
+<p>She was lily-white, whose cheeks had but now been burning so fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense," he replied half-roughly. "It was that burst of sunshine."</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, there were shadows. Hark!"</p>
+
+<p>She nearly screamed, because footsteps were going down the stairs of the
+empty house.</p>
+
+<p>"It must have been the caretaker," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw a white person. Guy, never never let us come here again."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't seriously think you saw a ghost?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, how do I know? Come away, into the air. We should never have come
+here. Oh, this room! I feel as if I should faint."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see who it was," said Guy springing up.</p>
+
+<p>"No, don't leave me. Wait for me. I'll come with you."</p>
+
+<p>They hurried down the stairs and when they reached the pallid lawn they
+saw Margaret and Monica in their white coats disappearing among the yew
+trees by the entrance.</p>
+
+<p>"There are your ghosts," said Guy laughing.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, though Guy scoffed at her fears, Pauline was not sure that she
+would not have preferred a ghost to that disquieting passage of her
+sisters without hail or comment.<a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a> Yet perhaps after all they had not
+seen her and Guy in that sinister small parlour.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we catch them up?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>And Pauline with a breath of dismay was conscious of an inclination to
+pretend that they had not been here this afternoon. She discovered
+herself, as it were, proposing to Guy that they should not overtake
+Monica and Margaret. A secretiveness she had never known before had
+seized her soul, and she hoped that their presence in the Abbey was
+unknown. Guy divined at once that she did not want to overtake her
+sisters, and he kept her under the trees, where they watched each
+assault of the wind tearing at the little foliage that still remained.
+He guided her tenderly away from the sight of the house; and they walked
+along the broad path down through the shrubbery, meeting a rout of brown
+and red and yellow leaves that swept by them. She clung to Guy's arm as
+if this urgent and tumultuous wind had the power to sweep her too into
+the confusion: such an affraying journey was life beginning to seem.
+This ghastly elation of the October weather would not allow her breath
+to examine the perplexity in which she had involved herself. She felt
+that if the wind blew any louder, she would have to scream out in
+defiance of its violence or else surrender miserably and be whirled into
+oblivion. A brown oakleaf had escaped from the perishable host and was
+palpitating in a fold of her sleeve like a hunted creature; but when
+Pauline would have rescued it at the same moment a gust came roaring up
+the walk under the hissing trees, and the driven leaf was torn from its
+refuge and flung high into the air to join the myriads in their giddy
+riot of death.</p>
+
+<p>"Come away from here," she cried to Guy. "Come away or I shall go mad in
+this wind."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with a sort of judicial demeanour, as if he were in
+doubt whether he ought not to reprove such excitement.<a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a></p>
+
+<p>"It was really beginning to blow quite fiercely," he said when they had
+reached the comparative stillness of Abbey Lane.</p>
+
+<p>Behind them Pauline still heard with terror and hatred the moaning of
+the trees, and she hurried away from the sound.</p>
+
+<p>"Never, never will I go there again. Why did you ask me to go there? I
+would sooner have met a thousand Brydones than have been in that house."</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline," he protested. "You really do sometimes encourage yourself to
+be overwrought."</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, don't lecture me," she said, turning upon him fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, don't let the whole of Wychford see that you're in a temper," he
+retorted. "People haven't yet got over the idea of us two as a natural
+curiosity of the neighbourhood. I don't want ... and I don't suppose
+you're very anxious for these yokels to discuss our quarrels in the
+post-office to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind what anybody does," said Pauline desperately. "I only want
+to be out of this wind&mdash;this wind."</p>
+
+<p>She was rather glad that Guy, perhaps to punish her for the loss of
+control, said he must go and work instead of coming back to tea at the
+Rectory. It strangely gave her the ability to smile at him and be in
+their parting herself again, whereas had he come back with her she knew
+that she would still have felt irritated. Her smile may have abashed his
+ill-humour, for he seemed inclined to change his mind about the need for
+work; but she would not let him and hurried towards home at the back of
+the west wind. Should she ask her sisters if they had seen her in the
+Abbey? It would be better to wait until they said something first. It
+would really be best to say nothing about this afternoon. Tea was in the
+nursery that day, for the Rector was holding some sort of colloquy in
+the drawing-room which<a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a> he always used for parochial business, because
+he dreaded having his seeds scattered by the awkward fingers of the
+flock.</p>
+
+<p>Tea had not come in yet, and Pauline took her familiar seat in the
+window, glad to be out of the wind but pondering a little mournfully the
+lawn mottled with leaves, and the lily-pond that was being seamed and
+crinkled by every gust that skated across the surface. When the others
+arrived, Pauline knew that she turned round to greet them defiantly,
+although she would have given much not to feel excuseful like this.</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't see Monica and me?" Margaret asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Only after you'd gone too far for us to call to you," Pauline answered,
+nervously assuring herself that Margaret had not tried to 'catch her
+out,' as Janet would have said.</p>
+
+<p>"We had taken the short cut through the Abbey," Monica explained.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline felt that what Monica meant to say had been: 'we did not spy
+upon you deliberately.' And that she should have had this instinct of
+putting her sisters in the wrong prepared her for something unpleasant,
+that and the fuss her mother was making over the tea-tray. Pauline was
+more than ever grateful to the impulse which had not allowed Guy to
+change his mind and come back with her. As soon as tea was over,
+Margaret and Monica went away to practise a duet; and in the manner of
+their going from the room Pauline felt the louring of the atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother began at once:</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, I'm surprized at your going into the Abbey with Guy."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it was really an accident. I mean it was because we wanted not to
+meet any of the Brydones, who were rushing at us from every side."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline tried to laugh, but her mother looked down at the milk jug and
+flushed nearly to crimson in the embarrassment of something she was
+forcing herself to say.<a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a></p>
+
+<p>"It's not merely going into the Abbey ... no ... not merely that ... no,
+not merely going into the Abbey ... but to let Guy make love to you like
+that is so vulgar. Pauline, it's the sort of way that servants behave
+when they're in love."</p>
+
+<p>She sprang from the window-seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, what do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret and Monica saw you sitting on Guy's knee. In any case I would
+rather you never did that. In any case ... yes ... but in a place where
+people passing might have seen ... yes, would have seen ... oh, it was
+inexcusable.... I shall have to make much stricter rules...."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to speak to Guy about this?" Pauline asked. The house
+seemed to be whirling away like a leaf, such a shattering of her love
+were these words of her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"How can I speak to Guy about it?" Mrs. Grey demanded irritably. "How
+can I, Pauline? It has nearly choked me to speak to you."</p>
+
+<p>"I think Monica and Margaret are almost wicked," Pauline cried in
+flames. "They are trying to destroy everything. They are, they are. No,
+Mother, you shan't defend them. I knew they felt guilty when they went
+out of the room like that. How dare they put horrible thoughts in your
+mind? How dare they? They're cruel to me. And you're cruel to me. I
+don't understand what's happening to everybody. You'll make me hate you
+all, if you speak like that."</p>
+
+<p>She rushed from the nursery and went first to the music-room where
+Margaret was sounding deep notes, hanging over her violoncello, and
+where Monica was playing one of those contained, somewhat frigid
+accompaniments.</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret and Monica," said Pauline standing in the doorway. "You're
+never to dare to speak about me to<a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a> Mother as you must have spoken this
+afternoon. Because neither of you have any emotion but conceit and
+selfishness, you shall not be jealous of Guy and me. Margaret, you can
+have no heart. I shall write to Richard and tell him you're heartless.
+Don't smile down at your violoncello. You shall not rule me into being
+like yourself. Oh, I'll never play music with either of you again."</p>
+
+<p>Then she left them and in her white room for an hour she listened
+hopelessly to the trolling wind.<a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>November</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">G</span>UY was very indignant when he heard from Pauline the sequel of her
+sisters' vigilance. That they should afterward have tried to atone with
+gentleness for what they had made her suffer did not avail with him.
+Monica and Margaret now impressed him with their unworldly beauty in a
+strange way, for they became sinister figures like the Lady Geraldine in
+Christabel, sly malignant sylphs set in ambush to haunt the romantic
+path of his love. He was intensely aware that he ought not to resent
+their interference, but that he ought in fact to acknowledge the justice
+of it and by a stoical endeavour prove himself entitled to the cares of
+this long engagement. Actually Guy was enduring a violent jealousy, and
+illogically he began to declare how the others were jealous of him and
+Pauline. The consciousness that he could not carry her off into
+immediate marriage galled him and he suffered all the pangs of an
+unmerited servitude. He and Pauline became the prisoners of tyrants who
+were urging them to accept the yoke of convention; the more he suffered,
+the more he knew in his heart that he was culpable, and the more
+culpable he recognized himself, the more he chafed against the burden of
+waiting. All the resolutions that with the announcement of their
+betrothal had seemed to sail before a prospering breeze now turned and
+beat up against adverse influences and were every moment in danger of
+being irreparably wrecked.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally coincident with all the stress of a situation, that owing to
+the temperament of the Greys was never relieved by discussion, was a
+complete failure to advance on<a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a> the private road of his poetical
+ambition. All that he had written was seeming vain and bad: all that he
+was now trying to write deteriorated with every word painfully inscribed
+upon the cheerless empty page. He had conceived a set of eclogues that
+were to mark his contempt for the feverish incompetence of the modern
+school, whose ears had been corrupted by Wagner's filthy din; and all he
+could manage to achieve were seeming the banal inspirations of
+Mendelssohn. Guy was like an alchemist perpetually on the verge of
+discovering the stone that will transmute base metals to gold as he
+tried to find the secret by which such an one as Beethoven could purify
+with art the most violent emotions of humanity, yet always preserve
+their intrinsic value. He craved the secret which even the most obscure
+Elizabethans seemed to have possessed, that unearthly power of harmony
+which could fuse all baseness in a glittering song. Passion had never
+lost itself in arid decoration when they sang; nor yet had it ever
+betrayed itself with that impudently direct appeal these modern lyrists
+made, these shameless Rousseaus of verse. Yet he was as bad as any of
+them, for he was either like them when he tried to write his heart, or
+he expired in the mere sound of words like the degenerate ruck of the
+Caroline heirs to a great tradition. He was almost on the point of
+proclaiming his final failure, and if at that moment he could have
+received from his father the offer to come and teach small boys at Fox
+Hall, he would have gone.</p>
+
+<p>And yet would he have gone? Could he abandon the delight of being with
+Pauline? The nearer he came to confessing his failure, the more he
+longed for her company. He was surely now in the midway of the thorny
+path of love, and whether he progressed or retreated he could not escape
+the spines. Well had he said to himself that night in May: '<i>La belle
+Dame sans mercy bath thee in thrall</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>All the fire and fever of his present life on the outskirts<a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a> of a
+haunted country was for his imagination alone. However timidly his pen
+approached those dreams, they vanished; and whenever his pen betrayed
+him, Guy turned despairingly again to Pauline herself. These days
+without her were every day more unendurable. Once he had been content to
+talk about her to Mrs. Grey and her sisters, to listen to their praise
+of her: now every word they spoke wounded his pride. This madness of
+love could only feed itself in the very dungeons of his mind; and unless
+she were with him it did so horribly gorge itself that, if he had not
+swiftly seen her again, the madness would have broken the bars of its
+prison and ridden him like a hag.</p>
+
+<p>It was when Guy had worked himself to this pitch of desire for the
+remedy of her sweet presence that Pauline was denied to him. He knew he
+must blame himself because, even after the warning of that afternoon in
+the Abbey, whenever they were together he would carry her away into the
+country, whence they would not return sometimes until night had fallen.
+Worse than that, by his now continuous withdrawal from the life of the
+Rectory he must have disquieted her family. He saw that they were
+becoming anxious about Pauline, but for that very reason he could not
+bring himself to mitigate a solitary doubt of theirs. Even to talk about
+her in the lightest way was now become an outrage upon the seclusion of
+their joint life. Such a conversation as that with Margaret about the
+silver photograph frame was now unimaginable. What right had anyone to
+know even what picture of Pauline burned upon his wall in the
+night-time? At first Pauline herself when the memory of the shock her
+mother's words had been to her died out, tried to justify the attitude
+of guardianship. She would explain to Guy how, ever since she could
+remember, her mother and sisters had treated her with this vigilance.
+They had, as she said, always so much adored her that it was natural for
+them to be unable at<a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a> once to relinquish entirely to someone else the
+complete possession of her. Yet Guy must not be jealous, because she
+told them none of her secrets now: indeed she was distressed at the
+thought of how far outside her confidence they reproachfully esteemed
+themselves. Her love for him had severely shaken the perfect unity of
+their immemorial life together, and he must be generous and understand
+how gradual would have to be their renunciation of her to him. Guy,
+however, would not allow Pauline to have regrets like this. The most
+trivial consideration of her family aroused his jealousy; and when Mrs.
+Grey said she thought it would be better if the old rule of only seeing
+Pauline twice a week came into force again, Guy was determined that
+Pauline should resent the step as bitterly as he resented it. All the
+time he was with her he would be lamenting the briefness of their
+permitted intercourse, and since the weather was now so wet that even
+they could not reasonably claim beneath such streaming skies the right
+to abscond into deserted country, November shed a gloom upon their love.</p>
+
+<p>On the days when Guy did come to the Rectory, no one attempted to rob
+them of their privacy; they were always granted the nursery to
+themselves, and even sometimes they had tea there together, if visitors
+came, so that the privilege of their few hours should not be infringed.
+Nevertheless, the old sense of time and the world at their service was
+lost. The dull November dusk came swiftly on; and out in the passage the
+cuckoo with maddening reiteration proclaimed each fleeting fifteen
+minutes. Often Guy was asked to dinner, but the old pleasure was mostly
+gone, for in the evening he and Pauline were not expected to retire by
+themselves; and there was always an implied reproach for his influence
+when she refused to play her violin. Then there came a dreadful day,
+because some cousins had arrived to stay at the Rectory; for these two
+girls like everyone<a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a> else had been accustomed to adore Pauline, and so
+were determined to take an extreme interest in her engagement.</p>
+
+<p>"We seem to have a ghastly lure for them," Guy groaned in exasperation,
+when Pauline had managed at last to secure the nursery for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, they're only staying a week."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he protested, "and for me to stay with you a week takes months
+of these miserable little hours we have. Oh, Pauline, I must see more of
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Then back came the adoring cousins, and Guy felt that no torture he
+could imagine was bad enough for them. Their cordiality to him was so
+great that he had to be superficially pleasant; and, as smile after
+smile was wrung from him, by the end of the afternoon he felt sick with
+the agony his politeness had cost.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry and dress! hurry! hurry!" he begged Pauline, in a whisper when
+the gong sounded. "Let us at least have five minutes alone before dinner
+comes and I must go."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline was scarcely five minutes in coming down again, but Guy counted
+each tick of the clock with desperate heartsickness.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my darling, my darling," he said when she was held in the so dearly
+longed for, the so terribly brief embrace. "I cannot bear the torment of
+to-day."</p>
+
+<p>She tried to soothe him; but Guy had reached the depths and this relief
+after such effort was almost too late.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, listen," he said quickly. "You must come and say good-night to
+me in the garden. Do you hear? You must. You must. I shan't sleep unless
+you do. You must."</p>
+
+<p>"Guy," she murmured, "I couldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"You must. Promise ... you must. Come down and say good-night to me on
+the lawn. I shall wait there all night. I shall wait...."</p>
+
+<p>The cuckoo burst out to cry seven o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>"You must come. You must come. Promise."<a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," she whispered faintly. Then she said she could not.</p>
+
+<p>Guy went to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember, I have not kissed you good-night," he proclaimed solemnly.
+"And now I'm going. I shall wait from eleven o'clock, and stay all night
+until you have kissed me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but Guy...."</p>
+
+<p>"To-night," he said. "You promise?"</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, if I dare, if I dare."</p>
+
+<p>There were footsteps in the passage. He fled across the room, kissed her
+momentarily and hurried out, saying good-bye to the cousins, as he
+passed them, with a kind of exultant affection.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, the November night hung humid and oppressive; Guy looking up
+felt rain falling softly yet with gathering intensity, and he lingered a
+few moments in the drive held by the whispering blackness. Behind him,
+the lamplight of the Rectory windows seemed for the moment sad and
+unattainable and gave him the fancy he was drifting away from a friendly
+shore. Then suddenly he marched away along the drive, content; for the
+thought of 'to-night,' which latterly had often brought such a
+presentiment of loneliness, now sounded upon his imagination like the
+rapture of a nightingale.</p>
+
+<p>Plashers Mead had never appeared so desirable as now when it was the
+prelude to such an enterprise as this of consecrating with a last
+embrace the rain and gloom of November. If he had any hesitation about
+the rightness or even, setting probity aside, about the prudence of such
+an action, he justified himself with romantic reasons; and if he was
+driven by conscience to an ultimate defence, he justified himself with
+the exceptional circumstances that gave him a sanction to accept from
+Pauline this sacrifice of her traditions. Impulses to consider what he
+was doing were easily dismissed: indeed before he reached his house<a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a>
+there was not one left. Inside, the warmth and comfort of Plashers Mead
+were additional incentives to prosecute his resolve; every gleaming
+book, the breathing of the dog upon the mat before the fire, the gentle
+purr of the lamp, all seemed to demand that voluptuous renunciation
+which would later urge him forth again into the night. That it would
+probably be raining was not to prove an obstacle: Pauline would be more
+sure to come if she thought he were standing outside in the rain. It was
+a second Eve of St. Agnes; and Guy went across to his shelf and took
+down Keats. He had come to the knights and ladies praying in their dumb
+oratories, when there was a knock at the front-door, and his mind leapt
+to the thought that Pauline might have sent a note by Birdwood to
+prevent his coming to-night. The knock sounded again, and as Miss Peasey
+was evidently too deeply immersed in The Pilgrim's Progress, her
+vespertine lectionary, to pay heed to visitors at this hour of nine
+o'clock, he must go down and open the door himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Are we disturbing you?"</p>
+
+<p>It was the voice of Brydone, and with Willsher in his wake he came into
+the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlie and I have made several shots to find you in, but of course we
+know you're a busy man nowadays."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on upstairs, will you?" said Guy making a tremendous effort to
+appear hospitable. "I'll dig out the whisky."</p>
+
+<p>He went along and shouted in Miss Peasey's ear what was wanted. She
+looked up as if it were Apollyon himself come to affront her holy
+abstraction.</p>
+
+<p>"I think there's some left from that bottle we got in August.... I shall
+lay it on the mat," she told him.</p>
+
+<p>Guy nodded encouragingly and went upstairs to join his guests.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose you'll be soon having a missus in charge here," said
+Brydone heartily.<a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a></p>
+
+<p>Willsher hummed Bachelor Boys as a contributory echo of the question.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, we're not getting married at once, you know," Guy explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you're quite right," Brydone declared heartily. "After all, being
+close at hand like this, you're not much likely to draw a blank in the
+lottery."</p>
+
+<p>"Marriage is a lottery, isn't it?" said Guy with polite sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather," sighed Willsher. "Terrific!"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I shall have to be looking round preparatory to getting
+married in two or three years' time," Brydone added. "Well, you see,
+after Christmas I shall be thinking about my finals, and then I'm going
+to come in as the old man's partner. Country people like it best, if a
+doctor's married. No doubt about that, is there, Charlie?"</p>
+
+<p>The solicitor's son agreed it was indubitable.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course if I had the cash to hang on in Harley Street for ten years
+as a specialist, it would be another matter. But I can't, so there it
+is."</p>
+
+<p>Even this fellow had his dreams, Guy thought; even he would make
+acquaintance with thwarted ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>"Been doing anything with a rod lately?" asked Willsher, whose pastime,
+when he could not be standing in action on the river's bank, was always
+to steer a conversation in the direction of anglers' gossip.</p>
+
+<p>"No, not lately," said Guy. "Though I knocked down a lot of apples with
+one last month."</p>
+
+<p>"Ha-ha! that's good," Brydone ejaculated. "That's very good, Hazlewood.
+That's good, isn't it, Charlie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Awfully good," agreed the angler.</p>
+
+<p>Their appreciation seemed perfectly genuine, and Guy was touched by the
+readiness of them to be entertained by his lame wit.<a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I mustn't forget to tell the old man that," Brydone chuckled. "He's
+always digging at me over the fish. Done anything with a rod lately? I
+knocked down a lot of apples last month. Your governor will like that,
+Charlie!"</p>
+
+<p>Guy heard the clink of a tray deposited cautiously on the floor of the
+passage outside. He allowed Miss Peasey time to retreat before he opened
+the door, because it was one of the clauses in her charter that she was
+never, as a lady-housekeeper, to be asked to bring a tray into a room
+when anyone but Guy was present. He hoped that after they had drunk, his
+visitors would depart; but alas, the unintended charm of his
+conversation seemed likely to prolong their stay.</p>
+
+<p>"Rabelais," Brydone read slowly as he saw the volumes on the shelves.
+"That's a bit thick, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"In quantity or quality, do you mean?" asked Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard that's the thickest book ever written," said Brydone.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you read old French easily?" asked Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's in old French, is it?" said Brydone in a disappointed voice.
+"That would biff me."</p>
+
+<p>A silence fell upon the room, a silence that seemed to symbolize the
+'biffing' of the doctor's son by old French. Willsher took the
+opportunity to steer the conversation back to fish, and ten o'clock
+struck in the middle of an argument between him and his friend over the
+merits of two artificial flies. Guy must be on the Rectory lawn by
+eleven o'clock, and he began to be anxious, so animated was the
+discussion, about the departure of these well-meaning intruders. He did
+not want to plunge straight from their company into the glorious
+darkness that would hold Pauline; and he eyed the volume of Keats lying
+face downward on the table, hoping he would be allowed to come back to
+the knights and ladies praying in their dumb oratories, while<a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a> he
+thought with a thrill of the moment when he should be able to read:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>And they are gone; ay, ages long ago</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>These lovers fled away into the storm.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"If you can't get a chub any other way, you can sometimes get him with a
+bit of bacon," Willsher was saying. "And I know a fellow who caught one
+of those woppers under Marston's Mill with a cherry. Fact, I assure
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"I know a man at Oldbridge, who caught a four pounder with a
+bumble-bee."</p>
+
+<p>"I caught a six pounder at Oxford with a mouse's head myself," Guy
+declared.</p>
+
+<p>The friends looked at him in the admiration and envy with which anglers
+welcome a pleasant companionable sort of a lie. It was a bad move, for
+it seemed as if by that lie he had drawn closer the bonds of sympathy
+between himself and his guests. They visibly warmed to his company, for
+Brydone at once invited himself to another 'tot' and was obviously
+settling down to a competitive talk about big fish; while Willsher's
+first shyness turned to familiarity, so completely indeed that he asked
+if Guy would mind his moving the furniture in order to try to explain to
+that fathead Brydone the exact promontory of the Greenrush where he had
+caught thirty trout in an hour when the mayfly was up two years ago.</p>
+
+<p>Half-past-ten struck from the church tower, and Guy became desperate.
+There was nothing he hated so much as asking people to go, which was one
+reason why he always discouraged them at the beginning; but it really
+seemed as if he must bring himself to the point of asking Brydone and
+Willsher to leave him to his work. He decided to allow them until a
+quarter-to-eleven. The minutes dragged along, and when the quarter
+sounded Guy said he was sorry but that he was very much afraid he would
+have to work now.<a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Right O," said Brydone. "We'll tootle off." But it took ten minutes to
+get them out of the house, and when at last they disappeared into the
+mazy garden Guy was in a fume of anxiety about his tryst. He could not
+now go round by Rectory Lane, as he had intended at first. No doubt
+Brydone and Willsher would stay talking half-an-hour on the bridge, for
+the rain had stopped and they had given the impression of having the
+night before them. In fact Brydone had once definitely announced that
+the night was still young. Yet in a way the fact of their nearness and
+of his having to avoid them added a zest to the adventure.</p>
+
+<p>How dark it was and how heavily the trees dripped in the orchard. Guy
+pulled the canoe from the shed and dragged it squeaking over the wet
+grass: not even he in the exaltation of the moment was going to swim the
+Hellespont.</p>
+
+<p>When he was in the canoe and driving it with silent strokes along the
+straight black stream; when the lantern was put out and the darkness was
+at first so thick that like the water it seemed to resist the sweep of
+his paddle, Guy could no longer imagine that Pauline would venture out.
+He became oppressed by the impenetrable and humid air, and he began to
+long for rain to fall as if it would reassure him that nature in such an
+annihilation of form was still alive. Now he had swung past the
+overhanging willows of the churchyard; his eyes grown accustomed to the
+darkness discovered against a vague sky the vague bulk of the church,
+and in a minute or two he could be sure that he was come to the Rectory
+paddock. He was wet to the knees and his feet, sagging in the grass,
+seemed to make a most prodigious noise with their gurgling.</p>
+
+<p>Guy was too early when he crept over the lawn, for there were still
+lights in all the upper windows, and he withdrew to the plantation,
+where he waited in rapt patience while the branches dripped and
+pattered, dripped and<a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a> pattered ceaselessly. One by one the lights had
+faded out, but still he must not signal to Pauline. How should he after
+all make known to her his presence on that dark lawn? Scarcely would she
+perceive from her window his shadowy form. He must not even whisper; he
+must not strike a match. Suddenly a light crossed his vision and he
+started violently before he realized that it was only a glow-worm moving
+with laborious progress along the damp edge of the lawn. Black indeed
+was the hour when a glow-worm belated on this drear night of the year's
+decline could so alarm him. For a while he watched the creeping
+phosphorescence and wondered at it in kindly fellowship, thinking how
+like it was to a human lover, so small and solitary in this gigantic
+gloom. Then he began to pick it up and, as it moved across his hand and
+gave it with the wan fire a ghostly semblance, he resolved to signal
+with this lamp to Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>Midnight crashed its tale from the belfry, and nowhere in the long house
+was there any light. There was nothing now in the world but himself and
+this glow-worm wandering across his hand. He moved nearer to the house
+and stood beneath Pauline's window; surely she was leaning out: surely
+that was her shadow tremulous on the inspissate air. Guy waved, and the
+pale light moving to and fro seemed to exact an answer, for something
+fell at his feet and by the glow-worm's melancholy radiance he read
+'<i>now</i>' on a piece of paper. Gratefully he set the insect down to vanish
+upon its own amorous path into the murk. Not a tree quivered, not a
+raindrop slipped from a blade of grass but Guy held out his arms to
+clasp his long awaited Pauline. The '<i>now</i>' prolonged its duration into
+hours, it seemed; and then when she did come she was in his arms before
+he knew by her step or by the rustle of her dress that she was coming.
+She was in his arms as though like a moth she had floated upon a
+flower.<a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a></p>
+
+<p>Their good-night was kissed in a moment, and she was gone like a moth
+that cannot stay upon the flower it visits.</p>
+
+<p>Guy waited until he thought he saw her leaning from her window once
+more. Then he drew close to the wall of the house and strained his eyes
+to catch the farewell of her hand. As he looked up, the rain began to
+fall again; and in an ecstasy he glided back to Plashers Mead, adoring
+the drench of his clothes and the soft sighing of the rain.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="ANOTHER_WINTER" id="ANOTHER_WINTER"></a>ANOTHER WINTER</h2>
+
+<p><a name="page_270" id="page_270"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_271" id="page_271"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>December</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span>N the first elation of having been able to prove to Guy how exclusively
+she loved him, Pauline had no misgivings about the effect upon herself
+of that dark descent into the garden. It was only when Guy, urging the
+success of what almost seemed disturbingly to state itself as an
+experiment, begged her to go farther and take the negligible risk of
+coming out with him on the river at night, that she began to doubt if
+she had acted well in yielding that first small favour. The problem,
+that she must leave herself to determine without a hint of its existence
+to anyone outside, stuck unresolved at the back of her conscience,
+whence in moments of depression it would, as it were, leap forth to
+assail her peace of mind. She was positive, however, that the precedent
+had been unwise from whatever point of view regarded, and for a while
+she resisted earnestly the arguments Guy evoked about the privileges
+conferred on lovers by the customary judgment of the world. Nevertheless
+in the end she did surrender anew to his persistence, and on two nights
+of dim December moonlight she escaped from the house and floated with
+him unhappily upon the dark stream, turning pale at every lean branch
+that stretched out from the bank, at every shadow, and at every sound of
+distant dogs' barking.</p>
+
+<p>Guy would not understand the falseness of this pleasure and, treating
+with scorn her alarm, he used to invent excuses by which she would be
+able to account for the emptiness of the room in the event of her
+absence being discovered. The mere prospect of such deceit distressed
+Pauline, and when she realized that even already by doing what she had<a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a>
+done deceit had been set on foot, she told him she could not bear the
+self-reproach which followed. It was true, as she admitted, that there
+was really nothing to regret except the unhappiness the discovery of her
+action would bring to her family, but of course the chief effect of this
+was that Guy became even more jealous of her sisters' influence. The
+disaccord between him and them was making visible progress, and much of
+love's joy was being swallowed up in the sadness this brought to her.
+She wished now that she had said nothing about the rebuke she had earned
+for that unfortunate afternoon in the Abbey. Margaret and Monica had
+both tried hard ever since to atone for the part they played, and having
+forgiven them and accepted the justice of their point of view, Pauline
+was distressed that Guy should treat them now practically as avowed
+enemies. She might have known that happiness such as hers could not
+last, and she reproached herself for the many times she had triumphed in
+the thought of the superiority of their love to any other she had
+witnessed. She deserved this anxiety and this doubt as a punishment for
+the way in which she had often scoffed at the dulness of other people
+who were in love. Marriage, which at first had been only a delightful
+dream the remoteness of which did not matter, was now appearing the only
+remedy for the ills that were gathering round Guy and her. As soon as
+she had set her heart upon this panacea she began to watch Guy's work
+from the point of view of its subservience to that end. She was anxious
+that he should work particularly hard and she became very sensitive to
+any implication of laziness in the casual opinion that Margaret or
+Monica would sometimes express. Guy was obviously encouraged by the
+interest she took, and for a while in the new preoccupation of working
+together as it were for a common aim the strain of their restricted
+converse was allayed.</p>
+
+<p>One day early in December Guy announced that really he<a name="page_273" id="page_273"></a> thought he had
+now enough poems to make a volume, news which roused Pauline to the
+greatest excitement and which on the same evening she triumphantly
+announced to her family at dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"My dears, his book is finished! And, Father, he has translated some
+poems of that man&mdash;that Latin creature you gave him on his birthday."</p>
+
+<p>"Propertius is difficult," said the Rector. "Very difficult."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I'm so glad he's difficult, because that will make it all the
+more valuable if Guy ... or won't it? Oh, don't let me talk nonsense:
+but really, darlings, aren't you all glad that his book is finished?"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll drink the poet's health," said the Rector.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Father, I must kiss you ... aren't you pleased Guy appreciated your
+present?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Pauline, you're sweeping your napkin down on the floor...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but Mother, I must kiss Francis for being so sweet."</p>
+
+<p>"He promised to show me the poems," said Margaret. "But Guy doesn't like
+me any more."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, Margaret, he does. Oh, Margaret, he really does. And if you
+say that, I shall have to break a secret. He's written two poems about
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Margaret flushed.</p>
+
+<p>"Has he? Well, he must certainly show them to me first or I shall veto
+the publication."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, darlings," Pauline cried. "I am happy to-night! The famousness of
+Guy presently ... and oh, I forgot to tell you something so touching
+that happened this morning. What do you think? Miss Verney consulted me
+as to whether I thought it was time she began to wear caps."</p>
+
+<p>"Guy ought to write a poem about that," said Monica.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, Monica, you're not to laugh at poor Miss<a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a> Verney. I must tell
+her to-morrow morning about Guy's book. She so appreciates greatness."</p>
+
+<p>It was a delightful evening, and Pauline in her contentment felt that
+she was back in the heart of that old Rectory life, so far did the
+confidence in Guy's justification of himself enable her to leave behind
+the shadows of the past two months, and most of all those miserable
+escapades in the watery December moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>"A book, dear me, how important," said Miss Verney, when next morning
+Pauline was telling her the news. "Quite an important event for
+Wychford, I'm sure. I must write to the Stores and order a copy at once
+... or perhaps, as a local celebrity ... yes, I think, it would be
+kinder to patronize our Wychford stationer."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Miss Verney, it's not published yet, you know. We expect it won't
+be published before March at the earliest."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I ever met an author," said Miss Verney meditatively.
+"You see, my father being a sailor ... really, an author in Wychford,
+... dear me, it's quite an important occasion."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline thought she would devote the afternoon to writing the good news
+to Richard, and Margaret hearing of her intention, announced
+surprizingly that Richard was coming back in April for two or three
+months.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Margaret, and you never told me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I didn't think you took much interest in Richard nowadays. He
+asked what had happened to you."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad he's coming back, Margaret. But oh, do tell me if you are
+going to marry him."</p>
+
+<p>Margaret would not answer, but Pauline, all of whose hopes were roseate
+to-day, decided that Margaret had really made up her mind at last, and
+she went upstairs full of penitence for her neglect of Richard, but
+determined to make up for it by the good news she would send both of
+herself and of him.<a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="c">W<small>YCHFORD</small> R<small>ECTORY</small><br />
+O<small>XON</small>.</p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>December.</i></p>
+
+<p class="nind"><i>My Dear Richard,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I am sorry that I've not written to you for so long, but I know
+you'll forgive me, because I have to think about so many things.
+Margaret has just told me you are coming back in April. Be sure it
+is April, because my birthday is on the first of May, you know, and
+you must be in England for my birthday. Margaret looked very happy
+when she said you were coming home. Richard, I am sure that
+everything will be perfect. Guy's book is finished, and perhaps it
+will be published in March. If it's published early in March, I
+will send you a copy so that you can read it on the steamer coming
+home. There are two poems about Margaret, who was very sympathetic
+with Guy over me! That's one of the reasons why I'm sure that
+everything will be perfect for you. Guy wants to meet you very
+much. He says he admires action. That's because I told him about
+your bridge. Your father and mother are always very sweet to us
+when we go and have tea with them. Miss Verney is going to wear
+caps. Birdwood asked if you would bring him back a Goorcha's&mdash;is
+that the way to spell it&mdash;a Goorcha's knife because Godbold won't
+believe something he told him. Birdwood said you were a grand young
+chap and were wasted out in India. Father won a prize at Vincent
+Square for a yellow gladiolus. It's been christened&mdash;now I've
+forgotten what, but after somebody who had a golden throat. Guy's
+dog is a lamb. A merry Christmas, and lots of love from</i></p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Your loving</i>&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+<i>Pauline.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Pauline looked forward to Richard's return because she hoped that if
+Margaret married him her own marriage to Guy would begin to appear more
+feasible, it being at present<a name="page_276" id="page_276"></a> almost too difficult to imagine anything
+like marriage exploding upon the quietude of the Rectory. The return of
+Richard, from the moment she eyed it in relation to her own affairs,
+assumed an importance it had never possessed before when it was only an
+ideal of childish sentiment, and Pauline made of it a foundation on
+which she built towering hopes.</p>
+
+<p>Guy, as soon as he had decided to publish his first volume, instantly
+acquired doubts about the prudence of the step, and he rather hurt
+Pauline's feelings by wanting Michael Fane to come and give him the
+support of his judgment.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you I should never be enough," she said sadly.</p>
+
+<p>He consoled her with various explanations of his reliance upon a
+friend's opinion, but he would not give up his idea of getting him and
+he wrote letter after letter until he was able to announce that for a
+week-end in mid-December Michael was actually pledged.</p>
+
+<p>"And I do want you to like him," said Guy earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline promised that of course she would like him, but in her heart she
+assured herself she never would. It was corulean winter weather when the
+friend arrived, and Pauline who had latterly taken up the habit of often
+coming into the churchyard to talk for a while with Guy across the
+severing stream, abandoned the churchyard throughout that week-end. Guy
+was vexed by her withdrawal and vowed that in consequence all the
+pleasure of the visit had been spoilt.</p>
+
+<p>"For I've been rushing in and out all the time to see if you were not in
+sight, and I'm often absolutely boorish to Fane, who by the way loves
+your Rectory bedroom so much."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he condescended to let your book appear?" asked Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, rather, he says that everything I've included is quite all right.
+In fact he's a much less severe critic than I am myself."<a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a></p>
+
+<p>Pauline had made up her mind, if possible, to avoid a meeting with
+Michael, but on Monday she relented, and they were introduced to each
+other. The colloquy on that turquoise morning, when the earth smelt
+fresh and the grass in the orchard was so vernally green, did not help
+Pauline to know much about Michael Fane, save that he was not so tall as
+Guy and that somehow he gave the impression of regarding life more like
+a portrait by Vandyck than a human being. He was cold, she settled, and
+she, as usual shy and blushful, could only have seemed stupid to him.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon, when the disturbing friend had gone, Pauline and Guy
+went for a walk.</p>
+
+<p>"He admired you tremendously."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he?" she made listless answer.</p>
+
+<p>"He said you were a fairy's child, and he also said you really were a
+wild rose."</p>
+
+<p>"What an exaggerated way of talking about somebody whom he has only seen
+for a moment."</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline," said Guy, affectionately rallying her, "aren't you being
+rather naughty&mdash;rather wilful, really? Didn't you like Michael?"</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, you can't expect me to know whether I liked him in a minute. He
+made me feel shyer than even most people do."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let's talk about the book instead," said Guy. "What colour shall
+the binding be?"</p>
+
+<p>"What colour did he suggest?"</p>
+
+<p>"I see you're determined to be horrid about my poor harmless Michael."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why must he be brought down like this to approve of your book?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he has good taste, and besides he's interested in you and me."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you tell him about us?" Pauline asked sharply.<a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Nothing, my dearest, nothing," said Guy, flinging his stick for Bob to
+chase over the furrows. "At least," he added turning and looking down at
+her with eyebrows arched in pretended despair of her unreasonableness,
+"I expect I bored him to death with singing your praises."</p>
+
+<p>Still Pauline could not feel charitable, and still she could not smile
+at Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, my rose," he said tenderly. "Why will you droop? Why will you care
+about people who cannot matter to us? My own Pauline, can't you see that
+I called in a third person because I dare not trust myself now. All the
+day long, all the night long you are my care. I'm so dreadfully anxious
+to justify myself: I long for assurance at every step: once I was
+self-confident, but I can't be self-confident any longer. Success is no
+responsibility in itself, but now...."</p>
+
+<p>"It's my responsibility," cried Pauline melting to him. "Oh, forgive me
+for being jealous. Darling boy, it's just my foolish ignorance that
+makes me jealous of some one who can give you more than I."</p>
+
+<p>"But no one can!" he vowed. "I only asked Michael's advice because you
+are too kind a judge. My success is of such desperate importance to us
+two. What would it have mattered before I met you? Now my failure would
+... oh, Pauline, failure is too horrible to think of."</p>
+
+<p>"As if you could fail," she chided gently. "And if you did fail, I would
+almost be glad, because I would love you all the more."</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, no I wouldn't," she whispered. "Because I could not love you more
+that I do now."</p>
+
+<p>The dog with a sigh dropped his stick: he was become accustomed to these
+interludes.</p>
+
+<p>"Bob gives us up as hopeless," Guy laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not a bit sympathetic, you jealous dog," she said. "Because you
+have your master all day long."<a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a></p>
+
+<p>The next time Guy came to the Rectory, he brought with him the
+manuscript, so that Pauline could seal it for luck; and they sat in the
+nursery, while Guy for the last enumeration turned over the pages one by
+one.</p>
+
+<p>"It represents so much," he said, "and it looks so little. My father
+will be rather surprized. I told him I should wait another year. I
+wonder if I ought to have waited."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," said Pauline. "Everything else is waiting and waiting. It
+makes me so happy to think of these pages flying away like birds."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope they won't be like homing pigeons," said Guy. "It will be rather
+a blow if William Worrall rejects them."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but how could he be so foolish."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think he will really," said Guy. "After all, a good many people
+have endorsed the first half, and I'm positive that what I've written
+here is better than that. I rather wish I'd finished the Eclogues
+though. Do you think perhaps I'd better wait after all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, Guy, don't wait."</p>
+
+<p>So, very solicitously the poems were wrapped up, and when they were tied
+and sealed and the parcel lay addressed upon the table, Mrs. Grey with
+Monica and Margaret came in. They were so sympathetic about the possible
+adventures in sight for that parcel, and Guy was so much his rather
+self-conscious self that the original relation between him and the
+family seemed perfectly restored. Pauline was glad to belong to them,
+and in her pride of Guy's achievement she basked in their simple
+affection, thrilling to every word or look or gesture that confirmed her
+desire of the cherished accord between Guy and the others.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I'm sure you'd both like to go and post Guy's poems," Mrs. Grey
+exclaimed. "Yes ... charming ... to go and post them yourselves."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline waited anxiously for a moment, because of late Guy had often
+seemed impatient of these permissions granted<a name="page_280" id="page_280"></a> to him by her mother, but
+this afternoon he was himself and full of the shy gratitude that made
+her wonder if indeed nearly a year could have flown by since their love
+had been declared. Dusk was falling when they reached the post-office.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you register it, Mr. Hazlewood?" asked the postmistress.</p>
+
+<p>Guy nodded, and the parcel left their hands: in silence they watched it
+vanish into the company of other parcels that carried so much less: then
+back they came through the twilight to tea at the Rectory, both feeling
+as if the first really important step toward marriage had been taken.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," said Guy, "if only these poems of mine are well received, my
+father must acknowledge my right to be here, and if he once admits that,
+what barrier can there be to our wedding?"</p>
+
+<p>Pauline told him how much during the last month the distant prospect of
+their marriage had begun to weigh upon her, but now since that parcel
+had been left at the post-office, she said she would always talk of
+their wedding because that was such a much less remote word than
+marriage.</p>
+
+<p>"Come out to-night," said Guy suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>She put her hand on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, don't ask me again."</p>
+
+<p>He was penitent at once, and full of promises never to ask her again to
+do anything that might cause an instant's remorse. They had reached the
+hall of the Rectory and in the shadows Pauline held him to her heart,
+suddenly caught in the flood of tenderness that a wife might have for a
+husband to whose faults she could be indulgent by the measure of his
+greater virtues kept, as it might be, for her alone.<a name="page_281" id="page_281"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>January</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">G</span>UY, as soon as he had sent off the poems to a publisher, was much less
+violently driven by the stress of love, which latterly had urged him
+along so wayward a course. He began to acquire a perspective and to lose
+some of that desperately clinging reliance upon present joys. The need
+of battling against an uncertain future had brought him to the pitch of
+madness at the thought of the hours of Pauline's company that must be
+wasted; but now when to his sanguine hopes marriage presented itself as
+at last within sight, sometimes even seeming as close as the fall of
+this new year, he was anxious to set Pauline upon more tranquil waters,
+lest she too should like himself be the prey of wild imaginations that
+might destroy utterly one untempered by any except the gentler emotions
+of a secluded life. Her mother and sisters, whom he had come to regard
+as hostile interpreters of convention, took on again their old features
+of kindliness and grace; and he was able to see without jealous torments
+how reasonable their attitude had been throughout, nay more than
+reasonable, how unworldly and noble-hearted it had been in confiding
+Pauline to the care of one who had so few pretensions to deserve her. He
+upbraided himself for having by his selfishness involved Pauline in the
+complexities of regrets for having done something against her judgment:
+and in this dreary rain of January, free from the burden of uncompleted
+labour, he now felt a more light-hearted assurance than he had known
+since the beginning of their love.<a name="page_282" id="page_282"></a></p>
+
+<p>Bills came in by every post, but their ability to vex him had vanished
+in the promise his manuscript gave of a speedy defeat of all material
+difficulties. The reaction from the strain of decking his poems with the
+final touches that were to precede the trial of public judgment gave
+place to dreams. A dozen times Guy followed the manuscript step by step
+of its journey from the moment the insentient mailcart carried it away
+from Wychford to the moment when Mr. William Worrall threw a first
+casual glance to where it lay waiting for his perusal on the desk in the
+Covent Garden office. Guy saw the office-boy send off the formal
+postcard of acknowledgment that he had already received; and in his
+dream he rather pitied the youth for his unconsciousness of what a
+treasure he was acknowledging merely in the ordinary routine of a
+morning's work. Perhaps the packet would lie unopened for two or three
+days&mdash;in fact probably Mr. Worrall might not yet have resumed work, as
+they say, after a short Christmas vacation. Moreover when he came back
+to business, although at Guy's request for sponsors the poems had been
+vouched for by one or two reputed friends of the publisher with whom he
+was acquainted, he would no doubt still be inclined to postpone their
+examination. Then one morning he would almost inadvertently cut the
+string and glance idly at a page, and then....</p>
+
+<p>At this point the author's mental visions varied. Sometimes Worrall
+would be so deeply transfixed by the revelation of a new planet swimming
+into ken that he would sit spellbound at his own good fortune, not
+emerging from a trance of delight until he sent a telegram inviting the
+poet to come post haste to town and discuss terms. In other dreams the
+publisher would distrust his own judgment and take the manuscript under
+his arm to a critic of taste, anxiously watching his face and as an
+expression of admiration gradually diffused itself knowing that his own
+wild<a name="page_283" id="page_283"></a> surmize had been true. There were many other variations of the
+first reception of the poems, but they all ended in the expenditure of
+sixpence on a telegram. Here the dream would amplify itself; and proofs,
+binding, paper, danced before Guy's vision; while soon afterward the
+first reviews were coming in. At this stage the poet's triumph assumed a
+hundred shapes and diversities, and ultimately he could never decide
+between a leader on his work in The Times headed <small>A NEW GENIUS</small> or an
+eulogy on the principal page of The Daily Mail that galloped neck and
+neck for a column alongside one of The Letters of an Englishman. The
+former would bestow the greater honour: the latter would be more
+profitable: therefore in moments of unbridled optimism he was apt to
+allot both proclamations to his fortune. With such an inauguration of
+fame the rest was easy dreaming. His father would take a train to
+Shipcot on the same morning: if he read The Times at breakfast he would
+catch the eleven o'clock from Galton and, travelling by way of
+Basingstoke, reach Shipcot by half-past-two. Practically one might dream
+that before tea he would have settled £300 a year on his son, so that
+the pleasant news could be announced to the Rectory that very afternoon.
+In that case he and Pauline could be married in April; and actually on
+her twenty-first birthday she would be his wife. They would not go to
+the Campagna this year, because these bills must be paid, unless his
+father, in an access of pride due to his having bought several more
+eulogies at bookstalls along the line, offered to pay all debts up to
+the day of his wedding; in which case they could go to the Campagna:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0"><i>I wonder do you feel to-day</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>As I have felt since, hand in hand,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>We sat down on the grass, to stray</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>In spirit better through the land,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>This morn of Rome and May?</i><br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="page_284" id="page_284"></a></p>
+
+<p>They would drive out from the city along the Appian Way and turn aside
+to sit among the ghostliness of innumerable grasses in those primal
+fields, the air of which would be full of the feathery seeds and the dry
+scents of that onrushing summer. There would be no thought of time and
+no need for words: there would merely be the two of them on a morn of
+Rome and May. And later in the warm afternoon they would drive home,
+coming back to the city's heart to eat their dinner within sound of the
+Roman fountains. Then all the night-time she would be his, not his in
+frightened gasps as when wintry England was forbidding all joy to their
+youth, but his endlessly, utterly, gloriously. They would travel farther
+south and perhaps come to that Parthenopean shore calling to him still
+now from the few days he had spent upon its silver heights and beside
+its azure waters. In his dream Pauline was leaning on his shoulder
+beneath an Aleppo pine, at the cliff's edge, Pauline whose alien
+freshness would bring a thought of England to sigh through its boughs,
+and a cooler world to the aromatic drouth. Theirs should be sirenian
+moons and dawns, and life would be this dream's perfect fulfilment. In
+what loggia, firefly-haunted, would he hold her? The desire with which
+the picture flamed upon his imagination was almost intolerable, and here
+he always brought her back to Plashers Mead on a June dusk. Then she
+could be conjured in this house, summoned in spirit here to this very
+room; and if they had loved Italy, how they would love England, as they
+walked across their meadows, husband and wife. With such visions Guy set
+on fire each January night that floated frorely into his bedroom, until
+one morning a letter arrived from Mr. William Worrall, that made his
+fingers tremble, as he broke the envelope and read the news:<a name="page_285" id="page_285"></a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">217 C<small>OVENT</small> G<small>ARDEN</small>, W.C.<br />
+<i>January 6th.</i>&nbsp; &nbsp; </p>
+
+<p class="nind"><i>Dear Sir,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I have looked at the poems you were kind enough to send for my
+consideration, and I shall be happy to hand them to a reader for
+his opinion. The reader's fee is one guinea. Should his opinion be
+favourable, I shall be glad to discuss terms with you.</i></p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Yours faithfully,&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+William Worrall.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Guy threw the letter down in a rage. He would almost have preferred a
+flat refusal to this request for money to enable some jaded hack to read
+his poems. The proposal appeared merely insolent, and he wrote curtly to
+Mr. William Worrall to demand the immediate return of his manuscript.
+But after all, if Worrall did not accept his work, who would? Money was
+an ulterior consideration when the great object was to receive such
+unanimous approval as would justify the apparent waste of time in which
+he had been indulging. The moment his father acknowledged the right he
+had to be confident, he in turn would try to show by following his
+father's advice that he was not the wrong-headed idler of his
+reputation. Perhaps he would send the guinea to Worrall. He tore up his
+first letter and wrote another in which a cheque was enclosed. Then he
+began to add up the counterfoils of his cheque book, a depressing
+operation that displayed an imminent financial crisis. He had overdrawn
+£5 last quarter. That left £32 10s. of the money paid in on December 21.
+The quarter's rent was £4 10s. That left £28. Miss Peasey's wages were
+in arrears, and he must pay her £4 10s. on the fifteenth of this month.
+That would leave £23 10s. and he must knock off 7s. 6d. for Bob's
+licence. About £3 had gone at Christmas and there were the books still
+to pay. £20<a name="page_286" id="page_286"></a> was not much for current expenses until next Lady Day.
+However, he decided that he could manage in Wychford, if he did not have
+to pay out money for Oxford debts, the creditors of which were pressing
+him harder each week.</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td><td align="right">£</td><td align="right">s.</td><td align="right">d.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Lampard.</i></td><td>Books.</td><td align="right">39</td><td align="right">15</td><td align="right">0</td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Harker.</i></td><td>Furniture.</td><td align="right">17</td><td align="right">18</td><td align="right">0</td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Faucett.</i></td><td>Books.</td><td align="right">22</td><td align="right">16</td><td align="right">6</td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Williamson.</i></td><td>Books.</td><td align="right">13</td><td align="right">19</td><td align="right">0</td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Ambrose.</i></td><td>Books.</td><td align="right">4</td><td align="right">7</td><td align="right">0</td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Brough.</i></td><td>Tobacco.</td><td align="right">9</td><td align="right">19</td><td align="right">0</td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Clary.</i></td><td>Clothes.</td><td align="right">44</td><td align="right">4</td><td align="right">0</td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Miscellaneous.</i></td><td>Books, Clothes,</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp; Stationery, Chemist,<br />
+&nbsp; etc., etc. <span style="margin-left: 2em;">about £50</span></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>A total of £202 18s. 6d. Practically he might say that £200 would clear
+everything. Yet was £50 enough to allow for those miscellaneous
+accounts? Here for instance was a bill of £11 for boots and another of
+£14 for hats apparently, though how the deuce he could have spent all
+that on hats he did not know. It would be wiser to say that £250 was
+required to free himself from debt. Guy read through the tradesmen's
+letters and detected an universal impatience, for they all reminded him
+that not merely for fifteen months had they received nothing on account
+of large outstanding bills, but also they made it clear that behind
+reiterated demands and politeness strained to breaking-point stood
+darkly the law. That brute Ambrose, to whom after all he only owed £4
+7s., was the most threatening. In fact he would obviously have to pay
+the ruffian in full. That left only £15 13s. for current expenses to
+Lady Day, or rather £14 12s., for by the way Worrall's guinea had been
+left out of the reckoning.<a name="page_287" id="page_287"></a></p>
+
+<p>Guy wondered if he ought to get rid of Miss Peasey and manage for
+himself in future. Yet the housekeeper probably earned her wages by what
+she saved him, and if he relied on a woman who 'came in' every morning,
+that meant feeding a family. It would be better to sell a few books. He
+might raise £50 that way. Ten pounds to both Lampard and Clary, and six
+fivers among the rest would postpone any violent pressure for a while.
+Guy at once began to choose the books with which he could most easily
+part. It was difficult to put aside as many as might be expected to
+raise £50, for his collection did not contain rarities, and it would be
+a sheer quantity of volumes, the extraction of which would horribly
+deplete his shelves, upon which he must rely.</p>
+
+<p>The January rain dripped monotonously on the window-sills, while Guy
+dragged book after book from the shelves that for only fifteen months
+had known their company. They were a melancholy sight, when he had
+stacked on the floor as many books as he could bear to lose, each shelf
+looking as disreputable as a row of teeth after a fight. A hundred
+volumes were gone, scarcely a dozen of which had he sacrificed without a
+pang. But a hundred volumes in order to raise £50 must sell at an
+average of ten shillings apiece, and in the light of such a test of
+value he regarded dismayfully the victims. Precious though they were to
+him, he could not fairly estimate the price they would fetch at more
+than five shillings each. That meant the loss of at least a hundred more
+books. Guy felt sick at the prospect and looked miserably along the rows
+for the farther tribute of martyrs they must be forced to yield. With
+intense difficulty he gathered together another fifty, and then with a
+final effort came again for still another fifty. Here was the first
+edition of Swinburne's Essays and Studies. That must go, for it might
+count as ten shillings and therefore save a weaker brother. Rossetti's
+Poems in this edition of<a name="page_288" id="page_288"></a> 1871 must go in order to save the complete
+works, for he could copy out the sonnet which was not reprinted in the
+later edition. Here was Payne's translation of Villon which could
+certainly go, for it would fetch at least fifteen shillings, and he
+still possessed that tattered little French edition at two francs. The
+collected Verlaine might as well go, and the Mallarmé with the Rops
+frontispiece: the six volumes would save others better loved. Besides,
+he was sick of French poetry, wretched stuff most of it. Yet, here was
+Hérédia and the Pleiad and de Vigny, all of whom were beloved
+exceptions. He must preserve too the Italians, (what a solace Leopardi
+had been), though here were a couple of Infernos, one of which could
+surely be sacrificed. He opened the first:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Mi prese del costui piacer si forte,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The words were stained with the blue anemone to which he had likened
+Pauline's eyes that first day of their love's declaration. He opened the
+other:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0"><i>Ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Quando leggemmo il disiato riso</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Esser baciato da cotanto amante,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>La bocca mi baciò tutto tremante:</i><br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And in this volume the words were stained with a ragged robin which
+unnoticed had come back to Plashers Mead in his pocket that May eve and
+which when it fell out later he had pressed between those burning pages.
+It was doubtless the worst kind of sentiment, but the two books must go
+back upon their shelves, and never must they be lost, even if everything
+but Shakespeare went.</p>
+
+<p>Guy put his hand to his forehead and found that it was<a name="page_289" id="page_289"></a> actually wet
+with the agony of what on this January afternoon he had been compelling
+himself to achieve. Each book before it was condemned he stroked fondly
+and smelt like incense the fragrant mustiness of the pages, since nearly
+every volume still commemorated either the pleasure of the moment when
+he had bought it or some occasion of reading equally good to recall.
+Then he covered the pile with a shroud of tattered stuff and wrote a
+letter offering them to the only bookseller in Oxford with whom he had
+never dealt. Two days later an assistant came over to inspect the booty.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said Guy painfully, when the assistant put away his note-book
+and shot his cuffs forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Hazlewood, we can offer you £35 for that little lot."</p>
+
+<p>Guy stammered a repetition of the disappointing sum.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, sir. And we don't really want them."</p>
+
+<p>"But surely £50...."</p>
+
+<p>The assistant smiled in a superior way.</p>
+
+<p>"We must <i>try</i> and make a <i>little</i> profit," he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God, you'll do that. Why, I must have paid very nearly a hundred
+for them, and they were practically all second hand when I bought them."</p>
+
+<p>The assistant shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, sir, but in offering you £35, I'm offering too much as it
+is. We don't really want them, you see. They're not really any good to
+us."</p>
+
+<p>"You're simply being damned charitable in fact," said Guy. "All right.
+Give me a cheque and take them away when you like ... the sooner the
+better."</p>
+
+<p>He could have kicked that pile of books he had with such hardship
+chosen; already they seemed to belong to this smart young assistant with
+the satin tie; and he began to hate this agglomeration which had cost
+him such agony and in the end had swindled him out of £15. The
+assistant<a name="page_290" id="page_290"></a> sat down and wrote a cheque for Guy, took his receipt and
+bowed himself out, saying that he would send for the books in the course
+of the week.</p>
+
+<p>Through the rain Guy went for consolation to Pauline. He told her of his
+sacrifice and she with all she could give of exquisite compassion
+listened to his tale.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Guy, my darling, why don't you borrow the money from Father? I am
+sure he'd be delighted to lend it to you."</p>
+
+<p>Guy shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"It's impossible. My debts must be paid by myself. I wouldn't even
+borrow from Michael Fane. Dearest, don't look so sad. I would sell my
+soul for you. Kiss me. Kiss me. I care for nothing but your kisses. You
+must promise not to say a word of this to any one. Besides, it's no
+sacrifice to do anything that brings our marriage nearer by an inch.
+These debts are weighing me down. They stifle me. I am miserable too
+about the poems. I haven't told you yet. It's really a joke in one way.
+Yes, it's really funny. Worrall wrote to ask for a guinea before he read
+them. Now, don't you think there is something very particularly humorous
+in being charged a guinea by a reader? However, don't worry about that."</p>
+
+<p>"How could he be so stupid?" she cried. "I hope you took them away from
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. I sent the guinea. They must be published. Pauline, I must have
+done something soon or I shall go mad! Surely you see the funny side of
+his offer? I think the notion of my expecting to get five shillings
+apiece out of a lot of readers, and my only reader's getting a guinea
+out of me is funny. I think it's quite humorous."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing is funny to me that hurts you," Pauline murmured. "And I'm
+heartbroken about the books."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, when I'm rich I can buy plenty."</p>
+
+<p>"But not the same books."<a name="page_291" id="page_291"></a></p>
+
+<p>"That's mere sentiment," he laughed. "And the only sentiment I allow
+myself is in connection with things that you have sanctified."</p>
+
+<p>Then he told her about the flowers pressed in the two volumes of Dante,
+both in that same fifth canto.</p>
+
+<p>"And almost you know," Guy whispered, "I value most the ragged robin,
+because it commemorates the day you really began to love me."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, no," she protested. "Guy, don't say that. I always loved you, but I
+was shy before. I could not tell you. Sometimes, I wish I were shy now.
+It would make our love so much less of a strain."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it a strain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, sometimes," she cried nearly in tears, her light brown hair upon
+his shoulder. "Oh, yes, yes, Guy. I can't bear to feel.... I'm
+frightened sometimes, and when Mother has been cross with me, I've not
+known what to do. Guy, you won't ever ask me to come out again at
+night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not if it worries you afterward."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, it has, it has. Guy, when shall we be married?"</p>
+
+<p>"This year. It shall be this year," he vowed. "Let us believe that,
+Pauline. You do believe that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Guy, I adore you so wildly. It must be this year. My darling, my
+darling, this year ... let it be this year."</p>
+
+<p>Guy doled out very carefully the £35 he had accumulated by the sale of
+his books. Lampard and Clary had to be content with £7 apiece. Five more
+creditors received £4, or rather one of them only £3 19s., so that the
+guinea left over could be put back into the current account for poetic
+justice. There was for the present nothing more to do but await the
+verdict of Worrall's reader, and in a fortnight Guy heard from the
+publisher to say this had been favourable enough to make Mr. Worrall
+wish to see him in order to discuss the matter of publication. Guy was
+much excited and rushed across to the Rectory in a festivity of<a name="page_292" id="page_292"></a>
+hopefulness. He had wired to say he would be in London next day, and all
+that evening the name of Worrall was lauded until round his unknown
+personality shone the aureole of a wise and benevolent saint. There
+seemed no limit to what so discerning a publisher might not do for Guy,
+and he and Pauline became to themselves and to her family the hero and
+heroine of such an adventure as never had been. In the course of the
+evening Guy had an opportunity of talking to Margaret, and for the first
+time for a long while he availed himself of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you really going to talk to me then?" she asked in mock surprize.</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret, I've been rather objectionable lately," said Guy, remembering
+with an access of penitence that it must be almost exactly a year ago
+that he and Margaret in that snowy weather had first talked about his
+love for Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I have thought that you were forgetting me," said Margaret. "I
+shall be sad if we are never going to be friends again."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Margaret, we are friends now. I've been worried, and I thought that
+you had been rather unkind to Pauline."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't really."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. It was absolutely my fault," Guy admitted. "Now that
+there seems a chance of our being married in less than ten years, I'm
+going to give up this continual exasperation in which I live nowadays.
+It's curious that my first impression of you all should have been as of
+a Mozart symphony, so tranquil and gay and self-contained and perfectly
+made did the Rectory seem. How clumsily I have plunged into that life,"
+he sighed. "Really, Margaret, I feel sometimes like a wild beast that's
+escaped from a menagerie and got into a concert of chamber-music. Look
+here, you shall never have to grumble at me again. Now tell me, just to
+<a name="page_293" id="page_293"></a>show that you've forgiven my detestable irruption ... when Richard
+comes back...."</p>
+
+<p>Margaret gave him her hand for a moment, and looked down.</p>
+
+<p>"And you're happy?" he asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I shall be."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you will be, you will be."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline asked him afterward what he had said to Margaret that could have
+made her so particularly sweet, and when Guy whispered his discovery,
+Pauline declared that the one thing necessary to make this evening
+perfect had been just that knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, how clever of you to make her tell you what she will never tell
+us. You don't know how much it has worried me to feel that you were
+always angry with Margaret. How I've exaggerated everything! And what
+friends you really are, you dears!"</p>
+
+<p>"I've never been angry with her except on your account."</p>
+
+<p>"But you won't ever be again, because I'm so foolish. I'm really a sort
+of young Miss Verney."</p>
+
+<p>They laughed at this idea of Pauline's, and soon it was time for Guy to
+go. He thought luxuriously as he walked up the drive how large a measure
+of good news he would bring back with him from London.</p>
+
+<p>Guy was surprized to be kept waiting when he enquired for Mr. Worrall at
+three o'clock on the following afternoon. All the way up in the train he
+had thought so much about him and so kindlily that it seemed he must the
+very moment he entered the dusty Georgian antechamber shake his
+publisher warmly by the hand. He had pictured him really as looking out
+for his coming, almost as vividly indeed in his prefiguration of the
+scene as to behold Mr. Worrall's face pressed tight against a pane and
+thence disappearing to greet him from the step.</p>
+
+<p>It was a shock to be invited to wait, and he repeated his name to the
+indifferent clerk a little insistently.<a name="page_294" id="page_294"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Worrall will see you in a minute," the clerk repeated.</p>
+
+<p>Guy looked at the few objects of interest in the outer office, at the
+original drawings of wrappers and frontispieces, at the signed
+photograph of a moderately distinguished poet of the 'nineties, at a
+depressing accumulation of still unsold volumes. The window was grimy,
+and the raindrops seemed from inside to smear it as tears smudge the
+face of a dirty child. The clerk pored over a ledger, and from the grey
+afternoon the cries of the porters in Covent Garden came drearily in. At
+last a bell sounded, and the clerk invited him 'to step this way,'
+lifting the counter and pointing up a narrow staircase beyond a glass
+door. Guy went up and at last entered Mr. Worrall's private office.</p>
+
+<p>The publisher was a short fat man with a bald and curiously conical
+head, reminding Guy very much of a dentist in his manner. The poet sat
+down and immediately caught in his first survey Mr. William Worrall's
+caricature by Max Beerbohm. As a result of this observation Guy
+throughout the interview could only perceive Mr. Worrall as the
+caricaturist had perceived him, and like a shape in a dream his head all
+the time grew more and more conical, until it seemed as if it would soon
+bore a hole in the festooned ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Hazlewood," said the publisher referring as he spoke to Guy's
+card with what Guy thought was a rather unnecessary implication of
+oblivion. "Well, Mr. Hazlewood, my reader reports very favourably on
+your poems, and there seems no reason why I should not publish them."</p>
+
+<p>Guy bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"No reason at all," Mr. Worrall continued. Then making a gothic arch
+with his fingers and looking up at the ceiling, he added:</p>
+
+<p>"Though, of course, there will be a risk. However, my reader's opinion
+was certainly favourable."<a name="page_295" id="page_295"></a></p>
+
+<p>And so it ought to be, thought Guy, for a guinea.</p>
+
+<p>"And I don't think," Mr. Worrall went on, "that in the circumstances we
+need be very much afraid. Have you any ideas about the price at which
+your sheaf, your little harvest is to be offered to the public?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I should leave that to you," said Guy hastily.</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely," said the publisher. "Yes, I think perhaps we might say five
+shillings or ... of course it might be done in paper in the Covent
+Garden Series of Modern English Poets. Yes, the reader speaks most
+highly of your work. You know the Covent Garden series of modern poets?
+In paper at half-a-crown net?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should be very proud to appear in such a series," said Guy
+pleasantly. The series as a matter of fact was one that could do him no
+discredit.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a charming idea, isn't it?" said Mr. Worrall, fondling one of the
+set that lay on his desk. "Every five volumes has its own floral emblem.
+We've done The Rose, The Lily, The Violet. Let me see, your poems are
+mostly about London, aren't they?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, there isn't one about London," Guy pointed out rather sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"No, precisely, then of course they would not come in The London Pride
+set which still has a vacancy. Perhaps The Cowslip? What does the reader
+say? Um, yes, pastoral. Precisely! Well, then why not let us decide that
+your poems shall be Number Three in The Cowslip set. Capital! I think
+you'd be wise to choose the Covent Garden series in paper. The cost of
+publication is really less in that series, and I have always chosen my
+poets so carefully that I can be sure the Press will pay attention
+to&mdash;er neophytes. That is a great advantage for a young writer, as you
+no doubt realize without my telling you?"</p>
+
+<p>"The cost?" echoed Guy in a puzzled voice.</p>
+
+<p>"It will run you in for about £30&mdash;as a guarantee of<a name="page_296" id="page_296"></a> course. The terms
+I suggest are simply a written agreement that you will guarantee £30
+toward the cost. Your royalty to be ten per cent on the first thousand,
+twelve and a half on the next thousand and fifteen over two thousand. We
+might fairly say that in the event of selling a thousand you would have
+nothing to pay, but of course if you only sell twenty or thirty, you
+will have to&mdash;er&mdash;pay for your piping."</p>
+
+<p>"And when should I have to produce this £30?" Guy asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I might ask for a cheque to be placed to my account on the day of
+publication; and then of course I should send in a written statement
+twice a year with the usual three months' margin for settlement."</p>
+
+<p>"So that supposing my book came out in March?" Guy enquired.</p>
+
+<p>"By the following November I should hope to have the pleasure of sending
+you back your £30 and a cheque on account of royalties," said the
+publisher briskly.</p>
+
+<p>"They don't seem very good terms somehow," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Worrall shrugged his shoulders, and his conical head grew more
+conical.</p>
+
+<p>"You forget the advantage of being in the Covent Garden series of modern
+poets. However, don't, pray do not, entrust your manuscript to my
+pilotage unless you are perfectly satisfied. I have a good many poems to
+consider, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"May I write within a week or so and give you my decision?" Guy asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, Mr. Hazlewood. Clever fellow, isn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>Guy had given a farewell glance at Max Beerbohm's caricature.</p>
+
+<p>"Very clever," the poet fervently agreed.</p>
+
+<p>Guy left Mr. William Worrall's office and wandered<a name="page_297" id="page_297"></a> dismally across
+Covent Garden, wondering where on earth he was going to be able to raise
+£30. He had intended to spend the night in town and look up some old
+friends, but foreseeing now the inevitable question 'What are you
+doing?' he felt he had not the heart to explain that at present he was
+debating the possibility of spending £30 in order to produce a book of
+poems. All the people whom he would have been glad to see had held such
+high hopes of him at Oxford, had prophesied for his career such
+prosperity; and now when after fifteen months he emerged from his
+retirement it was but to pay a man to include him in the Covent Garden
+series of modern poets. The rain came down faster, and a creeping fog
+made more inhospitable the dusk of London. He thought of a quick train
+somewhere about five o'clock, and in a sudden longing to be back in the
+country and to sleep, however dark and frore the January night that
+stretched between them, nearer to Pauline than here in this city of
+drizzled fog, he took a cab to Paddington.</p>
+
+<p>During the railway journey Guy contemplated various plans to raise the
+money he wanted. He knew that his father at the cost of a long letter
+would probably have given him the sum: but supposing a triumph lay
+before him, all the sweets of it would have been robbed by paternal
+help. Moreover if the book were paid for thus, there would be a
+consequent suspicion of all favourable criticism: it would never seem a
+genuine book to his father, and the reviews would give him the
+impression of being the work of well-disposed amateurs or of personal
+friends. There was the alternative of borrowing the money from Michael
+Fane; and then as the train went clanging through the night Guy made up
+his mind to be under an obligation to nobody and to sacrifice all the
+rest of his books if necessary that this new book might be born.</p>
+
+<p>When he was back at Plashers Mead, his resolution did not<a name="page_298" id="page_298"></a> weaken:
+coldly and unsentimentally he began to eviscerate the already mutilated
+library. At the end of his task he had stacked upon the floor five
+hundred volumes to be offered as a bargain to the bookseller who had
+bought the others. All that was left indeed were the cheapest and most
+ordinary editions of poets, one or two volumes of the greatest of all
+like Rabelais and Cervantes, and the eternally read and most
+companionable like Boswell and Gilbert White and Sir Thomas Browne. In
+the determination that had seized him he rejoiced in his bare shelves,
+so much exalted by the glories of abnegation that he began to despise
+himself in his former attitude as a trifler among books and to say to
+himself, as he looked at the volumes which had survived this heartless
+clearance, that now he was set on the great fairway of literature
+without any temptation to diverge up the narrow streams of personal
+taste. The bookseller's assistant was not at all eager for the proferred
+bargain, and in the end Guy could only manage to obtain the £30 and not,
+as he had hoped, another £10 towards his debts. Nevertheless he locked
+the cheque up in his desk with the satisfaction of a man who for the
+first time in his life earns money, and later on went across to tell
+Pauline the result of the visit to London.</p>
+
+<p>There was a smell of frost in the air that afternoon, and the sharpness
+of the weather consorted well with Guy's mood, taking away the heavy
+sense of disappointment and giving him a sparkling hopefulness. He and
+Pauline went for a walk on Wychford down, and in the wintry cheer he
+would not allow her to be cast down at the loss of his books or to
+resent Worrall's reception of the poems.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything is all right," he assured her. "The more we have to deny
+ourselves now, the greater will be my success when it comes. The law of
+compensation never fails. You and I are Davidsbündler marching against
+the Philistines. So be brave, my Pauline."<a name="page_299" id="page_299"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I will try to be brave," she promised. "But it's harder for me because
+I'm doing nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing," said Guy. "Nothing except endow me with passion and
+ambition, with consolation ... oh, nothing, you foolish one."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I really all that to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Forward," he shouted, hurling his stick in front of him and dragging
+Pauline at the heels of Bob across turf that was already beginning to
+crackle in the frost. Pauline could not resist his confidence, and when
+at last they had to turn round and leave a smoky orange sunset, they
+came home glowing to the Rectory, both in the highest spirits. Guy wrote
+to the publisher that night and announced his intention of accepting the
+"offer," a word which he could not resist framing with inverted commas
+in case the sarcastic shaft might pierce Mr. Worrall's hard and conical
+head.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting back in his chair and thinking over his poems, all sorts of
+verbal improvements suggested themselves to Guy; and he added a note
+asking for the manuscript to be sent back for a few corrections. He
+looked at his work with new eyes when it arrived, and bent with all the
+enthusiasm that fruition gave his pen upon reviewing each line for the
+hundredth time. He had enjoyed few things so well in his life as going
+to bed tired with the intense consideration of a rhyme and falling
+asleep in the ambition to reconsider it early next morning.</p>
+
+<p>About ten days had passed since Guy sold the second lot of books, and
+the poems were now as good as he could make them until print should
+reveal numbers of fresh faults. He hoped that Worrall would hurry on
+with the printing in order to allow him plenty of time for an even more
+severe scrutiny; and he wrote to suggest April as the month of
+publication, so anxious was he to have one specially bound copy to offer
+Pauline on her birthday.<a name="page_300" id="page_300"></a></p>
+
+<p>On the very morning when the manuscript had been wrapped up and was
+ready to be sent off a disturbing letter arrived from Lampard, his
+favourite Oxford bookseller, to say that having made a purchase of books
+two or three days ago he had been surprized to find among them a large
+number of volumes with Mr. Hazlewood's name inscribed on the fly-leaves,
+for which Mr. Hazlewood had not yet paid him. He ventured to think it
+was only by an oversight that Mr. Hazlewood had not paid his long
+outstanding account before disposing of the books and in short he was
+anxious to know what Mr. Hazlewood intended to do about it. His bill,
+£32 15s., was enclosed. Guy wrote back to say that it was indeed a most
+unaccountable oversight on his part, but that he hoped in order to mark
+his sympathy with Mr. Lampard's point of view to send him another cheque
+very shortly, reminding the bookseller at the same time that he had
+scarcely three weeks ago sent him £7 on account. Mr. Lampard in his
+reply observed very plainly that Guy's letter was no reply at all and
+threatened politely to make matters rather unpleasant if the bill were
+not paid in full instantly. Guy tried once more a letter full of bland
+promises, and received in response a letter from Mr. Lampard's
+solicitor. The £30 intended for Mr. Worrall had to be sacrificed, and
+even £2 15s. had to be taken from his current account. Savagely he tore
+the paper from the manuscript, wrapped it up again and despatched it to
+another publisher. The bad luck of the Lampard business made him only
+the more resolute not to invoke aid from his father or anyone else. He
+was a prey to a perverse determination to do everything himself; but it
+was gloomy news that he had to tell Pauline that afternoon, and she
+broke down and cried in her disappointment.<a name="page_301" id="page_301"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>February</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">P</span>AULINE 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 £200 appalled her as much as if he had said £2000.
+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 entrusted.</p>
+
+<p>"William had the same difficulty," sighed the old maid. <a name="page_302" id="page_302"></a>"Really it
+seems as if money <i>is</i> the root of all evil. £200, you say? Oh, dear,
+how uncomfortable he must feel, poor young man."</p>
+
+<p>"If only I could make some money, dear Miss Verney. But how could I?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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
+quarrelled with him over me. Oh, I'm the most miserable girl in England,
+and such a little time ago I was the happiest."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.<a name="page_303" id="page_303"></a> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I shall go mad," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>He mentioned names one after another, but to Pauline they were the names
+of stone idols that stared unresponsively at her lover's poems.</p>
+
+<p>"If we had only done what Mother wanted and not seen so much of each
+other," she lamented.</p>
+
+<p>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<a name="page_304" id="page_304"></a> 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 sombre-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 grey-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?</p>
+
+<p>It was one evening toward the end of the month 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.</p>
+
+<p>"In a way," said Pauline, "they are my favourite 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,<a name="page_305" id="page_305"></a> oh, Monica, ever so far, that always
+the moment I've seen my crocuses budding winter seems to fly away."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I notice he doesn't come to church now so much as he did," said Monica.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you ever ask him why he hasn't been?" she persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"His faith seems rather to have frozen lately," said Monica.</p>
+
+<p>"He's been upset and disappointed."</p>
+
+<p>"All the more reason for going to church," Monica argued.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, for you, darling, or for me; but Guy may be different."<a name="page_306" id="page_306"></a></p>
+
+<p>"There's no room for moods in one's religious duties. The artistic
+temperament is not provided for."</p>
+
+<p>That serene and nun-like conviction of tone made Pauline feel a little
+rebellious, and yet in its corroboration of her own uneasiness she could
+not laugh it aside.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Does he know you go to Confession?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I only mentioned it because I'm afraid that with your beautiful nature
+you will be too merciful to that Guy of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"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."<a name="page_307" id="page_307"></a></p>
+
+<p>Her sister's cloistral smile flickered upon the scene like the wan
+February sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>"I do hope Guy really appreciates you," was what she said.</p>
+
+<p>"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 toward the house on the other side
+of the lawn. When he sauntered across to them she pointed out the
+destructiveness of the sparrows.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well, my dear," he chuckled, "most florists are worse."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps <i>I'm</i> a florist," Monica whispered, "and Guy may be only a
+mischievous sparrow."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline smiled at Monica and took her arm gratefully and affectionately.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear King Alfred," said Pauline. "How glad I shall be to say
+good-morning to him again."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>After Monica's question it was no longer possible for Pauline when she
+was alone to avoid facing the problem of Guy's attitude toward 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 someone 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 someone merely good-looking<a name="page_308" id="page_308"></a> 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 behaviour, the more she became convinced that
+all the time Guy's religion had merely been Guy's kindness. This
+discovery was not to<a name="page_309" id="page_309"></a> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 anyone'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<a name="page_310" id="page_310"></a> 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....</p>
+
+<p>"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 afterward in peace, and she slept as if upon
+a victory and very early in the morning went to church.</p>
+
+<p>The days when the thrushes sang mattins 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<a name="page_311" id="page_311"></a> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>In the pause before he answered, she suffered anew the torment of that
+struggle in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Does it worry you when I don't come?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes, it does rather."</p>
+
+<p>"Then of course I will come," said Guy at once.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, don't you want to come to church? You used to come happily, didn't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I came chiefly to be near you," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"That does make me so unhappy. I'd almost rather you came out of
+politeness to Father."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that was another reason," Guy admitted.</p>
+
+<p>"And you never came because you wanted to?" she asked miserably.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I wanted to."</p>
+
+<p>"But because you believed?"<a name="page_312" id="page_312"></a></p>
+
+<p>"In what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Guy, don't be so cruel. Don't you believe in anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you haven't any faith?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want to have it," said Guy. "If God won't condescend to give it to
+me...." he broke off with a shrug.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm ready to believe," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"How can you expect to have faith if your reason for it is merely to sit
+next me in church?" she asked bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I think it's you who are being cruel," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care. I don't care if I am cruel. You'll break my heart."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.<a name="page_313" id="page_313"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="ANOTHER_SPRING" id="ANOTHER_SPRING"></a>ANOTHER SPRING</h2>
+
+<p><a name="page_314" id="page_314"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_315" id="page_315"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>March</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN the poems were returned by three publishers within the first
+fortnight of March, Guy was inclined to surrender his vocation and to
+think about such regular work as would banish the reproach he began to
+fancy was now perceptible at the back of everybody's eyes. The weather
+was abominably cold, and even Plashers Mead itself was no longer the
+embodiment of the old enthusiasm. Already in order to pay current
+expenses he was drawing upon the next quarter, and the combination of
+tradesmen's books with icy draughts curling through the house produced
+an atmosphere of perpetual exasperation. It always seemed to be coldest
+on Monday morning and Miss Peasey <i>would</i> breathe over his shoulder
+while he was adding up the bills.</p>
+
+<p>"We apparently live on butter," he grumbled.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, it was really lamb you had yesterday," the housekeeper
+maintained irrelevantly.</p>
+
+<p>"I said we apparently live on butter," Guy shouted.</p>
+
+<p>Then of course Miss Peasey <i>would</i> poke her veiny nose right down into
+the book, while the draught blew her hair about and unpleasantly tickled
+his cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the best butter," she said sorrowfully at last.</p>
+
+<p>"But my watch is quite all right."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon?"</p>
+
+<p>"I made an allusion to Alice in Wonderland," he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Peasey retired from the room in dudgeon, and Guy wasted ten minutes
+in examining various theories on what his<a name="page_316" id="page_316"></a> housekeeper could have
+thought he meant by his last remark. Finally he wrote off to a friend of
+his, an ardent young Radical peer with whom he had shared rooms at
+Oxford.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="c">P<small>LASHERS</small> M<small>EAD</small>, W<small>YCHFORD</small>, O<small>XON</small>.</p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>March 15.</i></p>
+
+<p class="nind"><i>Dear Com,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Why the dickens haven't you written to me for such ages? I'm going
+to chuck this place. Haven't you got any scheme on hand for
+teaching the democracy to find out the uselessness of your order?
+Why not a new critical weekly, with me as bondslave-in-chief? Or
+doesn't one of your National Liberals want a bright young fellow to
+dot his i's and pick up his h's? For £250 a year I'll serve any of
+them, write his speeches, interview his constituents or even teach
+his cubs to prey on the body politic like Father Lion himself.
+Seriously though, if you hear of anything, do think of me.</i></p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Yours ever&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+G. H.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Comeragh wrote back at once:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">420 Brook Street, W.<br />
+<i>March 16.</i>&nbsp; &nbsp; </p>
+
+<p class="nind"><i>Dear old Guy,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>If you will bury yourself like a misanthropic badger, you can't
+expect to be written to by every post. Oddly enough there has been
+some talk of starting a new paper; at least it isn't really very
+odd because the subject is mooted three times a day in the advanced
+political circles round which I revolve. However, just at present
+the scheme is in abeyance. Never mind, I'll fetch you out of your
+earth at the first excuse that offers itself. Do you ever go in and
+see the Balliol people? My young brother's up now, you know. Ask
+him over to lunch some day. He's a shining light of Tory Democracy
+and is going<a name="page_317" id="page_317"></a> to preserve or I suppose I ought to say conserve the
+honour of our family. When are your poems coming out? I heard from
+Tom Anstruther the other day. He seems rather hurt that an attaché
+at Madrid is not given an opportunity of adjusting or upsetting the
+balance of power in Europe. I'll try to get down for a week-end,
+but I'm betraying my order by voting against an obscurantist
+majority whenever I can, and plotting hard against the liberties of
+landowners when I'm not voting. However, when the House flies away
+to search for summer I'll drop out of the flock and perch a while
+on your roof. One thing I will promise, which is that when I'm
+Prime Minister you shall be offered the Laurel at £200 a year.</i></p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Yours ever&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+Com.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>It was jolly to hear from Comeragh like this, and the letter opened for
+Guy a prospect of something that, when he came to think about it,
+appeared very much like a retreat. He realized abruptly that the strain
+of the last two months had been playing upon his nerves to such an
+extent that the notion of leaving Wychford was no longer very
+distasteful. The realization of his potential apostasy came with rather
+a shock, and he felt that he ought somehow to atone to Pauline for the
+disloyalty toward her his attitude seemed to involve. He began to go to
+church again in a desperate endeavour to pursue the phantom that she
+called faith, but this very endeavour only made more apparent the vital
+difference in their relations with life. She always had for his attempts
+to capture something worth while for himself in religion a kind of
+questioning anxiety which was faintly irritating; and though he always
+pushed the problem hastily out of sight, the fact that he could now be
+irritated by her was dolefully significant.</p>
+
+<p>All through this month of maddening East wind Guy felt that he stood
+upon the verge of a catastrophe, and the<a name="page_318" id="page_318"></a> despatch of the poems which at
+first had done so much to help matters along was now only another source
+of vexation. Formerly he had always possessed the refuge of work, but in
+this perpetual uncertainty he could not settle down to anything fresh,
+and the expectation every morning of his poems being once again rejected
+was a handicap to the whole day. Partly to plunge himself into a
+reaction and partly to avoid and even to crush their spiritual
+divergence Guy always made love passionately to Pauline during these
+days. He was aware that she was terribly tried by this, but the
+knowledge made him more selfishly passionate. A sort of brutality had
+entered into their relation which Guy hated, but to which in these
+circumstances that made him feverishly glad to wound her he allowed more
+liberty every day. The merely physical side of this struggle between
+them was of course accentuated by the gag placed upon discussion. He
+would not give her the chance of saying why she feared his kisses, and
+he took an unfair advantage of the conviction that Pauline would never
+declare a reason until he demanded one. He was horribly conscious of
+abusing her love for him, and the more he was aware of that, the more
+brutal he showed himself until sometimes he used to wonder in dismay if
+at the back of his mind the impulse to destroy his love altogether had
+not been born.</p>
+
+<p>Easter was approaching, and Pauline went to Oxford for a week to get
+summer clothes. When she came back, Guy found her attitude changed. She
+was remote, almost evasive, and at the back of her tenderest glance was
+now a wistful appeal that perplexed his ardour.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel you don't want me to kiss you," he said reproachfully. "What has
+happened? Why have you come back from Oxford so cold? What has happened
+to you, Pauline?"</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes took fire, melted into tenderness, flamed once more, and then
+were quenched in rising tears.<a name="page_319" id="page_319"></a></p>
+
+<p>The voice in which she answered him seemed to come from another world.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, I am not cold ... I'm not cold enough...."</p>
+
+<p>She flung herself away from his gesture of endearment and buried her
+cheeks in the cushion of the faded old settee. A wild calm had fallen
+upon the room as if like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm it could
+register a warning of the emotional tempest at hand. The books, the
+furniture, the very pattern of birds and daisies upon the wall stood out
+sharply, almost luridly it seemed: the cuckoo from the passage called
+the hour in notes of alarm as if a stormcock were sweeping up to cover
+from dangerous open country.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" Guy asked. He knew that he was carrying the
+situation between Pauline and himself farther along than he had ever
+taken it since the night they met. Yet nothing could have stopped his
+course at this moment and, if the end should ruin his life, he would
+persist.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask me," she sobbed. "It's cruel to ask me."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean your mother...." he began.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, it's myself, myself."</p>
+
+<p>"My dearest, if it's only yourself, you need not be afraid. Why, you're
+so adorable...."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline seemed to cry out at the wound he had given her, and Guy started
+back afraid for an instant of what he was provoking.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't treat me like a stupid little girl that petting can cure. I'm not
+adorable, I'm bad ... I'm ... oh, Guy, I am so unhappy!"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by 'bad'?" he asked. "You talk as if we were ...
+really, darling, you don't grasp life at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Guy," she said turning to him with fierce earnestness. "Don't persuade
+me I've done nothing. I have. I ought<a name="page_320" id="page_320"></a> not. I've known that all the
+time. If you don't want me to be miserable for the rest of my life, you
+mustn't persuade me. I've been so weak...."</p>
+
+<p>He was annoyed at the exaggeration in her words and perplexed by her
+violence.</p>
+
+<p>"Anybody would think, you know," he told her, "that we had behaved
+terribly."</p>
+
+<p>"We have. We have."</p>
+
+<p>Her mouth was drawn with pain: her eyes were wild.</p>
+
+<p>"But we've not," Guy contradicted, mustering desperately all the forces
+of normality to allay Pauline's overstrained ideas. "We've not," he
+repeated. "You don't understand, darling Pauline, that when you talk
+like that you give the impression of something that is unimaginable of
+you. It's dreadful really to have to talk about this, but it's better
+that we should discuss it than that you should torture yourself
+needlessly like this."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not what we've done so much," she said. "It's what you've made me
+think about you."</p>
+
+<p>Guy laughed rather miserably.</p>
+
+<p>"That seems a very trifling reason for so much ... well, you know, it's
+very nearly hysteria."</p>
+
+<p>"To you, perhaps," she retorted bitterly. "To me it's like madness."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't understand these morbid fancies of yours. What have you been
+doing in Oxford? Ah, I know," he shouted in a rage of sudden divination.
+"You've been talking to a priest.... Oh, if I could burn every
+interfering scoundrel who...." The scene swept over him, choking the
+words in his throat with indignant impotent jealousy. "You've been to
+Confession. And what good have you got from it, but lies, lies?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've always been to Confession," Pauline answered coldly.</p>
+
+<p>In a flash Guy visualized her religious life as one long<a name="page_321" id="page_321"></a> creeping
+toward a gloomy Confessional where lurked a smooth-faced priest who
+poured his poison into her ears.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall go no more," he vowed. "What right have you to drag the
+holiness of love in the mud of a priest's mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know how stupidly you're talking," said Pauline. "You say I
+exaggerate. You don't know how much you are exaggerating. You don't
+understand."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you wanted me to have faith! How can I have faith when I hear
+of priests degrading our love. What right had you to go to a priest?
+What does he know of you or me? What has he suffered? What does he
+understand? Why do you listen to him and pay no heed to me? What did you
+say?"</p>
+
+<p>Pauline looked at him in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you say?" he repeated angrily. He was caring for nothing at
+that moment but to tear from her the history of the scene that made a
+furnace of his brain. "He must have tried to put the idea into your head
+that you've been doing wrong. I say you have done nothing wrong. I
+suppose you told him you came out at night with me on the river and I
+suppose he concluded from that ... oh, Pauline, I cannot let you be a
+prey to the mind of a priest. You don't realize what it means to me. You
+don't realize the raging jealousy it rouses."</p>
+
+<p>"Guy," she moaned, "love is too much for me. I can't bear the
+uncertainty. Your debts ... the sending back of your poems ... the fear
+that we shall never be married ... the doubts ... the thought that I've
+deceived my family ... the misery I bring to you because I can't think
+everything is right...."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want you always to agree with me. I've promised never to ask
+you again to come out with me at night. I'll even promise never to kiss
+you again, until we are married. But you must promise me never again to
+go to Confession."<a name="page_322" id="page_322"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I can't give up what I believe is right," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I won't give up what I believe is right."</p>
+
+<p>He strained her to him and kissed her lips so closely that they were
+white instead of red. Then he went from her in an impulse to let her if
+she would break off the engagement. If he had stayed he must have
+blasphemed the religion which was soiling with its murk their love. He
+must have hurt her so deeply that he would have compelled her to bid him
+never come back. It was for her now, the responsibility of going on, and
+she should find what religion would do for her when she was left alone
+to battle with the infamous suggestions the fiction was giving to her
+mind. She should find that beside his love religion was nothing, that
+the folly would topple down and betray her at this very moment. When
+next he saw her, she would have forgotten her priests and their mummery:
+she would think only of him and live only for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Blow, you damned wind," he shouted to the brilliant and tranquil March
+day. "Blow, blow, can't you? You've blown all these days and now when I
+want you in my face, you lie still."</p>
+
+<p>But the weather stayed serene, and Guy had to run in order to tire the
+fury in his mind. He did not stop until he realized by the scampering of
+the March hares to right and left of his path how very absurd he must
+appear even to the blind heavens.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," he exclaimed suddenly standing still and addressing a thorn-tree
+on the green down. "Why, of course, now I realize the Reformation!"</p>
+
+<p>This sudden apprehension of a tremendous historical fact was rather
+disconcerting in the way it brought home to him the uselessness of all
+the information that he had for years absorbed without any real response
+of recognition. It brought home to him how much he would have to
+discover for himself and appalled him with the mockery it made of<a name="page_323" id="page_323"></a> his
+confidence hitherto. How if all those poems he had written were merely
+external emotion like his conception of religion until this moment? He
+really hoped the manuscript would come back this evening from whatever
+publisher had last eyed it disdainfully, so that in the light of this
+revelation of his youthfulness he could judge his life's achievement
+afresh. It was indeed frightening that in one moment all his comfortable
+standards could be struck away from beneath his feet, for if an outburst
+of jealousy on account of a priest's interference could suddenly
+re-shape his conception of history, what fundamental changes in his
+conception of art might not be waiting for him a little way ahead?</p>
+
+<p>The spectacle of Pauline's simple creed had hitherto pleasantly affected
+his senses; and she had taken her place with the heroines of romantic
+poets and painters. It had been pleasant to murmur:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0"><i>Pray but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Think but one thought of me up in the stars:</i><br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="nind">and to compare himself with the lover of The Blessed Damozel had been a
+luxurious melancholy. Pauline and he had worshipped together in chapels
+of Lyonesse where, if he had knelt beside her with rather a tender
+condescension toward her prayers, he had always been moved sincerely by
+the decorative appeal they made to him. He had felt a sentimental awe of
+her hushed approach to the altar and he had derived a kind of
+sentimental satisfaction from the perfection of her attitude, perhaps,
+even more, he had placed upon it a sentimental reliance. Her faith had
+been the decorative adjunct of a great deal of his verse, and he flushed
+hotly to remember lines that now appeared as damnable insincerities with
+which he had allowed his pen to play. All that piety of hers he had<a name="page_324" id="page_324"></a>
+sung so prettily was real and possessed an intrinsic power to injure
+him, so that what he had patronized and encouraged could rise up and pit
+itself deliberately against him. Pauline actually believed in her
+religion, believed in it to the extent of dishonouring their love to
+appease the mumbo-jumbo. That something so monstrously inexistent could
+have any such power was barely comprehensible, and yet here he was faced
+with what easily might prove to be a force powerful enough to annihilate
+their love. He remembered how in reading of Christina Rossetti's
+renunciation of a lover who did not believe as she believed, he had
+thought of the incident as a poet's exaggeration. And it might well have
+happened. Now indeed he could see why she was so much the greatest
+poetess of them all: her faith had been real. Lines from that Sonnet of
+sonnets came back to him, broken lines but full of dread:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i6"><i>I love ... God the most;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Would lose not Him but you, must one be lost:</i><br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And if Pauline should speak so to him, if Pauline should disown him at
+the bidding of her phantom gods? How the thought swept into oblivion all
+his pitiful achievement, all his fretful emotions set down in rhyme.
+Either he must convince her that she was affrighted by vain fancies or
+he must bow before this reality of belief and seek humbly the truth
+where she discovered it. Yet if he took that course, it held no pledge
+of faith for him. Shamefacedly and scarcely able to bear even the
+thorn-tree's presence Guy knelt down and prayed that he might be given
+Pauline's single heart. The song of the innumerable larks rose into the
+crystalline, but all the prayers tumbled down from that stuffy pavilion
+of sky. The moment that the first emotional aspiration was thus defeated
+Guy was only conscious of his lapse into superstition, and furious with
+the surrender he went walking over the downs in a determination to shake
+Pauline's faith at<a name="page_325" id="page_325"></a> whatever the cost temporarily to the beautiful
+appearance of their love.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote that evening in a fine frenzy of declamation against God,
+affirming in his verse the rights of man; but on reading the lines
+through next morning they seemed like the first vapours of adolescence;
+and when he turned for consolation to Shelley, he found that even a
+great poet's rage on behalf of man against God was often turgid enough.
+It was however a hopeful sign that he could still perceive what puddles
+these aerial fountains of song often left behind them, and he was glad
+to find that not all the value of critical experience had been destroyed
+by the imperative need to readjust his values of reality.</p>
+
+<p>Birdwood brought a note from Pauline just when Guy had burnt his
+effusion of the night before and come to the conclusion that as a
+polemical and atheistic rhymester he was of the very poorest quality.</p>
+
+<p>The gardener was inclined to be chatty, and when the weather and the
+flowers in season had been discussed at length, he observed that Miss
+Pauline was not looking so well as she ought to look.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to speak to her about it, Mr. Hazlenut."</p>
+
+<p>Birdwood had never learned to give Guy his proper name, and there had
+been many jokes between him and Pauline about this and many vows by Guy
+that one day he would address the gardener as Birdseed. How far away
+such foolish little jokes were seeming now.</p>
+
+<p>"It's been a tiring Spring," said Guy. "The East wind...."</p>
+
+<p>"Her cheeks isn't nothing like so rosy as they was," said the gardener.
+"You'll excuse the liberty I'm taking in mentioning them, but having
+known Miss Pauline since she couldn't walk ... why I happen to mention
+it is that there was a certain somebody up in the town who passed the
+remark to me and, I having to give him a piece of my<a name="page_326" id="page_326"></a> mind pretty sharp
+on account of him talking so free, it sort of stuck in my memory and ...
+you don't think she's middling?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, I think she's quite well," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as long as you aren't worrited, I don't suppose I've got any call
+to be worrited; only anyone can't help it a bit when they see witches'
+cheeks on a young lady. She certainly does look middling, but maybe, as
+you say, it is this unnatural East wind."</p>
+
+<p>Birdwood touched his cap and retired, but his words had struck at Guy
+remorsefully while he walked away to a corner of the orchard, reading
+Pauline's letter. The starlings were piping a sweet monotony of Spring,
+and daffodils, that he and she had planted last Summer when they came
+back from Ladingford, haunted his path.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind"><i>My darling,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Why haven't you been to see me this morning? Why weren't you in
+the orchard? I stayed such a long while in the churchyard, but you
+never came. If I said anything yesterday that hurt your feelings,
+forgive me. You mustn't think that I was angry with you because
+perhaps I spoke angrily. Darling, darling Guy, I adore you so, and
+nothing else but you matters to my happiness. I should not have
+spoken about religion&mdash;I don't know how we came to argue about it.
+It was unkind of me to be depressed and sad when my dearest was
+sad. Truly, truly I am so anxious about your poems only because I
+want you to be happy. Sometimes I must seem selfish, but you know
+that before anything it is your work I think of. I'm not really a
+bit worried about our being married. I have these fits of
+depression which are really very wrong. I'm not worried about
+anything really, only I had a dream about you last month which
+frightened me. Oh, Guy, come this afternoon and tell me you're not
+angry. I promise you that I won't make you miserable with my stupid
+depression. Guy, if I could only tell you how I love you.<a name="page_327" id="page_327"></a> If you
+only knew how never, never for an instant do I care for anything
+but your happiness. You don't really want me to give up believing
+in anything do you? It doesn't really make you angry, does it? Come
+and tell me this afternoon that you've forgiven</i></p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Your&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+Pauline.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I love you. I love you.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Gently the daffodils swayed in this light breeze of dying March, and the
+grass was already tall enough to sigh forth its transitory summer tune.
+Guy in a flood of penitence hastened at once to the Rectory to accuse
+himself to Pauline, and when he saw her watching for him at the nursery
+window he had no regrets that could stab to wound him as deeply as he
+deserved to be wounded. She was very tender and still that afternoon,
+and as he held her in his arms there seemed to him nothing more worth
+while in life than her cherishing. For them sitting in that nursery the
+hours swung lazily to and fro in felicity, and all the time there was
+nobody to disturb the reconciliation. They talked only of the future and
+allowed recent despairs and foreboding agitations to slink away
+disgraced. Janet, coming to take away the tea-things, beamed at their
+happiness and through a filigree of bare jasmine twigs the slanting sun
+touched with new life the faded wall-paper, opening wider, it seemed,
+the daisies' eyes, mellowing the berries and tinting the birds with
+brighter plumes for their immutable and immemorial courtship.</p>
+
+<p>Plunged deep in such a peace Guy prompted by damnable discord asked idly
+what had been that dream of which Pauline had spoken in her letter. She
+was unwilling for a long while to tell him, but he spurred on by
+mischief itself persuaded her in the end and she recounted that
+experience of waking to find herself prone upon the floor of her room.<a name="page_328" id="page_328"></a></p>
+
+<p>"No wonder you're looking pale," he exclaimed. "Now you see the result
+of exciting yourself unnecessarily."</p>
+
+<p>"But it was so vivid," she protested, "and really the light was blinding
+and it thought so terribly all the time."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall think very terribly that you've been reading some
+spiritualistic rot in a novel," said Guy, "if you talk like that. Your
+religion may be true, but I'm quite sure these conjuring tricks of your
+fancy are a sign of hysteria. And this poor speck that was me? How did
+you know it was me if it was a speck? Did that think too? My foolish
+Pauline, you encouraged your morbid ideas when you were awake and when
+you were asleep you paid the penalty."</p>
+
+<p>She had gone away from him and was standing by the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, if you talk like that, it means you don't really love me. It means
+you have no sympathy, that you're cold and cruel and cynical."</p>
+
+<p>He sighed with elaborate compassion for her state of mind.</p>
+
+<p>"And what else? I wonder how you ever managed to fall in love with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes I wonder too," she said slowly.</p>
+
+<p>He turned quickly and went out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Guy regretted before he was half-way down the passage what he had done,
+but he steeled himself against going back by persuading himself that
+Pauline's hysteria must be remorselessly checked. All the way back to
+Plashers Mead he had excuses for his behaviour, and all the way he was
+wondering if he had done right. Supposing that she were to persist in
+this exaggeration of everything, who could say into what extravagance of
+attitude she might not find herself driven? Rage seized him against this
+malady that was sapping the foundations of their love, and all his
+affection for her was obscured in the contemplation of that overwrought
+Pauline who sacrificed herself to baseless doubts and alarms. If he<a name="page_329" id="page_329"></a>
+once admitted her right to dream ridiculously about him, he would be
+encouraging her upon the road to madness. Had she not already fondled
+the notion of going mad, just as she would often fondle the picture of
+herself as the heroine of an unhappy love-affair? If he were severe now,
+she would surely come to see the absurdity of these religious fears,
+this heart-searching and morbid sensitiveness. It was curious that he
+was able to keep his idea of Pauline herself quite apart from Pauline as
+the subject of nervous depression. He was practically ascribing to her a
+double personality, so distinct were the two views of her in his mind.
+When he got home he found the manuscript had been sent back by a seventh
+publisher, and on top of the packet lay a letter from his friend
+Comeragh.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">420 B<small>ROOK</small> S<small>TREET</small>, W.</p>
+
+<p class="nind"><i>Dear Guy,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Sir George Gascony asked me to-day if I knew of someone who would
+suit him as private secretary. He's going out to Persia next month.
+I told him about you. Come up to town and meet him. He's dining
+here on Thursday. I'm certain you can have the job.</i></p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Yours ever&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+Comeragh.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>At first the letter only presented itself to his imagination as an easy
+way of punishing Pauline's hysteria. It seemed to him the very weapon
+that was wanted to 'give her a lesson,' and after dinner he went across
+to the Rectory and announced his news in front of everybody, asking
+everybody if they did not think he ought to go and talking
+enthusiastically of oriental adventure until quite late. He sternly
+refused to allow himself a moment alone with Pauline in which to talk
+over the plan; and, even when they were left alone together in the hall
+he kissed her good-night hurriedly and silently and rather guiltily.<a name="page_330" id="page_330"></a></p>
+
+<p>When Guy was back at home and thought about his behaviour, he began to
+wonder if he had committed himself to Persia too finally. The prospect,
+except so far as it would affect Pauline, had not really sunk into his
+mind yet, but now as he read the letter over he began to think that he
+really would like to go. It might mean a separation of two years but it
+would reconcile him to his father and it would assure his marriage at
+the end of the time. Persia might easily be almost as interesting as it
+sounded, and how remote from debts looked Baghdad. If last year he had
+been able practically to settle to be a schoolmaster, how much more
+easily could this resolution be taken. Dreamily he let his imagination
+play round the notion of Persia, dreamily and rather pleasantly it would
+solve so many difficulties and it held the promise of so much active
+romance.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning Mrs. Grey sent round to ask if Guy would come to lunch
+early enough to have a talk with her first.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes ... charming.... I really wanted us to have a little talk
+together," she said in nervous welcome, as she led the way to her own
+sitting-room that with its red lacquer and its screen painted with birds
+of paradise hid itself away in a corner of the house. Ordinarily Guy
+would have accepted it as a sign of the highest favour to be brought to
+her small room, but this morning it seemed to imprison him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes ... charming ... a little talk," said Mrs. Grey; and Guy while he
+waited for her to begin, watched the mandarins that moved in absurd
+reduplications all about her armchair's faded green pattern.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it was rather a surprize to us all last night ... yes ... I
+expect it was a surprize to you. And you really think you ought to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm getting rather discouraged about poetry," Guy confessed. "I'm
+beginning to think that what I've written isn't much good and that if I
+am ever going to write anything worth while, it will be because I've
+learnt to be less self-conscious<a name="page_331" id="page_331"></a> about it. If I went to Persia with Sir
+George Gascony I should probably be kept fairly busy and if there was
+any poetry left in me after that, well, it might be good stuff."</p>
+
+<p>"But you've not seen yet what people think of what you have written ...
+no ... you see the poems haven't been published yet, which is very
+vexing ... and so I thought ... I mean the Rector thought that if there
+was any difficulty he would like to help you to publish them ... yes ...
+rather than go away to Persia ... you know ... yes ... poor little
+Pauline was crying nearly all night and I don't think you ought to go
+away suddenly like this ... no ... and we couldn't find an atlas
+anywhere!"</p>
+
+<p>"You think I ought not to go?" said Guy, and he realized as he spoke
+that he was disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>"I do think that after all these months of hoping for your poems to be a
+success that you ought at least to try them first, and then afterwards
+we can talk about Persia. I'm afraid you think I've been too strict
+about Pauline ... perhaps I have ... yes ... and so I think that now
+Spring is here you can go out every day ... yes ... charming ... now
+that the weather is getting better...."</p>
+
+<p>But now every day, thought Guy bitterly, there would be recriminations
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course if you think I ought not to go, I won't," he said. "I'll
+write to Comeragh and refuse."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you're glad, aren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, rather."</p>
+
+<p>"We all understood why you thought you ought to go, and now I've another
+plan ... yes ... charming.... I'm going to send Pauline away for a month
+... with Miss Verney ... yes ... charming, charming plan ... and you
+must make arrangements at once about your poems ... and then perhaps you
+could give them to Pauline for her birthday...."<a name="page_332" id="page_332"></a></p>
+
+<p>"But I don't think the Rector ought to pay for them," Guy objected.</p>
+
+<p>"The Rector wants to pay for them. But of course he won't say anything
+about it, and you will have to make the arrangements yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"You're all so good to me, and I feel such a fraud," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better make arrangements with the man you sent them to first ...
+and Pauline needn't know anything about it ... and I shan't say I've
+persuaded you not to go to China ... or else she will be worried ...
+she's looking rather pale ... I think two or three weeks by the seaside
+... Lyme Regis perhaps or Cromer ... Lyme Regis, I think, because the
+trains to Folkestone have been torn out ... yes ... charming, charming."</p>
+
+<p>After lunch Guy told Pauline in the garden that he had decided not to
+accept the post he had been offered, and she was so obviously overjoyed
+at his decision, that he no longer had the heart to feel the slightest
+disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, I've been so stupid," she told him. "I've depressed you without
+any reason, but I will come back from Scarborough quite well."</p>
+
+<p>Guy began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, why are you laughing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, because I cannot make out where you really are going."</p>
+
+<p>"Scarborough, because Miss Verney has chosen Scarborough."</p>
+
+<p>They talked for a while of the letters that each would write to the
+other and of what a Summer should follow that short parting, when every
+day they would be together and when perhaps even such days as those at
+Ladingford might come again.</p>
+
+<p>"And you won't worry about anything all this time you're away?" Guy
+asked.<a name="page_333" id="page_333"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I won't, indeed I won't."</p>
+
+<p>Guy went home to find a telegram from Comeragh saying that Sir George
+Gascony had got appendicitis and would not be going to Persia for a
+month or two at least. Yet he did not mention this telegram at the
+Rectory when next day he came to say good-bye to Pauline, because he was
+anxious to preserve the idea of his having vainly attempted to do
+something, and when he sat alone in his orchard the same afternoon, he
+had an emotion of something very near to relief that for a while there
+would be no more heart-searchings and stress, no more misgivings and
+reproaches and despairs. He was perfectly happy, sitting by himself in
+the orchard and staring at the blackthorn by the margin of the stream.<a name="page_334" id="page_334"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>April</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">M</span>ISS Verney was so droll at Scarborough and enjoyed herself so much that
+Pauline in her pleasure at the success of what the old maid called their
+'jaunt' really was able to put aside for the present her own
+perplexities. The sands were empty at this season and the Spa unpopulous
+except for a few residents. The wind blew inland from a sparkling sea,
+while Miss Verney with bonnet all awry sitting in a draughty shelter
+declared that somehow like this she pictured the Riviera; and when the
+weather was too bad even for Miss Verney's azure dreams Pauline and she
+sat cosily among the tropic shells and Berlin wool of their lodgings.
+Long letters used to come every day from Guy, and long letters had to be
+written by Pauline to him; while perpetually Miss Verney tinkled on with
+marine tales that if no doubt nautically inaccurate had nevertheless a
+fine flavour of salt water.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember I was sitting in the parlour window at Southsea when a
+regiment.... I remember a Captain in the Royal Marines.... I remember
+how anxious my father was that I should have been a boy."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear Miss Verney, you can't remember that."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, he invariably spoke of me as the Midshipman, I remember. I
+would then have been about eight years of age ... pray give my very kind
+regards to Mr. Guy and say how well we are both looking and what a
+benefit this fine air is to be sure, and don't forget our little
+expedition to the theatre. You must tell Mr. Guy the story of the piece.
+He will certainly enjoy hearing about that very nice-mannered<a name="page_335" id="page_335"></a> convict
+who ... ah dear! how my poor father used to revel in the play."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Verney's conversation scarcely ever stopped, and while Pauline was
+writing letters it was always particularly brisk, but she used to enjoy
+the accompaniment as she would have enjoyed the twittering of a bird. It
+seemed to inspire her letters with the equable gaiety that Guy was so
+glad to think was coming back to her. His own letters were invariably
+cheerful, and Pauline began to count the days to the time when she would
+see him again. Easter had gone by, and the weather was so steadily fine
+that it was a pity not to be together. He wrote of primroses awaiting
+her footsteps in the forest, of blue dog-violets and cowslips in the
+hollows of Wychford down, of all the birds that were now arrived in
+England, of the cuckoo's first call and of the first swallow seen.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Come back soon, my own, my sweet,</i> he wrote. <i>Come back and let
+this winter be all forgotten. I climbed up to the top of the church
+tower to-day, and oh, the tulips in your garden and oh, the
+emptiness of that garden notwithstanding! Come back, my Pauline,
+for you'll see the iris buds in the paddock and you've no idea of
+the way in which that river of ours sparkles on these April
+mornings. I wish I could tell you how remote this Winter already
+has grown. It has crept out of memory like a dejected nightmare at
+breakfast. You are never to think again about the stupid things
+I've said about religion: think only, my dearest, that I hope
+always for your faith. It would be dishonest of me to say that I
+believe now exactly as you believe, but I want to believe like
+that. Perhaps I'm illogical in writing this: perhaps all the time I
+do believe. Forget too what I said about Confession. I would almost
+go myself to prove my penitence (to you!), but I just can't bring
+myself to do that, because for me it really would be useless and
+would turn me against everything you count as holy. Forget all that
+has cast a shadow on our love. Count it all as my heedlessness<a name="page_336" id="page_336"></a> and
+be confident that I alone was to blame. I would write more, but
+letters are such impossible things for intimacy. Some people can
+pour out their souls on paper: I can't. That's really what my poems
+suffer from. I have been working at them again since you were away,
+and they have a kind of coldness, a sort of awkward youthful
+reserve. Perhaps that's better than youthful exuberance, and yet I
+don't know. One can prune the too prodigal growth, but one can't
+always be sure of having the prodigality when one has the maturity.
+The metaphors seem to be getting rather tied up, and you must be
+bored by now with my chattering criticism.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Your mother came to tea yesterday and brought Monica. Margaret is
+rather in seclusion at present on account of Richard's arrival, I
+fancy. She's obviously dreading other people's notice. It is rather
+a self-conscious business, this waiting for the arrival of someone
+whom everybody expects is going to play such an important part in
+her life. If we were separated now for two years, it would be
+different; but I can see that Margaret is dreadfully afraid that
+now, having at last made up her mind to marry Richard, she may not
+care for him as much as she did. He must be a fine fellow. I'm
+looking forward tremendously to his coming. Monica was perfectly
+delightful yesterday, and grew quite excited in her nun-like way
+over the ultimate decoration of Plashers Mead. Dear me, what taste
+you all have got, and what a very great deal you've taught me! You
+must most of all forget that I ever said a word against your
+sisters. They have really equipped me in a way with a point of view
+toward art. I tried to tell Monica so yesterday afternoon. In fact
+we got on very well together. In a way, you know, she almost
+appreciates you more than Margaret does. You represent her hope,
+her ideal of the world. Worldly one, I must say good-night. Tell
+Miss Verney with my love that all her cats send their best respects
+and compliments and that Bellerophon particularly requests that his
+mistress will bring back whatever fish is in season at Scarborough.
+Oh, the funniest thing I've<a name="page_337" id="page_337"></a> forgotten to tell you! Miss Peasey was
+chased by some bullocks across the big field behind the orchard!
+She was too priceless about it when she got home.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Pauline began to think it was impossible for her ever to have had the
+least worry in the course of her engagement. This was the first time she
+had been parted from Guy for more than a week during the whole of a
+year, and there was something very reassuring in such an opportunity to
+regard him like this so disinterestedly, to find that the separation was
+having the traditional effect and to be positive that she was going to
+meet him again at the end of April more in love than ever. Nevertheless
+she was always aware of being grateful for the repose from problems, and
+she did once or twice play with the idea of having perhaps made a
+mistake in objecting to his going abroad. It was on occasions of doubt
+like this that Pauline would try to impress Miss Verney with what
+existence had already meant to her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm feeling so old, Miss Verney."</p>
+
+<p>"Old, my dear? Oh, that cannot be true," exclaimed her friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Falling very much in love does make one feel old," Pauline declared.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see," Miss Verney went on, "let me try to remember how I felt.
+My impression is <i>now</i> that when I was in love I felt much younger that
+I do at present, but perhaps that is natural, for it is very nearly
+thirty years ago since William and I parted."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he still alive?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, he is still alive, but I have never seen him and he must be
+wonderfully altered. Sometimes I think of all the days that have gone by
+since we parted. It seems so strange to think of our lives being able to
+go on, when once it seemed to both of us that life could not go on at
+all if we were not together. It seems so strange to think of him<a name="page_338" id="page_338"></a> eating
+his lunch somewhere at the same time that somewhere else I am eating my
+lunch. Who knows if he ever thinks of me, who knows indeed?"</p>
+
+<p>"If anything happened to prevent our marriage," began Pauline
+thoughtfully, and then was silent.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Verney opened wide her pale blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"And what could happen?" she asked grandly.</p>
+
+<p>"I've no business to imagine such a thing, have I?"</p>
+
+<p>"None whatever," said Miss Verney decidedly.</p>
+
+<p>But had Miss Verney's love affair been complicated by anything more than
+merely natural difficulties? Guy's debts and unsuccess were nothing in
+comparison with other elements of disaccord ... and then Pauline pulled
+herself up from brooding and resolutely forced her mind to contemplate a
+happy Summer. Had she not just now been congratulating herself upon the
+disappearance of all worries in this sea-air?</p>
+
+<p>The time at Scarborough drew to a close, and about a week before her
+birthday came the news of Richard's arrival from India. She and Miss
+Verney packed up and were home in Wychford two days before they were
+expected.</p>
+
+<p>"Richard, how lovely to see you again," Pauline cried. "And oh, Richard,
+I'm sure you've grown. Don't you think he has grown?" she demanded of
+everybody. "Richard, how clever of you to grow when you're
+twenty-seven."</p>
+
+<p>It was really like old times to go babbling on like this, while Richard
+sat and smiled encouragingly and spoke never a word.</p>
+
+<p>"Coming for a stroll?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I ought to see Guy first," she said. "Richard, I hope you like
+Guy."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think he looks like a poet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never seen a poet before," said Richard.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but like your idea of a poet?"<a name="page_339" id="page_339"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Never thought much about poets," said Richard. "So you aren't coming
+for a stroll?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will to-morrow, but I must spend the sunset with Guy."</p>
+
+<p>Guy was waiting for her by the paddock, and they floated downstream out
+of reach of people. In their own peninsula they kissed away the absence
+of twenty-two days.</p>
+
+<p>"You look much better," said Guy critically.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm perfectly well."</p>
+
+<p>"And happy?"</p>
+
+<p>She answered him with her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Pauline, I believe you're quite shy of me!"</p>
+
+<p>She blushed.</p>
+
+<p>"I really am a little, you know," she whispered. "Did you like Richard?
+Oh, Guy, I hope you did."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I did."</p>
+
+<p>"And, Guy, you don't mind if I go for a walk with him to-morrow morning?
+You see, I know he's longing to hear about Margaret and himself."</p>
+
+<p>"But you'll come out with me in the afternoon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Then Richard may have the morning," said Guy. "And I hope you'll
+arrange everything between him and Margaret so successfully that he
+won't steal any more hours from me."</p>
+
+<p>When Pauline had left Guy that evening she thought how strangely it had
+been like meeting him for the first time all over again. Or rather it
+was as if they had walked a long way down the wrong road and were now
+beginning to walk somewhat tentatively along what she hoped was surely
+the right road at last. Her duty was above all to help Guy with the
+material burdens: she must never again let him think that his debts or
+his prospects had any power to worry her. Merely most tactfully must she
+try to keep him from extravagance, and, oh dear, how she hoped that he
+had not<a name="page_340" id="page_340"></a> bought her an expensive birthday present. It was too late to
+say anything about it now, but if Guy had been wisely economical, how
+happy she would be. How she hoped too that Richard had not brought home
+from India a present that would annoy Margaret. Really it was a most
+oppressive business, this week before her coming of age, for between
+Guy's extravagance and Richard's ... well, it was really not so much bad
+taste as Indian taste. She would love anything he gave her of course,
+but perhaps he would consult beforehand with Margaret. Dear Richard, he
+was so sweet and touching, and if only he had not brought her something
+very elaborately carved. She met him next morning half way to Fairfield,
+and two years were obliterated as she kept pace with his long stride
+when they turned aside from the high road and tramped upward over the
+grassy wold.</p>
+
+<p>"Richard, isn't it very hot in India?"</p>
+
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"And didn't you ever get used to walking a bit more slowly in India?"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You lazy little thing. I thought you and Aunt Verney had been in
+training at Scarborough. Come on, let's sit down then."</p>
+
+<p>They sat down, and Richard drew with his stick in the close turf.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that your bridge?" Pauline asked with all the interest she could put
+into her voice.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, you villain, it's the beginning of Margaret's face!"</p>
+
+<p>She clapped her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Richard, aren't I a villain? But, you know, it's not very
+frightfully like anything, is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline," he said suddenly in that sharp voice in which two years ago
+he had entrusted his interests to her before<a name="page_341" id="page_341"></a> he went away. "Pauline, is
+Margaret going to marry me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course she is, Richard."</p>
+
+<p>"Has she spoken to you about me?"</p>
+
+<p>"But you know she never speaks about her own affairs and that she can't
+bear anybody else to speak of them to her."</p>
+
+<p>"Then how do you know?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, perhaps because I'm so much in love with Guy," Pauline whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how that quite works. I'm a very dull sort of a chap after
+that Guy of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"But you're not at all," Pauline declared. "And if you take my advice
+you won't think you're dull. You'll make Margaret marry you. Really I'm
+sure that what she would like best is to be made to do something. You
+see, she's a darling but she is just a very tiny little bit spoilt. You
+mustn't be so patient with her. But, Richard dear, I know she loves you,
+because she practically told Guy that she did."</p>
+
+<p>"Guy?" he echoed looking rather indignant.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you must understand how sweet Margaret was to him about me. She
+was so sympathetic, and really she practically brought about our
+engagement. Oh, I do love her so, Richard, and I do want her to be happy
+and I do know so dreadfully well that you are the very person to make
+her happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, you are a pink brick," he avowed.</p>
+
+<p>And scarcely another word did he say for the rest of their walk.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline went to Margaret's room that night and, after fidgeting all the
+while her sister was undressing, suddenly plunged down beside her bed
+and caught hold of her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret, you're not to snub me, because I absolutely must speak. I
+must beg you not to keep Richard waiting any longer. Do, my darling,
+darling Margaret, do be kind to <a name="page_342" id="page_342"></a>him and not so cold. He simply adores
+you, and ... why, Margaret, you're crying ... oh, let me kiss you, my
+Margaret, because you were so wonderful about Guy, and I've been a beast
+to you and you must, you must be happy."</p>
+
+<p>"If I could only love him as you love Guy," Margaret sighed between her
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>"You do really ... at least perhaps not quite as much. Oh, Margaret,
+don't be angry with me if I whisper something to you: think how much you
+would love him if you and he had ... Margaret, you know what I mean."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline blew out the candle and rushed from the dark room; and lying
+awake in her own bed, she fancied among the flowers of the Rectory such
+fairy children for Margaret and herself, such fairy children dancing by
+the margin of the river.<a name="page_343" id="page_343"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>May</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span>N the morning before Pauline's birthday Guy received a letter from
+Michael Fane announcing abruptly his engagement and adding that on
+account of worldly opposition he had been persuaded into a postponement
+of his marriage for two months. Guy was rather ironically amused by the
+serious manner in which Michael took so brief a delay, and he could not
+help thinking how unreasonably impatient of trifles people with ample
+private means often showed themselves. Michael wrote that he would like
+to spend some of his probation at Plashers Mead and alluded to the
+'luck' of his friend in being so near his Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>Guy wrote a letter of congratulation, and then he put Michael's news out
+of his mind in order to examine the two complete sets of the proofs of
+his poems which had also arrived that morning. He was engaged in the
+task of making rather a clumsy binding for them out of a piece of
+stained vellum, when Richard Ford came round to Plashers Mead. Guy
+welcomed him gladly, for besides the personal attraction he felt toward
+this lean and silent engineer he perceived in the likelihood of
+Richard's speedy marriage an earnest of his own. Somehow that marriage
+was going to break the spell of inactivity, to which at the Rectory all
+seemed to be subject and from which Guy was determined to keep Richard
+free, even if it were necessary to shake him as continuously as tired
+wanderers in the snow are shaken out of a dangerous sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"I came round to consult with you about my present to Pauline
+to-morrow," said Richard very solemnly. "I've<a name="page_344" id="page_344"></a> brought round one or two
+little things, so that you could give me your advice."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course I will," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"They're downstairs in the hall. I had some difficulty in explaining to
+your housekeeper that I wasn't a pedlar."</p>
+
+<p>In the hall was stacked a pile completely representative of the bazaar:
+half-a-dozen shawls, the model of a temple, a carved table, some inlaid
+stools, every sort of typical oriental gewgaw, in fact an agglomeration
+that seemed to invite the smell of cheap incense for its effective
+display.</p>
+
+<p>"Godbold drove them over," Richard explained as he saw Guy's
+astonishment. "Now look here, what's the best present for Pauline? You
+see I'm not at all an artistic sort of chap, and I don't want to hoick
+forward something that's going to be more of a nuisance than anything
+else."</p>
+
+<p>"It's really awfully difficult to choose," said Guy rather ambiguously.</p>
+
+<p>Then he discovered a simple ivory paper-knife which he declared was just
+the thing, having the happy thought that he would not cut the set of
+proofs he was binding for Pauline, so that to-morrow Richard could have
+the pleasure of beholding his gift put to immediate use.</p>
+
+<p>"You've chosen the smallest thing of the lot," said the disappointed
+donor. "You don't think a shawl as well?" he asked, holding up yards of
+gaudy material.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, candidly I think Pauline's too fair for that colour scheme, don't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right, the paper-knife. You don't mind if I leave these things here
+till Godbold can fetch them away, and ... er.... I wish you'd choose
+something for yourself. I've always taken a kind of interest in this
+house, don't you know, and I've often thought about it in India."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like a gong," said Guy at once, and Richard was obviously gratified
+by his quick choice, and still farther gratified when Guy suggested they
+should sound it immediately<a name="page_345" id="page_345"></a> outside the kitchen-door. Solemnly Richard
+held it up in the passage, while Guy crashed forth a glorious clamour,
+at the summons of which Miss Peasey came rushing out.</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious," she gasped. "I thought that dog Bob had jumped through
+the window."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a present for us from India," Guy shouted.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's extremely handsome, isn't it? Well now, I shall expect you
+to be punctual in future for your meals. Dear me, yes, quite a variety,
+I'm sure, after that measley bell."</p>
+
+<p>The gong was given a prominent position in the bare hall, and Guy
+invited Richard up to his own room. After the question of the presents
+had been solved Richard was shy and silent again, and Guy found it very
+hard to make conversation. Several times his visitor seemed on the point
+of getting something off his mind, but when he was given an opportunity
+for speech, he never accepted it. Desperate for a topic Guy showed him
+the proofs of the poems and explained that he was binding them roughly
+as his present to Pauline to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>"That's something I can't understand," said Richard intensely. "Writing!
+It beats me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Bridges would beat me," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>Richard looked quite cheerful at this notion and under the influence of
+the encouragement he had received seemed at last on the point of getting
+out what he wanted to say, but he could manage nothing more confidential
+than a tug at his bristled fair moustache.</p>
+
+<p>"When are you and Margaret going to be married?" Guy asked abruptly, for
+of course he had guessed that it was Margaret's name which was
+continually on the tip of his tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove, there you are, I'm rather stumped," said Richard <a name="page_346" id="page_346"></a>gloomily.
+"You see the thing is ... well ... I suppose you know that when I
+started off to India last June year, Margaret and I were sort of engaged
+... at least I was certainly engaged to her, only she hadn't absolutely
+made up her mind about me ... and of course that's just what you'd
+expect would happen to a chap like me ... dash it all, Hazlewood, I'm
+afraid to ask her again!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you need be," said Guy. "Of course we haven't discussed
+you, except very indirectly," he hastily added, "but I'm positive that
+Margaret is only waiting for you to ask her to marry her on some
+definite day: on some definite day, Ford, that's the great thing to
+remember."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean I ought to say 'Margaret, will you marry me on the twelfth of
+August, or the first of September?' That's your notion, is it?"</p>
+
+<p>Guy nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"By gad, I'll ask her to-day," said Richard.</p>
+
+<p>"And you'll be engaged to-morrow," Guy prophesied.</p>
+
+<p>"When are you and Pauline going to be married?"</p>
+
+<p>Guy looked up quickly to see if the solid Richard were laughing at him,
+but there was nothing in those steel-blue eyes except the most
+benevolent enquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the question," said Guy. "Writing is not quite such a certainty
+as bridge-building."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean there's the difficulty of money? By Jove, that's bad luck,
+isn't it? Still, you know, I expect that having the good fortune to have
+Pauline in love with you ... well, I expect, you've got to expect a bit
+of difficulty somewhere, you know. You know, Pauline was...." he stopped
+and blinked at the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline's awfully fond of you," Guy said encouragingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Hazlewood, that kid's been ... well, I can't express myself, you know,
+but I'd ... well, I really can't talk about her."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand though," said Guy. "Look here, you'll<a name="page_347" id="page_347"></a> stay and have lunch
+with me, and then we can go across to the Rectory afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>Emotional subjects were tacitly put on one side to talk of the birds and
+butterflies that one might expect to find round Wychford, of Miss Verney
+and Godbold and other local characters, or of the prospects of the
+cricket team that year. After lunch Guy put the unbound set of proofs in
+his pocket and, launching the canoe, they floated down to the Rectory
+paddock. Mrs. Grey and the girls were all in the garden picking purple
+tulips, and Guy taking Pauline aside told her on what momentous quest
+Richard was come, suggesting that he should occupy the Rector's
+attention, while Pauline lured away her mother and Monica.</p>
+
+<p>The Rector was sitting in the library hard at work, rubbing the fluff
+from the anemone seeds with sand.</p>
+
+<p>"And what can I do for you, Sir?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you'd like to see the proofs of my poems," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>He laid the duplicates on the dusty table and tried to thank his patron
+for what he had done. The Rector waved a clay pipe deprecatingly.</p>
+
+<p>"You must thank Constance ... you must thank my wife, if you thank
+anybody. But if I were you I shouldn't thank anybody till you find out
+for certain that she's done you a service," he recommended with a
+twinkle.</p>
+
+<p>Guy laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Worrall doesn't want to publish until the Autumn."</p>
+
+<p>The Rector made a face.</p>
+
+<p>"All that time to wait for the verdict?"</p>
+
+<p>"Time seems particularly hostile to me," Guy said.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to tweak his forelock pretty hard."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I've come to consult you about. Do you think I ought to go
+to Persia with Sir George Gascony? Mrs. Grey thought I oughtn't to take
+so drastic a step until I had first tested my poems in public. But I've
+been reading<a name="page_348" id="page_348"></a> them through, and they don't somehow look quite as
+important in print as they did in manuscript. I can't help feeling that
+I ought to have a regular occupation. What do you really advise me to
+do, Mr. Grey?"</p>
+
+<p>The Rector held up his arms in mock dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"Gracious goodness me, don't implicate a poor country parson in such
+affairs! I can give you advice about flowers and I can pretend to give
+you advice about your soul, but about the world, no, no."</p>
+
+<p>"I think perhaps I'll get some journalistic work in town," Guy
+suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Persia or journalism!" commented the Rector. "Well, well, they're both
+famous for fairy tales. I recommend journalism as being nearer at hand."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll take your advice."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear me, you must not involve me in such a responsibility. Now, if
+you were a nice rational iris I would talk to you, but for a talented
+young man with his life before him I shouldn't even be a good quack.
+Come along, let's go out and look at the tulips."</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>will</i> glance through my poems?" Guy asked diffidently.</p>
+
+<p>The Rector stood up and put his hand on the poet's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I will, my dear boy, and you mustn't be deceived by the
+manner of that shy old boor, the Rector of Wychford. Do what you think
+you ought to do, and make my youngest daughter happy. We shall be having
+her birthday before we know where we are."</p>
+
+<p>"It's to-morrow!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it indeed? May Day. Of course. I remember last year I managed to
+bloom Iris Lorteti. But this year, no! That wet May destroyed Iris
+Lorteti. A delicate creature. Rose and brown. A delicate lovely
+creature."</p>
+
+<p>Guy and the Rector pored over the tulips a while where<a name="page_349" id="page_349"></a> in serried
+borders they displayed their sombre sheen of amaranth and amethyst: then
+Guy strolled off to hear what was the news of Margaret and Richard.
+Pauline came flying to meet him down one of the long straight
+garden-paths.</p>
+
+<p>"Darling, they are to be married early in August," she cried.</p>
+
+<p>He caught her to him and kissed her, lest in the first poignant
+realization of other people's joy she might seem to be escaping from him
+utterly.</p>
+
+<p>Guy had a few minutes with Margaret before he went home that evening,
+and they walked beside the tulip borders, she tall and dark and
+self-contained in the fading light being strangely suited by association
+with such flowers.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Margaret," he said, "I want to tell you how tremendously I like
+Richard. Now that sounds patronizing. But I'm speaking quite humbly.
+These sort of Englishmen have been celebrated enough perhaps, and lately
+there's been a tendency to laugh at them, but, my God, what is there on
+earth like the Richards of England? Margaret, you once very rightly
+reproved me for putting Pauline in a silver frame, do let me risk your
+anger and beg you never to put yourself in a silver frame from which to
+look out at Richard."</p>
+
+<p>"You do rather understand me, don't you?" she said offering him her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Help Pauline and me," he begged.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't I always helped you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not always, but you will now that you yourself are no longer uncertain
+about your future. The moment you find yourself perfectly happy you'll
+be longing for everyone else to be the same."</p>
+
+<p>"But how haven't I helped you?" she persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be difficult to explain in definite words. But I don't think
+my idea of your attitude toward us could have been entirely invented by
+my fancy."</p>
+
+<p>"What attitude? What do you mean, Guy?"<a name="page_350" id="page_350"></a></p>
+
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, if you aren't conscious of it, I'm certainly not going to
+attempt to put it into words and involve myself in such a net."</p>
+
+<p>"How tantalizing you are!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not. If you have the least inclination to think I may be right,
+then you know what I mean and you can do what I ask. If you haven't the
+least notion of what I mean, then it was all my fancy and I'm certainly
+not going to give my baseless fancies away."</p>
+
+<p>"This is all too cryptic," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Then let it remain undeciphered," he said smiling; and he led the
+conversation more directly toward their marriage and the strangeness of
+the Rectory without Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>Richard spent the night at Plashers Mead, and Guy heard the halting
+account of two years' uncertainty, of the bungalow that had been taken
+and embowered against Margaret's coming, and of the way in which his
+bridge had spanned not merely the river, but the very ocean, and even
+time itself.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline's birthday morning was cloudless, and Guy, though to himself he
+was inclined to blame the action as weak, went to church and knelt
+beside her. Then afterward there was the scene of breakfast on the lawn
+that already with only this first repetition wore for him an immemorial
+air, so that he could no longer imagine a May Day that was not thus
+inaugurated. The presentation of his poems in proof had not a bit less
+wonderful an effect than he had hoped, for Pauline could never finish
+turning over the pages and loving the ludicrously tumbledown binding.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's so touching! I wish they could all be bound like this. And how
+I adore Richard's paper-knife."</p>
+
+<p>The four lovers disappeared after breakfast to enjoy the flashing May
+Day, and Monica left alone with her mother<a name="page_351" id="page_351"></a> looked a little sad, she,
+the only one of those three lovely daughters of the Rectory still
+undisturbed by the demands of the invading world.</p>
+
+<p>May that year was like the fabled Spring of poets; and Guy and Pauline
+were left free to enjoy the passionate and merry month as perhaps never
+before had they enjoyed any season, not even that dreamed away fortnight
+at Ladingford last year. They had ceased for a while with the engagement
+of Richard and Margaret to be the central figures of the Rectory whether
+for blame or commendation, and desiring nothing better than to be left
+without interference they were lost in apple-blossom to every-day
+existence. Guy with the prospect of his poems' appearing in the Autumn
+felt that he was justified in forgetting responsibilities and, having
+weathered the financial crisis of the March quarter, he had now nothing
+to worry him until Midsummer. That was the date he had fixed upon in his
+mind as suitable for making a determined attempt upon London. He had
+planned to shut up Plashers Mead and to take a small room in Chelsea
+whence he would conquer in a few months the material obstacles that
+prevented their marriage. The poems now that they were in print seemed a
+less certain talisman to fame; but they would serve their purpose,
+indeed they had served their purpose already, for this long secluded
+time would surely counterbalance the too easy victories of journalism.
+He would surely by now have lost that spruce Oxford cleverness and might
+fairly expect to earn his living with dignity. The least success would
+justify his getting married, and Pauline would enjoy two years spent
+high in some London attic within the sound of chirping sparrows and the
+distant whispers of humanity. They would perhaps be able to afford to
+fly for magic weeks to Plashers Mead, pastoral interludes in that
+crowded life which lay ahead. How everything had resolved itself
+latterly, and how this gift of glorious May should be accepted as the
+intimate and<a name="page_352" id="page_352"></a> dearest benefaction to their love. He and Pauline were
+together from earliest morn to the last minute of these rich and shadowy
+eves. They wreathed their boat with boughs of apple-blossom and went
+farther up the river than they had ever gone. The cuckoo was still in
+tune, and still the kingcups gilded all that hollow land: there was not
+yet the lush growth of weeds and reeds that indolent June would use to
+delay their dreaming progress: and still all the trees and all the
+hedges danced with that first sharp green of Spring, that cold and
+careless green of Spring.</p>
+
+<p>Then when the hawthorn came into prodigal bloom, and all the rolling
+country broke in endless waves of blossom, Pauline in her muslin dress
+seemed like an airy joy sustained by all these multitudinous petals,
+dancing upon this flowery tide, this sweet foam of May.</p>
+
+<p>"My flower, my sweet, are you indeed mortal?" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>The texture of her sleeve against his was less tangible than the light
+breeze that puffed idly from the South to where they sat enraptured upon
+the damasked English grass. Apple-blossom powdered her lap and starred
+her light brown hair, and around them like a Circean perfume drowning
+the actual world hung the odorous thickets of hawthorn.</p>
+
+<p>The month glided along until the time of ragged robins came round again,
+and as if these flowers were positively of ill omen to Guy and Pauline,
+Mrs. Grey suddenly took it into her head again that they were seeing too
+much of each other.</p>
+
+<p>"I said you could see Pauline every day," she told Guy. "But I did not
+say all day."</p>
+
+<p>"But I shall be going away soon," he said, "and it seems a pity to lose
+any of this lovely month."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I'm right ... and I did not know you had really decided to go
+away.... I'm sure, yes, I'm positive I'm right.... Why don't you be more
+<a name="page_353" id="page_353"></a>like Margaret and Richard ... they aren't together all day long ... no,
+not all day."</p>
+
+<p>"But Pauline is so different from Margaret," Guy argued.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know ... that's the reason ... she is too impulsive.... Yes,
+it's much better not to be together all the time.... I'm glad you've
+settled to go to London ... then perhaps you can be married next
+year...."</p>
+
+<p>A rule came into force again, and Guy began to feel the old exasperation
+against the curb upon youth's leisure. Rather unjustly he blamed
+Margaret, because he felt that the spectacle of her sedate affection
+made his for Pauline appear too wild and Pauline herself beside Margaret
+seem completely distraught with love.</p>
+
+<p>It pleased Guy rather, and yet in a way it rather annoyed him that
+Michael Fane should choose this moment to announce his intention of
+spending some time at Plashers Mead. Perhaps a little of the doubt was
+visible in his welcome, because Michael asked rather anxiously if he
+were intruding upon the May idyll: Guy laughed off the slight
+awkwardness and asked why Michael had not yet managed to get married.
+They talked about the evils of procrastination, but Guy could not at all
+see that Michael had much to complain of in a postponement of merely two
+months. His friend, however, was evidently rather upset, and he could
+not resist expatiating a little on his own grief with what Guy thought
+was the petulance of the too fortunate man. The warm May nights lulled
+them both and they used to pass pleasant evenings, leaning over the
+stream while the bats and fern-owls flew across the face of the
+decrescent moon; yet for Guy all the beauty of the season was more than
+ever endowed with intolerable fugacity.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline with Michael's arrival began to be moody again; would take no
+kind of interest in Michael's engagement; would only begin to see again
+the endless delays that hung<a name="page_354" id="page_354"></a> so heavily round their marriage. Michael
+was not at all in the way, for he spent all the time writing to his
+lady-love, of whom he had told Guy really nothing; or he would sit in
+the lengthening grass of the orchard and read books of poetry, the pages
+of which used to wink with lucid reflections caught from the leaves of
+the fruit-trees overhead.</p>
+
+<p>Guy looked over his shoulder and saw that he was reading The Statue and
+the Bust:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0"><i>So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The glory dropped from their youth and love,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And both perceived they had dreamed a dream;</i><br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"That poem haunts me," exclaimed Guy with a shudder.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Where is the use of the lip's red charm,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And the blood that blues the inside arm&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The earthly gift to an end divine?</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"And yet I can't stop reading it," he sighed.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>How do their spirits pass, I wonder,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Nights and days in the narrow room?</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>What a gift life was, ages ago,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Six steps out of the chapel yonder.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>On this Summer morning the words wrote themselves in fire across his
+brain.</p>
+
+<p>"They light the way to dusty death," he muttered over and over again,
+when he had left Browning to Michael and flung himself face downward in
+the orchard grass.</p>
+
+<p>In despair of what a havoc time was making of their youth and their
+love, that very afternoon he begged Pauline to<a name="page_355" id="page_355"></a> meet him again now in
+these dark nights of early Summer, now when soon he would be going away
+from her.</p>
+
+<p>"Going away?" she echoed in alarm. "I suppose that's the result of your
+friend's visit."</p>
+
+<p>Guy, however, was not going to surrender again, and he insisted that
+when a month had passed he would indeed be gone from Plashers Mead. It
+was nothing to do with Michael Fane: it was solely his own determination
+to put an end to this unprofitable dalliance.</p>
+
+<p>"But your poems? I thought that when your poems were published
+everything would be all right."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my poems," he scoffed. "They're valueless!"</p>
+
+<p>"Guy!"</p>
+
+<p>"They're mere decoration. They are trifles."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand you."</p>
+
+<p>"I care for nothing but to be married to you. For nothing, do you hear?
+Pauline, everything is to be subordinate to that. I would even write and
+beg my father to take me as a junior usher at Fox Hall for that. We must
+be married soon. I can't bear to see Richard and Margaret sailing along
+so calmly and quietly toward happiness."</p>
+
+<p>In the end he persuaded her to make all sorts of opportunities to meet
+him when no one else knew they were together. Even once most recklessly
+on a warm and moonless night of May's languorous decline to June he took
+her in the canoe far away up the river; and when they floated home dawn
+was already glistening on the banks and on the prow of their ghostly
+canoe. Through bird-song and rosy vapours she fled from him to her
+silent room, while he stood in a trance and counted each dewy footstep
+that with silver traceries marked her flight across the lawn.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_356" id="page_356"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_357" id="page_357"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_358" id="page_358"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_359" id="page_359"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="ANOTHER_SUMMER" id="ANOTHER_SUMMER"></a>ANOTHER SUMMER</h2>
+
+<h2><i>June</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">M</span>ICHAEL 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 toward
+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
+quarrelled 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<a name="page_360" id="page_360"></a> 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 toward 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline hated herself for the way in which she was gasping<a name="page_361" id="page_361"></a> 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
+surprize, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, I can't think why you have him to stay with you. He hates your
+being engaged to me...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nonsense," Guy interrupted rather crossly.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"How I hate that friend of yours!"</p>
+
+<p>Guy looked up in astonishment at the fervour of her tone.</p>
+
+<p>"And how he hates me," she went on.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline did not quarrel now, because she thought it might gratify
+Michael Fane to see the discord he had created,<a name="page_362" id="page_362"></a> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"With your friend?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, and she turned away from him clouded blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Still Pauline would not turn her head.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I expect they've every right to be," said Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>"I do think you're unreasonable. I'm only going away for a night."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline, when Guy had gone to London with his friend, began to fret
+herself with the fear that he would not come<a name="page_363" id="page_363"></a> 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 grey 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"What was she like?" Pauline asked, resolving to appear interested in
+Michael.</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw her," said Guy. "The tragedy took place 'off' in the
+Aristotelian manner."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Guy, don't use such long words."<a name="page_364" id="page_364"></a></p>
+
+<p>"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 behaviour such a splendid lesson for you, when you think <i>you</i> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see him yesterday?"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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<a name="page_365" id="page_365"></a> has at least managed to make a
+complete ass of himself, but what have I done?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your poems ... your poems," she murmured despairingly. "Are your poems
+really no use? Oh, Guy, that seems such a cruel thing to believe."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 candlelight 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 toward
+that narrow white bed, toward pious wide-eyed Saint Ursula and Tobit's
+companionable angel.</p>
+
+<p>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 ballades and the nocturnes more
+dangerously sweet. Gradually the melodies lulled most of Pauline's<a name="page_366" id="page_366"></a>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 candlelight 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.</p>
+
+<p>In the glimmering starshine Pauline could see Guy standing by the wicket
+in the high grey 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, my darling, my darling, it is you! Oh, I was so<a name="page_367" id="page_367"></a> frightened that
+when I came close you wouldn't really be there."</p>
+
+<p>She leaned half sobbing upon his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, don't talk so loud. I only did not come across the lawn to
+meet you for fear of attracting attention."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go back now," she begged, "now that I've seen you."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>In silence they travelled upstream 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.</p>
+
+<p>"The Abbey stream?" murmured Guy.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, let's hurry for I can see the Abbey in the starlight," she
+exclaimed.<a name="page_368" id="page_368"></a></p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, take me back," she cried.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<a name="page_369" id="page_369"></a> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk so loud," said Guy crossly. "Do remember where we are."</p>
+
+<p>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 downstream toward
+home.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, keep quiet," he begged. "What has happened to you?"</p>
+
+<p>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 honour, for
+him, for life itself.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline, will you keep quiet. Are you mad to behave like this?"</p>
+
+<p>He drove the canoe into a thorn-bush, so that it should not upset, and
+he seized her wrist so roughly that she<a name="page_370" id="page_370"></a> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what you're doing?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>She found herself asking Guy if she were screaming, and when she knew
+that at last she could hurt him, she screamed more loudly.</p>
+
+<p>"You used to laugh at me when I said I might go mad," she cried. "Now do
+you like it? Do you like it?"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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 toward home.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"Where am I? Guy, where am I?"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, my dearest, my dearest, I don't know why...."</p>
+
+<p>She burst into tears.<a name="page_371" id="page_371"></a></p>
+
+<p>"My dearest, how wet you are," she sobbed, stroking his drenched sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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 upstairs alone.</p>
+
+<p>"I will wait on the lawn until I see your candle alight," he promised.</p>
+
+<p>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 grey wall. A
+cock crowed in the distance, and through the leaves of the wistaria
+there ran a flutter of waking sparrows.<a name="page_372" id="page_372"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>July</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN Guy looked back next morning at what had happened on the river, he
+felt that the only thing to do was to leave Pauline for a while and give
+her time and opportunity to recover from the shock. He wondered if it
+would be wiser merely to write a note to announce his intention or if
+she had now reached a point at which even a letter would be a disastrous
+aggravation of her state of mind. He felt that he could not bear any
+scene that might approximate to that horrible scene last night, and yet
+to go away abruptly in such circumstances seemed too callous. Supposing
+that he went across to the Rectory and that Pauline should have another
+seizure of hatred for him (there was no other word that could express
+what her attitude had been), how could their engagement possibly go on?
+Mrs. Grey would be appalled by the emotional ravages it had made Pauline
+endure: she would not be justified, whatever Pauline's point of view, in
+allowing the engagement to last a day longer. It would be surely wiser
+to write a letter and with all the love he felt explain that he thought
+she would be happier not to see him for a short while. Yet such a course
+might provoke her to declare the whole miserable business, and the false
+deductions that might be made from her account were dreadful to
+contemplate. He blamed himself entirely for what had happened, and yet
+he could scarcely have foreseen such a violent change. Even now he could
+not say what exactly had begun the outburst, and indeed the only
+explanation of it was by a weight of emotion that had been accumulating
+for months. Of course he should never<a name="page_373" id="page_373"></a> have persuaded her to come out on
+the river at night, but still that he had done so was only a technical
+offence against convention. It was she who had magnified her
+acquiescence beyond any importance he could have conceived. He must
+thank religion for that, he must thank that poisonous fellow in the
+confessional who had first started her upon this ruinous path of
+introspection and self-torment. But, whatever the cause, it was the
+remedy that demanded his attention, and he twisted the situation round
+and round without being able to decide how to act. He realized how month
+by month his sense of responsibility for Pauline had been growing, yet
+now the problem of her happiness stared at him, brutally insoluble. What
+was it Margaret had once said about his being unlikely to squander
+Pauline for a young man's experience? Good God, had not just that been
+the very thing he had nearly done; and then with a shudder remembering
+last night, he wondered if he ought any longer to say 'nearly.' He must
+see her. Of course he must see her this morning. He must somehow heal
+the injury he had inflicted upon her youth.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline was very gentle when they met. She had no reproaches except for
+herself and the way she had frightened him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my Pauline, can't you forget it?" he begged. "Let me go away for a
+month or more. Let me go away till Margaret and Richard are going to be
+married."</p>
+
+<p>She acquiesced half-listlessly, and then seeming to feel that she might
+have been cold in her manner, she wished him a happy holiday from her
+moods and jealousy and exacting love. He tried to pierce the true
+significance of her attitude, because it held in its heart a premonition
+for him that everything between them had been destroyed last night, and
+that henceforth whatever he or she did or said they would meet in the
+future only as ghosts may meet in shadowy converse and meaningless
+communion.<a name="page_374" id="page_374"></a></p>
+
+<p>"You will be glad to see me when I come back?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, my dearest, of course I shall be glad."</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her good-bye, but her kiss was neither the kiss of lover nor
+of sister, but such a kiss as ghosts may use, seeking to perpetuate the
+mere form and outward semblance of life lost irrevocably.</p>
+
+<p>When Guy was driving with Godbold along the Shipcot road, he had not
+made up his mind where he would go, and it was on the spur of the
+moment, as he stood in the booking-office, that he decided to go and see
+his father, to whom latterly he had written scarcely at all and of whom
+he suddenly thought with affection.</p>
+
+<p>"I've settled to give up Plashers Mead," Guy told him that night, when
+they were sitting in the library at Fox Hall.</p>
+
+<p>"And try and get on the staff of a paper," he added to his father's
+faint bow. "Or possibly I may go to Persia as Sir George Gascony's
+secretary. My friend Comeragh got me the offer in March, but Sir George
+was ill and did not start."</p>
+
+<p>"That sounds much more sensible than journalism," said Mr. Hazlewood.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, perhaps it would be better," Guy agreed. "But then of course there
+is the question of leaving Pauline for two years."</p>
+
+<p>Yet even as he enunciated this so solemnly, he knew in his heart that he
+would be rather glad to postpone for two years all the vexations of
+love.</p>
+
+<p>His father shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"My poems are coming out this Autumn," Guy volunteered.</p>
+
+<p>His father gave some answer of conventional approbation, and Guy without
+the least bitterness recognized that to his father the offer of the
+secretaryship had naturally presented itself as the more important
+occasion.<a name="page_375" id="page_375"></a></p>
+
+<p>"If you want any help with your outfit...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you mustn't count on Persia," interrupted Guy. "But I'll go up to
+town to-morrow and ask Comeragh when Sir George is going."</p>
+
+<p>Next day, however, when Guy was in the train, he began to consider his
+Persian plan a grave disloyalty to Pauline. He wondered how last night
+he had come to think of it again and fancied it might have been merely
+an instinct to gratify his father after their coolness. Of course he
+would not dream of going really, and yet it would have been jolly. Yes,
+it would certainly have been jolly, and he was rather relieved to find
+that Comeragh was out of town for a week, for his presence might have
+been a temptation. Michael Fane was not in London either, so Guy went
+round to Maurice Avery's studio in Grosvenor Road and in the pleasure of
+the company he found there the Persian idea grew less insistent. Maurice
+himself had just been invited to write a series of articles on the
+English ballet for a critical weekly journal called The Point of View.
+They went to a theatre together, and Guy as he listened to Maurice's
+jargon felt for a while quite rustic and was once or twice definitely
+taken in by it. Had he really been stagnating all this time at Wychford?
+And then the old superiority which at Oxford he always felt over his
+friend reasserted itself.</p>
+
+<p>"You're still skating, Maurice," he drawled. "The superficial area of
+your brain must be unparalleled."</p>
+
+<p>"You frowsty old yokel!" his friend exclaimed laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe I shall get much out of breath, catching up with your
+advanced ideas," Guy retorted. "Anyway this Autumn I shall come to town
+for good."</p>
+
+<p>"And about time you did," said Maurice. "I say, mind you send your poems
+to The Point of View, and I'll give you a smashing fine notice the week
+after publication."<a name="page_376" id="page_376"></a></p>
+
+<p>Guy asked when Michael was coming back.</p>
+
+<p>"He's made a glorious mess of things, hasn't he?" said Maurice.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know. Not necessarily."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I admit he found her out in time. But fancy wanting to marry a
+girl like that. I told him what she was, and he merely got furious with
+me. But he's an extraordinary chap altogether. By the way when are you
+going to get married?"</p>
+
+<p>"When I can afford it," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"The question is whether an artist can ever afford to get married."</p>
+
+<p>"What rot you talk."</p>
+
+<p>"Wiser men than I have come to that conclusion," said Maurice. "Of
+course I haven't met your lady-love; but it does seem to me that your
+present mode of life is bound to be sterile of impressions."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't go about self-consciously obtaining impressions," said Guy a
+little angrily. "I would as soon search for local colour. Personally I
+very much doubt if any impressions after eighteen or nineteen help the
+artist. As it seems to me, all experience after that age is merely
+valuable for maturing and putting into proportion the more vital
+experiences of childhood. And I'm not at all sure that there isn't in
+every artist a capacity for development which proceeds quite
+independently of externals. I speculate sometimes as to what would be
+the result upon a really creative temperament of being wrecked at
+twenty-two on a desert island. I say twenty-two, because I do count as
+valuable the academic influence that only begins to be effective after
+eighteen."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is your notion about this literary Crusoe?" asked Maurice.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I fancy that his work would not suffer at all, that it would
+ripen, just as certain fruit ripens independently of<a name="page_377" id="page_377"></a> sun, that he would
+display in fact quite normally the characteristic growth of the artist."</p>
+
+<p>"But where would he obtain his reaction?" Maurice asked.</p>
+
+<p>"From himself. If that isn't possible for some people I don't see how
+you're going to make a distinction between literature and journalism."</p>
+
+<p>"Some journalism is literature."</p>
+
+<p>"Only very bad journalism," Guy argued. "The journalistic mind
+experiences a quick reaction, the creative writer a very slow one. The
+journalist is affected by extremes: and he is continually aware of the
+impression they are making at the moment: contrariwise the creative
+artist is always unaware of the impression at the moment it is made; he
+feels it from within first and it develops according to his own
+characteristics. Let me give you an example. The journalist is like a
+man who, seeing a mosquito in the act of biting him, claps his hand down
+and kills it. The creative artist isn't aware of having been bitten
+until he sees the swelling ... big or small according to his
+constitution. It is his business to cure the swelling, not to bother
+about the insect."</p>
+
+<p>"Your theories may be all right for great creative artists," said
+Maurice. "And I suppose you're willing to take the risk of stagnation?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not a great creative artist," said Guy quickly. "At the same time
+I'm damned if I'm a journalist. No, the effect of Plashers Mead on me
+has been to make me long to be a man of action. So far it has been
+stimulating, and without external help I've been able to reach the
+conclusion that my poems were never worth writing.... I wrote because I
+wanted to: I don't believe I ever had to."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what are you going to do now?" asked Maurice.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm probably going to work in London at journalism."<a name="page_378" id="page_378"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Then, great Scott, why all this preliminary tirade against it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I don't want to bluff myself into thinking that I'm going to do
+anything but be a strictly professional writer," said Guy. "Or else
+perhaps because I don't really want to come and live in London at all,
+but go to Persia. Dash it all, for the first time in my life, Maurice, I
+don't know what I do want, and it's a very humiliating state of affairs
+for me."</p>
+
+<p>When Guy left the studio that evening, he came away with that pleasant
+warming of the cockles of the brain that empirical conversation always
+gave. It was really very pleasant to be chattering away about aesthetic
+theories, to be meeting new people and to be infused with this sense of
+being joined up to the motive force of a city's life. At his lodgings in
+Vincent Square a letter from Pauline awaited his return, and with a
+shock he realized half way through its perusal that he was reading it
+listlessly. He turned back and tried to bring to its contents that old
+feverish absorption in magic pages, but something was wanting whether in
+the letter or whether in himself he did not know. He came to the point
+of asking himself if he loved her still as much, and almost with horror
+at the question vowed he loved her more than ever and that of all things
+on earth he only longed for their marriage. Yet in bed that night he
+thought more of his argument in the studio than about Pauline, and when
+he did think about her it was with a drowsy sense of relief. Vincent
+Square under the bland city moon seemed very peaceful, and in retrospect
+Wychford a place of endless storms.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning when Guy sat down to answer Pauline's letter he found
+himself writing with mechanical fluency without really thinking of her
+at all. In fact for the moment she represented something that disturbed
+the Summer calm in London, and he consciously did not want to think<a name="page_379" id="page_379"></a>
+about her until all this late troublous time had lost its actuality and
+he could be sure of returning to the Pauline of their love's earlier
+days.</p>
+
+<p>These shuttlecock letters were tossed backward and forward between
+Wychford and London throughout the rest of June and most of July, and
+sometimes Guy thought they were as unreal as his own poetry. He spent
+his time in looking up old friends, in second-hand book shops, in the
+galleries of theatres. He did not see Michael Fane, who wrote to him
+from Rome before Guy knew he had gone there. Comeragh however he saw
+pretty often, and he enjoyed talking about politics nearly as much as
+about art. He met Sir George Gascony, and Comeragh assured him afterward
+that when Sir George went out to Persia in August or September he could
+if he liked go with him. Guy put the notion at the back of his mind
+whence he occasionally took it out and played with it. In the end,
+however, when the definite offer came he refused it. This happened at
+the end of his visit to London when his money was running out and when
+he had to be going back to Wychford to live somehow on credit, until the
+Michaelmas quarter replenished his overdrawn account. Before he left
+town he paid a visit to Mr. Worrall and told him that he wanted his
+poems to appear anonymously. In fact if it were not for hurting the
+Rector's feelings he would have stopped their publication altogether.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of a hot and dusty July and about a week before the Lammas
+wedding of Margaret and Richard, Guy came back to Plashers Mead. The
+immediate effect of seeing again the place which was now associated in
+his mind with interminable difficulties was to make him resolute to
+clarify the situation once and for all, to clarify it so completely that
+there could never again be a repetition of that night in June. His
+absence had been in the strictest sense an interlude, and all the
+letters which marked to each<a name="page_380" id="page_380"></a> the existence of the other had been but
+conventional forms of love and comfortable postponements of reality.
+When he met Pauline, Guy felt that he met her to all intents directly
+after that dreadful night, with only this difference that owing to the
+time they had had for repose he could now say things that six weeks ago
+he could not have said. He had arrived at Wychford for lunch, and as a
+matter of course they were to be together that afternoon. Ordinarily on
+such a piping July day he would have proposed the river for their
+converse, and it was a sign of how near at hand he felt their last time
+on the river that he proposed a walk instead.</p>
+
+<p>Guy was aware of wanting to take Pauline to some place that was neither
+hallowed nor cursed by past hours, and avoiding familiar ways, they
+reached a barren cup-shaped field shut off from the road by a spinney of
+firs that offered such a dry and draughty shade as made the field even
+in the hot sun of afternoon more tolerable. They sat down on the sour
+stony land among the ragwort and teazles and feverfew. Summer had burnt
+up this abandoned pasturage, and while they sat in silence Guy rattled
+from the rank umbels of fools-parsley and hemlock the innumerable seeds
+that would only profit the rankness of another year.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>Pauline looked at him questioningly, and he felt impatient to be sitting
+here on this sour stony land and wondered how for merely this he could
+have refused that offer of Persian adventure. Not until now had he
+realized how much he had been resenting the performance of a duty.</p>
+
+<p>"You've hardly told me anything about your time in London," said
+Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her sharply in case this might be a prelude to jealous
+interrogation.</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing much to tell. I settled that my poems should appear
+anonymously. I'm afraid their publication may otherwise do me more harm
+than good."<a name="page_381" id="page_381"></a></p>
+
+<p>"All your poems?" she asked wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded impelled by a strong desire for absolute honesty, though he
+would have liked to except the poems about her, knowing how much she
+must be wounded to hear even them called worthless.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I've been no good to you at all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you have. Because these poems are no good, it doesn't follow
+that what I write next won't be good. And yet I'm uncertain whether I
+ought to go on merely writing. I'm beginning to wonder if I oughtn't to
+have gone out to Persia with Gascony. I refused the job because I
+thought it would upset you. And so, dearest Pauline, when next you feel
+jealous, do remember that. Do remember that it is always you who come
+first. Don't think I'm regretful about Persia. I'm only wondering on
+<i>your</i> account if I ought to have gone. It would have made our marriage
+in three years a certainty, but still I hope by journalism to make it
+certain in one year. Are you glad, my Pauline?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course I'm glad," she answered without fervour.</p>
+
+<p>"And you won't be jealous of my friends? Because it's impossible to be
+in London without friends you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you I should never be enough."</p>
+
+<p>Guy tried not to be irritated by this.</p>
+
+<p>"If you would only be reasonable! I realize now that for me at my age
+it's foolish to withdraw from my contemporaries. I shall stagnate. These
+two years have not been wasted...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they have," she interrupted, "if your poems are not worth your
+name."</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, these two years may well be the foundation on which I build
+all the rest of my life."</p>
+
+<p>"May they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course. But a desire for the stimulus of other people isn't the
+only reason for leaving Plashers Mead. I can't afford it here. My debts
+are really getting impossible<a name="page_382" id="page_382"></a> to manage, and unless I can show my
+father that I'm ready to do anything to be a writer, as I can't go out
+to Persia, well ... frankly I don't know what will happen. I gave
+Burrows notice at Midsummer."</p>
+
+<p>"You never told me," said Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no, I was afraid you'd be upset and I wanted you to have this
+quiet time when I was away...."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't trust me any more," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I do, but I thought it would worry you. I know my money
+affairs do worry you. But now I shall be all right. I'll come down here
+often, you know, and, oh, really, dearest girl, it is better that I
+should be in London. So don't be jealous, will you, and don't torment
+yourself about my debts, will you, and don't think that you are anything
+but everything to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I expect you'll enjoy being in London," she said slowly shredding the
+flowers from a spray of wild mignonette.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I shall be so busy that I won't have time to regret Wychford,"
+said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>He had by now broken off all the rank flowers in reach, and the sour
+stony ground was littered with seeds and pungent heads of bloom and
+ragged stalks.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll never regret Wychford," she said. "Never. Because I've spoilt it
+for you, my darling."</p>
+
+<p>She touched his hand gently and drew close to him, but only timidly; and
+as she made the movement a flight of goldfinches lighted upon the
+swaying thistle-down in the hollow of the waste land.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline! Pauline!" he cried and would have kissed her passionately, but
+she checked him:</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, I just want to lean my head upon your shoulder for a little
+while."</p>
+
+<p>Above her murmur he heard the rustle of the goldfinches' song in parting
+cadences upon the air, rising and falling: and looking down at Pauline
+in the sunlight, he felt that she was a wounded bird he should be
+cherishing.<a name="page_383" id="page_383"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>August</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE 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
+and Margaret's happiness, she was determined at whatever cost of
+dejection afterward to bring to the completion of her design all the
+enthusiasm she had brought to its conception.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you like me as a bridesmaid?" she asked Guy.</p>
+
+<p>And he with obviously eager welcome of the old Pauline could not find
+enough words to say how much he liked her.</p>
+
+<p>"Richard of course is wearing a tail-coat," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't," he whispered, "when <i>we</i> 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!"</p>
+
+<p>"Have I? I think I've changed such a lot. Oh, Guy, such a tremendous
+lot."</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"My rose, if all roses could stay like you, what a world of roses it
+would be."</p>
+
+<p>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<a name="page_384" id="page_384"></a> Richard marched about stiff and awkward,
+yet so radiant that almost more than anyone 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.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening when the diminished family sat in the drawing-room
+without going upstairs 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<a name="page_385" id="page_385"></a> 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?</p>
+
+<p>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 toward the wrong direction.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>A dull summer wind sent a stir through the dry leaves of<a name="page_386" id="page_386"></a> the creepers,
+but the night grew hotter notwithstanding and sleep utterly refused to
+approach her room.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, I don't want to annoy you, but is it really necessary that your
+poems should appear without your name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Absolutely," he said firmly.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't think any of them are good?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, some are all right, but I don't believe in them as I used to
+believe in them."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. But they have outlived their date. I must do better."</p>
+
+<p>She got up and went over to the window-seat, and when she spoke next she
+was looking at the wicket in the high grey wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy, could I outlive my date?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dearest Pauline, I do beg you not to start problems this afternoon.
+Of course not."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure? Are you sure that when you are in London you won't find
+other girls more interesting than I am?"<a name="page_387" id="page_387"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Even if temporarily I were interested in another girl, you may be quite
+sure that she would always be second to you."</p>
+
+<p>"But you might be interested?" Pauline asked breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"I must be free if I'm going to be an artist."</p>
+
+<p>"Free?" she echoed slowly.</p>
+
+<p>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 afterward 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 an 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. Upstairs in her room she wrote to him:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>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.</i></p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Pauline.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Her mother found her sobbing over her desk that was full of childish
+things, and asked what was the matter.</p>
+
+<p>"I've broken off my engagement," and wearily she told her some of the
+reasons, but never any reason that might<a name="page_388" id="page_388"></a> have seemed to cast the least
+blame on him. Next morning very early came a note for her mother from
+Guy in which he said he was leaving Plashers Mead in a couple of hours
+and begged that she would not let Pauline be the one to go away.<a name="page_389" id="page_389"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="EPIGRAPH" id="EPIGRAPH"></a>EPIGRAPH</h2>
+
+<p><a name="page_390" id="page_390"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_391" id="page_391"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>Guy</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">G</span>UY could not make the effort to fight the doom upon their love declared
+by Pauline in her letter. He felt that if he did not acquiesce he would
+go mad: a deadness struck at him that he fancied was a wonderful sense
+of relief, and hurriedly packing a few things he went in pursuit of his
+friend Comeragh in case it might not even now be too late to go to
+Persia. However, though he did not manage to be in time for Sir George
+Gascony, his friend secured him a job on some committee that was being
+organized in Macedonia by enthusiastic Liberals. His previous experience
+there was recommendation enough, and after he had seen his father,
+acquired his outfit and settled up everything at Plashers Mead by means
+of Maurice Avery, early in September he set out Eastward.</p>
+
+<p>In Rome Guy picked up Michael Fane who was on the point of starting for
+the Benedictine monastery at Cava. Having a few days to spare before he
+went on to Brindisi, he agreed to spend the time with Michael tramping
+in the sun along the Parthenopean shore.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't understand what consolation you expect to find by shutting
+yourself up with a lot of frowsty monks," said Guy fretfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor can I understand when just at the moment you have been dealt the
+blow that should at last determine if you are to be an artist," retorted
+Michael, "I can't understand why you choose that exact moment to go and
+be futile in Macedonia."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I would be an artist now, even if I could?" asked Guy
+fiercely. "How I hate such a point<a name="page_392" id="page_392"></a> of view. No, no, I have made myself
+miserable and I have made someone else miserable because I thought I
+wanted to be an artist. But never, never, shall that old jejune ambition
+be gratified now."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll never try to write anything more?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," said Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"Then what has all this been for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps to come back in a year, and ... listen:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0"><i>O ragged robins, you will bloom each year,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>But we shall never pluck you after rain:</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>For aye, O ragged hearts, you beat alone,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And never more shall you be joined again.</i><br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="nind">Do you think I want to come back in a year and still be able to versify
+my grief like that? I look forward to something better than minor
+poetry."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you still hope...." his friend began.</p>
+
+<p>"I daren't even hope yet ... but all my life I'll do penance for having
+said that an artist must be free."</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the inn at Amalfi, where letters might be waiting for
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Guy read aloud one which had arrived from Maurice Avery.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">422 G<small>ROSVENOR</small> R<small>OAD</small>,&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+W<small>ESTMINSTER</small>.</p>
+
+<p class="nind"><i>My dear Guy,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I settled up everything for you at Plashers Mead. Rather a jolly
+place. I nearly took it on myself. I'm getting quite used to
+settling up other people's affairs since you and Michael have made
+me your executor. Good luck to you in Macedonia.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Last night I went to the Orient Ballet and met a perfectly
+delightful girl. If there is such a thing as love at first sight, I
+am in love. Jenny Pearl she is called. Forgive this apparently<a name="page_393" id="page_393"></a>
+casual enthusiasm, but you two cynics will be able to tear me to
+pieces to your satisfaction. I offer my heart for your bitter mirth
+to embalm.</i></p>
+
+<p class="r"><i>Yours ever&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+M. A.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Your dog is at Godalming with my people. My sisters talk of
+nothing else.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>"Maurice rises like a phoenix from our ashes," said Guy grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"He was always irrepressible," Michael agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"And still you haven't answered my question about your monkery," Guy
+persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"You want action. I want contemplation. But don't think that I'm going
+to take final vows to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you really believe in the Christian religion?" Guy asked
+incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I really do."</p>
+
+<p>"What an extraordinary thing!"</p>
+
+<p>Next day they parted, Michael going to the Benedictine house at Cava,
+Guy pressing on toward Salerno. With every breath of the rosemary, with
+every sough of the Aleppo pines, with every murmur of the blue
+Tyrrhenian winking far below, more and more sharply did he realize that
+what he had thought at the time was wonderful relief had been more truly
+despair. Yet in a happier September might he not hope to come back this
+way, setting his face toward England?</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0"><i>One more turn of the head in the gathering gloom</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>To watch her figure in the lighted door:</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>One more wish that I never should turn again,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>But watch her standing there for evermore.</i><br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="page_394" id="page_394"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>Pauline</i></h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">P</span>AULINE went away with Monica to spend the rest of August and the
+beginning of September in the depths of the country, where however for
+all the stillness of the ripe season she did not find very great peace.
+In every lane, in every wood, below the brow of every hill she was
+always half-expecting to meet Guy. It was not until Monica was going to
+her sisterhood and that she came back to see TO LET staring from the
+windows of Plashers Mead that Pauline was able at last to realize what
+she had irrevocably done.</p>
+
+<p>On the day after her return Pauline went to see Miss Verney. To her she
+explained that the engagement was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard something about it," said Miss Verney. "And feeling sure that
+it was doubtless on account of money, I must very impertinently beg you
+to accept this."</p>
+
+<p>Pauline looked at the packet the old maid had thrust into her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Those are deeds," said Miss Verney importantly. "I have felt for some
+time past that I do not really need all my money. My income, you know,
+is very nearly £250 a year. £100 would be ample, and therefore I hope
+<i>you</i> will accept the surplus."</p>
+
+<p>"My darling Miss Verney," said Pauline, "it could not be."</p>
+
+<p>But the old maid was with very great difficulty persuaded of the
+impossibility.</p>
+
+<p>"And you mean to say," she gasped, "that you are never going to see each
+other again?"<a name="page_395" id="page_395"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, sometimes," Pauline whispered, "sometimes I wonder if it could
+really happen that Guy and I should never meet again. Please don't let's
+talk about it. I shall come and see you often, but you mustn't ever talk
+about Guy and me, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall put this money aside," Miss Verney announced, "because I am
+<i>most</i> anxious to prove that £100 a year is ample for me. Extravagance
+has always been my temptation!"</p>
+
+<p>Later in the afternoon Pauline left her friend and went down Wychford
+High Street toward home. There were great wine-dark dahlias in the
+gardens, and the bell was sounding for Evensong. She knelt behind a
+pillar, all of the congregation. How through this winter that was coming
+she would love her father and mother. And if Guy ever came back ... if
+Guy ever came back....</p>
+
+<p>She heard her father's voice dying away with the close of the Office;
+and presently they walked about the golden churchyard, arm-in-arm.</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't be surprized to see Sternbergia Lutea this year," he
+observed. "We have had a lot of sun."</p>
+
+<p>"Have we?" Pauline sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, a great deal of sun."</p>
+
+<p>Her father of course would never speak of that broken engagement, and
+already she had made her mother promise never to speak of it again. Deep
+to her inmost heart only these familiar vales and streams and green
+meadows would speak of it for the rest of her life.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="c">THE END</p>
+
+<p class="hang">
+<i>Capri</i><br />
+<i>December, 1914&mdash;April, 1915</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="c">
+<small>PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY<br />
+WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD.<br />
+PLYMOUTH</small></p>
+
+<hr class="add" />
+
+<p class="c">SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF</p>
+
+<p class="c">SINISTER STREET</p>
+
+<p class="c"><i>By</i> COMPTON MACKENZIE</p>
+
+<p><i>PUNCH:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"I shall not easily forget the delightful revelation of a new power
+that was given me by Mr. Compton Mackenzie's 'Carnival.' 'Sinister
+Street' confirms and heightens my estimate of its author.... As a
+study of the education of character it is already a masterpiece....
+It is not my habit lightly to prophesy fame; but after these two
+books I am prepared to wager that Mr. Mackenzie's future is bound
+up with what is most considerable in English fiction."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>EVENING STANDARD:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"Not without complacency we remember that, in noticing 'Carnival,'
+we suggested that Mr. Mackenzie's next novel would mark a critical
+stage in his career. We are complacent because the author has
+largely fulfilled the promise of that arresting novel. He has
+passed the critical stage, and whatever happens now nothing can
+deprive him of the honour of being the author of 'Sinister
+Street.'"</p></div>
+
+<p><i>MORNING POST:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"'Sinister Street' has indeed interested us profoundly, as the
+intimate study of the infancy and boyhood of a singularly
+attractive lad.... Its picture of West Kensington life, and its
+attempt to describe the atmosphere of the Public School which
+dominates the social life of West Kensington are really
+remarkable."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>TIMES:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"We do not wish it any shorter, for it is almost wholly delightful
+in itself."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>STANDARD:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"In his pages there is not one which even a reviewer could wish to
+skip.... The architecture of the book is superb."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>DAILY EXPRESS:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"'Sinister Street' is a fine novel, an achievement far removed from
+the average easy banality."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>MANCHESTER GUARDIAN:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"As difficult a task as fiction could undertake; but Mr.
+Mackenzie's tact and insight and comprehension have brought him
+through with brilliant success.... Something we would not willingly
+have missed."</p></div>
+
+<p class="c">MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI</p>
+
+<hr class="add" />
+
+<p class="c">SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF<br />
+CARNIVAL <i>By</i> COMPTON MACKENZIE</p>
+
+<p><i>ATHENÆUM:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"Mr. Mackenzie's second novel amply fulfils the promise of his
+first.... Its first and great quality is originality. The
+originality of Mr. Mackenzie lies in his possession of an
+imagination and a vision of life that are as peculiarly his own as
+a voice or a laugh, and that reflect themselves in a style which is
+that of no other writer.... A prose full of beauty."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>PUNCH:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"After reading a couple of pages I settled myself in my chair for a
+happy evening, and thenceforward the fascination of the book held
+me like a kind of enchantment. I despair, though, of being able to
+convey any idea of it in a few lines of criticism.... As for the
+style, I will only add that it gave me the same blissful feeling of
+security that one has in listening to a great musician.... In the
+meantime, having recorded my delight in it, I shall put 'Carnival'
+upon the small and by no means crowded shelf that I reserve for
+'keeps.'"</p></div>
+
+<p><i>OUTLOOK:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"In these days of muddled literary evaluations, it is a small thing
+to say of a novel that it is a great novel; but this we should say
+without hesitation of 'Carnival,' that not only is it marked out to
+be the reading success of its own season, but to be read afterwards
+as none but the best books are read."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>OBSERVER:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"The heroic scale of Mr. Compton Mackenzie's conception and
+achievement sets a standard for him which one only applies to the
+'great' among novelists."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>ENGLISH REVIEW:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"An exquisite sense of beauty with a hunger for beautiful words to
+express it."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"The spirit of youth and the spirit of London."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>NEW YORK TIMES:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"We hail Mr. Mackenzie as a man alive&mdash;who raises all things to a
+spiritual plane."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>MR. C. K. SHORTER in the SPHERE:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"'Carnival' carried me from cover to cover on wings."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>NEW AGE:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"We are more than sick of it."</p></div>
+
+<p class="c">MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI</p>
+
+<hr class="add" />
+
+<p class="c">SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF</p>
+
+<p class="c"><b>THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT</b></p>
+
+<p class="c"><i>By</i> COMPTON MACKENZIE</p>
+
+<p><i>TIMES:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"We are grateful to him for wringing our hearts with the 'tears and
+laughter of spent joys.'"</p></div>
+
+<p><i>SPECTATOR:</i></p>
+
+<p>"As an essay in literary <i>bravura</i> the book is quite remarkable."</p>
+
+<p><i>COUNTRY LIFE:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"In the kindliness, the humour and the gentleness of the treatment,
+it comes as near to Thackeray as any man has come since Thackeray."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>DAILY CHRONICLE:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"Thanks for a rare entertainment! And, if the writing of your story
+pleased you as much as the reading of it has pleased us,
+congratulations too."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>GLOBE:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"A little tenderness, a fragrant aroma of melancholy laid away in
+lavender, a hint of cynicism, an airy philosophy&mdash;and so a wholly
+piquant, subtly aromatic dish, a rosy apple stuck with cloves."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>GLASGOW NEWS:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"Fresh and faded, mocking yet passionate, compact of tinsel and
+gold is this little tragedy of a winter season in view of the pump
+room.... Through it all, the old tale has a dainty, fluttering,
+unusual, and very real beauty.'"</p></div>
+
+<p><i>ENGLISH REVIEW:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"All his characters are real and warm with life. 'The Passionate
+Elopement' should be read slowly, and followed from the smiles and
+extravagance of the opening chapters through many sounding and
+poetical passages, to the thrilling end of the Love Chase. The
+quiet irony of the close leaves one smiling, but with the wiser
+smile of Horace Ripple who meditates on the colours of life."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>WESTMINSTER GAZETTE:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"Mr. Mackenzie's book is a novel of genre, and with infinite care
+and obvious love of detail has he set himself to paint a literary
+picture in the manner of Hogarth. He is no imitator, he owes no
+thanks to any predecessor in the fashioning of his book.... Mr.
+Mackenzie recreates (the atmosphere) so admirably that it is no
+exaggeration to say that, thanks to his brilliant scene-painting,
+we shall gain an even more vivid appreciation of the work of his
+great forerunners. Lightly and vividly does Mr. Mackenzie sketch in
+his characters ... but they do not on that account lack
+personality. Each of them is definitely and faithfully drawn, with
+sensibility, sympathy, and humour."</p></div>
+
+<p class="c">MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI</p>
+
+<hr class="add" />
+
+<p class="c">SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF</p>
+
+<p class="c">KENSINGTON RHYMES</p>
+
+<p class="c"><i>By</i> COMPTON MACKENZIE</p>
+
+<p><i>SATURDAY REVIEW:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"These are particularly jolly rhymes, that any really good sort of
+a chap, say a fellow of about ten, would like. Mr. J. R. Monsell's
+pictures are exceptionally jolly too.... If we may judge by
+ourselves, not only the children, but the grown-ups of the family
+will be enchanted by this quite delightful and really first-rate
+book."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>DAILY MAIL:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"Among the picture-books of the season, pride of place must go to
+Mr. Compton Mackenzie's 'Kensington Rhymes.' They are full of quiet
+humour and delicate insight into the child-mind."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>OBSERVER:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"Far the best rhymes of the year are 'Kensington Rhymes,' by
+Compton Mackenzie, almost the best things of the kind since the
+'Child's Garden of Verse.'"</p></div>
+
+<p><i>ATHENÆUM:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"Will please children of all ages, and also contains much that will
+not be read without a sympathetic smile by grown-ups possessed of a
+sense of humour."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>TIMES:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"The real gift of child poetry, sometimes almost with a
+Stevensonian ring."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>OUTLOOK:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"What Henley did for older Londoners, Mr. Compton Mackenzie and Mr.
+Monsell have done for the younger generation."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>STANDARD:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"Our hearts go out first to Mr. Compton Mackenzie's 'Kensington
+Rhymes.'"</p></div>
+
+<p><i>SUNDAY TIMES:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"Full of whimsical observation and genuine insight, 'Kensington
+Rhymes' by Compton Mackenzie are certainly entertaining."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>EVENING STANDARD:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"Something of the charm of Christina Rossetti's."</p></div>
+
+<p><i>VOTES FOR WOMEN:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p class="hang">"They breathe the very conventional and stuffy air of Kensington.
+... We are bound to say that the London child we tried it on liked
+the book."</p></div>
+
+<p class="c">MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI</p>
+
+<p class="c"><i>MARTIN SECKER</i></p>
+
+<p class="c"><i>HIS COMPLETE CATALOGUE MCMXV</i></p>
+
+<p class="nind"><i>The Books in this list should be obtainable<br />
+from all Booksellers and Libraries, and if<br />
+any difficulty is experienced the Publisher<br />
+will be glad to be informed of the fact. He<br />
+will also be glad if those interested in<br />
+receiving from time to time Announcement<br />
+Lists, Prospectuses, &amp;c., of new and forthcoming<br />
+books from Number Five John<br />
+Street will send their names and addresses<br />
+to him for this purpose. Any book in this<br />
+list may be obtained on approval through the<br />
+booksellers, or direct from the Publisher, on<br />
+remitting him the published price, plus the<br />
+postage.</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>MARTIN SECKER<br />
+Publisher<br />
+Number Five John Street<br />
+Adelphi London</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Telephone Gerrard 4779<br />
+Telegraphic Address:<br />
+Psophidian London</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+PART ONE<br />
+INDEX OF AUTHORS<br />
+<br />
+ABERCROMBIE, LASCELLES<br />
+<span class="smcap">Speculative Dialogues.</span> <i>Wide Cr. 8vo.</i>    5<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Thomas Hardy: A Critical Study.</span> <i>Demy 8vo.</i><br />
+7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Epic</span> (<i>The Art and Craft of Letters</i>). <i>F'cap</i><br />
+<i>8vo.</i> 1<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+AFLALO, F. G.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Behind the Ranges.</span> <i>Wide Demy 8vo.</i> 10<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Regilding the Crescent.</span> <i>Demy 8vo.</i>  10<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Birds in the Calendar.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i>  3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+ALLSHORN, LIONEL<br />
+<span class="smcap">Stupor Mundi.</span> <i>Medium Octavo.</i> 16<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+APPERSON, G. L.<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Social History of Smoking.</span>    <i>Post  8vo.</i><br />
+6<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+ARMSTRONG, DONALD<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Marriage of Quixote.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+ARTZIBASHEF, MICHAEL<br />
+<span class="smcap">Sanine.</span> <i>Preface by Gilbert Cannan.</i> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Breaking-Point.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Millionaire.</span> <i>Intro. by the Author.</i> <i>Cr. 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Tales of the Revolution.</span>  <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+BARRINGTON, MICHAEL<br />
+<span class="smcap">Grahame of Claverhouse.</span> <i>Imperial 8vo.</i> 30<i>s.</i><br />
+<i>net</i>. <i>Edition de Luxe</i> 63<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+BENNETT, ARNOLD<br />
+<span class="smcap">Those United States.</span> <i>Post 8vo.</i>  2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+BLACK, CLEMENTINA<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Linleys of Bath.</span> <i>Medium 8vo.</i>  16<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Cumberland Letters.</span> <i>Med. 8vo.</i>  16<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+BOULGER, D. C.<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Battle of the Boyne.</span>               <i>Med.</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 21<i>s.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<br />
+BOTTOME, PHYLLIS<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Common Chord.</span>                           <i>Crown</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+BROWN, IVOR<br />
+<span class="smcap">Years of Plenty.</span>                            <i>Crown</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Security.</span>                                   <i>Crown</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+BURROW, C. KENNETT<br />
+<span class="smcap">Carmina Varia.</span>                     <i>F'cap</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<br />
+CALDERON, GEORGE (With St. John Hankin)<br />
+<span class="smcap">Thompson</span>: A Comedy.                  <i>Sq.</i> <i>Cr.</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 2<i>s.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<br />
+CANNAN, GILBERT<br />
+<span class="smcap">Round the Corner.</span>                                    <i>Crown</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Old Mole.</span>                                            <i>Crown</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Young Earnest.</span>                                       <i>Crown</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Samuel Butler</span>: <span class="smcap">A Critical Study.</span>              <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 7<i>s</i>. 6<i>d.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Windmills</span>: A Book of Fables.                      <i>Cr.</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 5<i>s.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Satire</span> (<i>The Art and Craft of Letters</i>).          <i>F'cap</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 1<i>s.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<br />
+CHESTERTON, G. K.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Magic</span>: A Fantastic Comedy.                    <i>Sq.</i> <i>Cr.</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 2<i>s.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<br />
+CLAYTON, JOSEPH<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Underman.</span>                                        <i>Crown</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Leaders of the People.</span>                      <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 12<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Robert Kett.</span>                                 <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 8<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<br />
+COKE, DESMOND<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Art of Silhouette.</span>                      <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 10<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<br />
+CRAVEN, A. SCOTT<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Fool's Tragedy.</span>                                  <i>Crown</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+DAWSON, WARRINGTON<br />
+<span class="smcap">The True Dimension</span>.                                  <i>Crown</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+DE SELINCOURT, BASIL<br />
+<span class="smcap">Walt Whitman</span>: <span class="smcap">A Critical Study.</span>              <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Rhyme</span> (<i>The Art and Craft of Letters</i>).           <i>F'cap</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 1<i>s.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<br />
+DOUGLAS, LORD ALFRED<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Wilde Myth</span>. <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo</i>. 12<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>. <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+DOUGLAS, NORMAN<br />
+<span class="smcap">Fountains in the Sand</span>. <i>Wide Demy</i> 8<i>vo</i>. 7<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>. <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Old Calabria</span>. <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo</i>. 15<i>s</i>. <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+DRAYCOTT, G. M.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Mahomet: Founder of Islam</span>. <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo</i>.<br />
+12<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>. <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+DRINKWATER, JOHN<br />
+<span class="smcap">William Morris: A Critical Study</span>. <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo</i>.<br />
+7<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>. net.<br />
+<span class="smcap">D. G. Rossetti: A Critical Study</span>. <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo</i>.<br />
+7<i>s</i>. <i>6d</i>. <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Lyric</span> <i>(The Art and Craft of Letters)</i>. <i>F'cap</i><br />
+8<i>vo</i>. 1<i>s</i>. net.<br />
+<br />
+FALLS, CYRIL<br />
+<span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling: A Critical Study</span>. <i>Demy</i><br />
+8<i>vo</i>. 7<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>. net.<br />
+<br />
+FEA, ALLAN<br />
+<span class="smcap">Old English Houses</span>. <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo</i>. 10<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>. <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Nooks and Corners of Old England</span>. 5<i>s</i>. <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Real Captain Cleveland</span>. <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo</i>.<br />
+8<span class="smcap">s</span>. 6<i>d</i>. <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+FLECKER, J. E.<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Golden Journey To Samarkand</span>. 5<i>s</i>. <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Collected Poems</span>. <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo</i>. 7<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>. <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+FRANCIS, RENÉ<br />
+<span class="smcap">Egyptian Æsthetics</span>. <i>Wide Demy</i> 8<i>vo</i>. 7<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>. <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+GRETTON, R. H.<br />
+<span class="smcap">History</span> <i>(The Art and Craft of Letters)</i>. <i>F'cap</i> 8<i>vo</i>.<br />
+1<i>s</i>. <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+HANKIN, ST. JOHN<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Dramatic Works</span>, with an Introduction by<br />
+John Drinkwater. <i>Small</i> 4<i>to</i>. <i>Definitive Limited<br />
+Edition in Three Volumes</i>. 25<i>s</i>. <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Return of the Prodigal.</span> <i>Sq.</i> <i>Cr.</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 2<i>s.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Cassilis Engagement.</span> <i>Sq.</i> <i>Cr.</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 2<i>s.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Charity That Began at Home.</span> 2<i>s.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Constant Lover, Etc.</span> <i>Sq.</i> <i>Cr.</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 2<i>s.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<br />
+HAUPTMANN, GERHART<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Complete Dramatic Works. 6 <i>vols.</i> <i>Crown</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">8<i>vo.</i> 5<i>s.</i> <i>net per volume</i>.</span><br />
+<br />
+HEWLETT, WILLIAM<br />
+<span class="smcap">Telling the Truth.</span> <i>Crown</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Uncle's Advice: a Novel in Letters.</span> <i>Cr.</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Child at the Window.</span> <i>Crown</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+HORSNELL, HORACE<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Bankrupt.</span> <i>Crown</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+HOWE, P. P.<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Repertory Theatre.</span> <i>Cr.</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Dramatic Portraits.</span> <i>Crown</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 5<i>s.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Bernard Shaw: a Critical Study.</span> <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo.</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net.</i></span><br />
+<span class="smcap">J. M. Synge: a Critical Study.</span> <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo.</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net.</i></span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Criticism</span> (<i>The Art and Craft of Letters</i>). <i>F'cap</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">8<i>vo</i>. 1<i>s.</i> <i>net.</i></span><br />
+<br />
+HUEFFER, FORD MADOX<br />
+<span class="smcap">HENRY JAMES: A CRITICAL STUDY.</span> <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo.</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net.</i></span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Collected Poems.</span> <i>Demy</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<br />
+IBSEN, HENRIK<br />
+<span class="smcap">Peer Gynt.</span> A New Translation by R. Ellis<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Roberts. <i>Wide Crown</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 5<i>s.</i> <i>net.</i></span><br />
+<br />
+JACOB, HAROLD<br />
+<span class="smcap">Perfumes of Araby.</span> <i>Wide Demy</i> 8<i>vo.</i> 7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net.</i><br />
+<br />
+JAMES, HENRY<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Turn of the Screw.</span>    <span class="smcap">The Aspern Papers.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Lesson of the Master.</span> <span class="smcap">Daisy Miller.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Death of the Lion.</span>    <span class="smcap">The Coxon Fund.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Reverberator.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Altar of the Dead.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Beast in the Jungle.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Figure in the Carpet.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Glasses.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Pupil.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Each F'cap 8vo.</i> 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.</span><br />
+<br />
+JOHNSON, OWEN<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Salamander.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Making Money.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+LAMONT, L. M.<br />
+<span class="smcap">A Coronal: An Anthology.</span> <i>F'cap 8vo.</i> 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+LEWISOHN, L.<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Modern Drama</span>. <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 5<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+LLUELLYN, RICHARD<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Imperfect Branch.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+LOW, IVY<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Questing Beast.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+LYNCH, BOHUN<br />
+<span class="smcap">Unofficial.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+L.S.D. <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+McFEE, WILLIAM<br />
+<span class="smcap">Casuals of the Sea.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+MACHEN, ARTHUR<br />
+<span class="smcap">Hieroglyphics.</span> <i>F'cap 8vo.</i> 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+MACKENZIE, COMPTON<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Passionate Elopement.</span> <i>Cr. 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i> <i>and</i> 2<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Carnival.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Sinister Street.</span> Volume I. <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Sinister Street.</span> Volume II. <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Guy and Pauline.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Kensington Rhymes.</span> <i>Crown 4to.</i> 5<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+MAKOWER, S. V.<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Outward Appearance.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+MAVROGORDATO, JOHN<br />
+<span class="smcap">Letters from Greece.</span> <i>F'cap 8vo.</i> 2<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Cassandra in Troy.</span> <i>Small 4to.</i> 5<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+MELVILLE, LEWIS<br />
+<span class="smcap">Some Eccentrics and a Woman.</span> <i>Demy 8vo.<br />
+10s. 6d. net.</i><br />
+<br />
+METHLEY, VIOLET<br />
+<span class="smcap">Camille Desmoulins</span>: A Biography. <i>Dy. 8vo. 15s. net.</i><br />
+<br />
+MEYNELL, VIOLA<br />
+<span class="smcap">Lot Barrow.</span>         <i>Crown 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Modern Lovers.</span>      <i>Crown 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Columbine.</span>          <i>Crown 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Narcissus.</span>          <i>Crown 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<br />
+NORTH, LAURENCE<br />
+<span class="smcap">Impatient Griselda.</span>      <i>Crown 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Golightlys: Father and Son.</span>      <i>Cr. 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<br />
+ONIONS, OLIVER<br />
+<span class="smcap">Widdershins.</span>      <i>Crown 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">In Accordance with the Evidence.</span>      <i>Cr. 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Debit Account.</span>      <i>Crown 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Story of Louie.</span>      <i>Crown 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<br />
+PAIN, BARRY<br />
+<span class="smcap">One Kind and Another.</span>      <i>Crown 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Collected Tales</span>: Volume I.      <i>Medium 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Collected Tales</span>: Volume II.      <i>Medium 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Short Story</span> (<i>The Art and Craft of Letters</i>).<br />
+<i>F'cap 8vo. 1s. Net.</i><br />
+<br />
+PALMER, JOHN<br />
+<span class="smcap">Peter Paragon.</span>      <i>Crown 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Comedy</span> (<i>The Art and Craft of Letters</i>). <i>F'cap 8vo.<br />
+1s. net.</i><br />
+<br />
+PERUGINI, MARK E.<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Art of Ballet.</span>      <i>Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.</i><br />
+<br />
+PHILIPS, AUSTIN<br />
+<span class="smcap">Battles of Life.</span>      <i>Crown 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<br />
+PRESTON, ANNA<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Record of a Silent Life.</span>      <i>Crown 8vo. 6s.</i><br />
+<br />
+REID, FORREST<br />
+<span class="smcap">W. B. YEATS: A Critical Study.</span> <i>Demy 8vo.<br />
+7s. 6d. net.</i><br />
+<br />
+ROBERTS, R. ELLIS<br />
+<span class="smcap">Henrik Ibsen: A Critical Study.</span> <i>Demy 8vo.</i><br />
+7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Leo Tolstoi: A Critical Study.</span> <i>Demy 8vo.</i><br />
+7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Peer Gynt: A New Translation.</span> <i>Wide Crown<br />
+8vo.</i> 5<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+SABATINI, RAFAEL<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Sea-Hawk.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Banner of the Bull.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+SAND, MAURICE<br />
+<span class="smcap">The History of the Harlequinade.</span> <i>Two<br />
+Volumes.</i> <i>Med. 8vo.</i> 25<i>s.</i> <i>net the set</i>.<br />
+<br />
+SCOTT-JAMES, R. A.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Personality in Literature.</span> <i>Demy 8vo.</i> 7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+SIDGWICK, FRANK<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Ballad</span> (<i>The Art and Craft of Letters</i>). <i>F'cap<br />
+8vo.</i> 1<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+SOLOGUB, FEODOR<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Old House.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+STONE, CHRISTOPHER<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Burnt House.</span> <i>Crown 8vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Parody</span> (<i>The Art and Craft of Letters</i>). <i>F'cap 8vo.</i><br />
+1<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+STRAUS, RALPH<br />
+<span class="smcap">Carriages and Coaches.</span> <i>Med. 8vo.</i> 18<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+STREET, G. S.<br />
+<span class="smcap">People and Questions.</span> <i>Wide Cr. 8vo.</i> 5<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+SWINNERTON, FRANK<br />
+<span class="smcap">George Gissing: A Critical Study.</span> <i>Demy 8vo.</i><br />
+7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">R. L. Stevenson: A Critical Study.</span> <i>Demy 8vo.</i><br />
+7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+TAYLOR, G. R. STIRLING<br />
+<span class="smcap">Mary Wollstonecraft.</span> <i>Demy 8vo.</i> 7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Psychology of the Great War.</span> <i>Cr. 8vo.</i><br />
+2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+TAYLOR, UNA<br />
+<span class="smcap">Maurice Maeterlinck: A Critical Study.</span><br />
+<i>Demy</i>  8<i>vo.</i> 7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+THOMAS, EDWARD<br />
+<span class="smcap">Feminine Influence on the Poets.</span> <i>Demy</i>  8<i>vo.</i><br />
+10<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">A. C. Swinburne: A Critical Study.</span> <i>Demy</i>  8<i>vo.</i><br />
+7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Walter Pater:  A Critical Study.</span> <i>Demy</i>  8<i>vo.</i><br />
+7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Tenth Muse.</span> <i>F'cap</i>  8<i>vo.</i> 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+VAUGHAN, H. M.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Meleager.</span> <i>Crown</i>  8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">An Australasian Wander-year.</span> <i>Dy.</i>  8<i>vo.</i> 10<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+WALPOLE, HUGH<br />
+<span class="smcap">Fortitude.</span> <i>Crown</i>  8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Duchess of Wrexe.</span> <i>Crown</i>  8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+WILLIAMS, ORLO<br />
+<span class="smcap">Vie de Bohème.</span> <i>Demy</i>  8<i>vo.</i> 15<i>s.</i> <i>net</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">George Meredith: A Critical Study.</span> <i>Demy</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">8<i>vo.</i> 7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Essay</span> (<i>The Art and Craft of Letters</i>). <i>F'cap</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">8<i>vo.</i> 1<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.</span><br />
+<br />
+YOUNG, FILSON<br />
+<span class="smcap">New Leaves.</span> <i>Wide Crown</i>  8<i>vo.</i> 5<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">A Christmas Card.</span> <i>Demy</i> 16mo. 1<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Punctuation</span> (<i>The Art and Craft of Letters</i>).<br />
+<i>F'cap</i>  8<i>vo.</i> 1<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+YOUNG, FRANCIS BRETT<br />
+<span class="smcap">Deep Sea.</span> <i>Crown</i>  8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Dark Tower.</span> <i>Crown</i>  8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Iron Age.</span> <i>Crown</i>  8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<br />
+YOUNG, F. &amp; E. BRETT<br />
+<span class="smcap">Undergrowth.</span> <i>Crown</i>  8<i>vo.</i> 6<i>s.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Robert Bridges: A Critical Study.</span> <i>Demy</i>  8<i>vo.</i><br />
+7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> <i>net</i>.<br />
+<br />
+PART TWO: CLASSIFIED<br />
+INDEX OF TITLES<br />
+<br />
+<i>General Literature</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Art of Ballet, The.</span> <i>By Mark E. Perugini.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Art of Silhouette, The.</span> <i>By Desmond Coke.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Battle of the Boyne, The.</span> <i>By D. C. Boulger.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Behind the Ranges.</span> <i>By F. G. Aflalo.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Birds in the Calendar.</span> <i>By F. G. Aflalo.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Camille Desmoulins.</span> <i>By Violet Methley.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Carriages and Coaches.</span> <i>By Ralph Straus.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Christmas Card, A.</span> <i>By Filson Young.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Cumberland Letters, The.</span> <i>By Clementina Black.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Dramatic Portraits.</span> <i>By P. P. Howe.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Feminine Influence on the Poets.</span> <i>By E. Thomas.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Grahame of Claverhouse.</span> <i>By Michael Barrington.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Hieroglyphics.</span> <i>By Arthur Machen.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">History of the Harlequinade, The.</span> <i>By M. Sand.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Leaders of the People.</span> <i>By Joseph Clayton.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Letters From Greece.</span> <i>By John Mavrogordato.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Linleys of Bath, The.</span> <i>By Clementina Black.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Mahomet.</span> <i>By G. M. Draycott.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Mary Wollstonecraft.</span> <i>By G. R. Stirling Taylor.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">New Leaves.</span> <i>By Filson Young.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">People and Questions.</span> <i>By G. S. Street.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Personality in Literature.</span> <i>By R. A. Scott-James.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Psychology of the Great War.</span> <i>By Stirling Taylor.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Real Captain Cleveland, The.</span> <i>By Allan Fea.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Regilding the Crescent.</span> <i>By F. G. Aflalo.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Robert Kett.</span> <i>By Joseph Clayton.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Social History of Smoking, The.</span> <i>By G. L. Apperson.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Some Eccentrics and a Woman.</span> <i>By Lewis Melville.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Speculative Dialogues.</span> <i>By Lascelles Abercrombie.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Stupor Mundi.</span> <i>By Lionel Allshorn.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Tenth Muse, The.</span> <i>By Edward Thomas.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Those United States.</span> <i>By Arnold Bennett.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Vie de Bohème.</span> <i>By Orlo Williams.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Wilde Myth, The.</span> <i>By Lord Alfred Douglas.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Windmills.</span> <i>By Gilbert Cannan.</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Verse</i><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Collected Poems of J. E. Flecker.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Collected Poems of F. M. Hueffer.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Carmina Varia.</span> <i>By C. Kennett Burrow.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Coronal, A.</span> A New Anthology. <i>By L. M. Lamont.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Golden Journey To Samarkand, The.</span> <i>By J. E.<br />
+Flecker.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Kensington Rhymes.</span> <i>By Compton Mackenzie.</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Drama</i><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Dramatic Works of St. John Hankin.</span> <i>3 vols.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann.</span> <i>6 vols.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Cassandra in Troy.</span> <i>By John Mavrogordato.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Magic.</span> <i>By G. K. Chesterton.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Modern Drama, The.</span> <i>By L. Lewisohn.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Peer Gynt.</span> <i>Translated by R. Ellis Roberts.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Repertory Theatre, The.</span> <i>By P. P. Howe.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Thompson.</span> <i>By St. John Hankin and G. Calderon.</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Travel</i><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Australasian Wander Year, An</span>. <i>By H. M. Vaughan</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Egyptian Æsthetics</span>. <i>By René Francis</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Fountains in the Sand</span>. <i>By Norman Douglas</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Nooks and Corners of Old England</span>. <i>By Allan Fea</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Old Calabria</span>. <i>By Norman Douglas</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Old English Houses</span>. <i>By Allan Fea</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Perfumes of Araby</span>. <i>By Harold Jacob</i>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Martin Secker's Series of<br />
+Critical Studies</i><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Robert Bridges</span>. <i>By F. E. Brett Young</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Samuel Butler</span>. <i>By Gilbert Cannan</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">George Gissing</span>. <i>By Frank Swinnerton</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Thomas Hardy</span>. <i>By Lascelles Abercrombie</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Henrik Ibsen</span>. <i>By R. Ellis Roberts</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Henry James</span>. <i>By Ford Madox Hueffer</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Maurice Maeterlinck</span>. <i>By Una Taylor</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">George Meredith</span>. <i>By Orlo Williams</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. <i>By John Drinkwater</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Walter Pater</span>. <i>By Edward Thomas</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">D. G. Rossetti</span>. <i>By John Drinkwater</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Bernard Shaw</span>. <i>By P. P. Howe</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">R. L. Stevenson</span>. <i>By Frank Swinnerton</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">A. C. Swinburne</span>. <i>By Edward Thomas</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">J. M. Synge</span>. <i>By P. P. Howe</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Leo Tolstoi</span>. <i>By R. Ellis Roberts</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Walt Whitman</span>. <i>By Basil de Selincourt</i>.<br />
+<span class="smcap">W. B. Yeats</span>. <i>By Forrest Reid</i>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>The Art and Craft of Letters</i><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Ballad, The.</span> <i>By Frank Sidgwick.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Comedy.</span> <i>By John Palmer.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Criticism.</span> <i>By P. P. Howe.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Epic, The.</span> <i>By Lascelles Abercrombie.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Essay, The.</span> <i>By Orlo Williams.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">History.</span> <i>By R. H. Gretton.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Lyric, The.</span> <i>By John Drinkwater.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Parody.</span> <i>By Christopher Stone.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Punctuation.</span> <i>By Filson Young.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Satire.</span> <i>By Gilbert Cannan.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Short Story, The.</span> By Barry Pain.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fiction</i><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Altar of the Dead, The.</span> <i>By Henry James.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Aspern Papers, The.</span> <i>By Henry James.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Bankrupt, The.</span> <i>By Horace Horsnell.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Banner of the Bull, The.</span> <i>By Rafael Sabatini.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Battles of Life.</span> <i>By Austin Philips.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Beast in the Jungle, The.</span> <i>By Henry James.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Breaking-point.</span> <i>By Michael Artzibashef.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Burnt House, The.</span> <i>By Christopher Stone.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Carnival.</span> <i>By Compton Mackenzie.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Casuals of the Sea.</span> <i>By William McFee.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Collected Tales</span>: Vol. I. <i>By Barry Pain.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Collected Tales</span>: Vol. II. <i>By Barry Pain.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Columbine.</span> <i>By Viola Meynell.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Common Chord, The.</span> <i>By Phyllis Bottome.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Coxon Fund, The.</span> <i>By Henry James.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Daisy Miller.</span> <i>By Henry James.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Dark Tower, The.</span> <i>By E. Brett Young.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Death of the Lion, The.</span> <i>By Henry James.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Debit Account, The.</span> <i>By Oliver Onions.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Deep Sea.</span> <i>By F. Brett Young.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Duchess of Wrexe, The.</span> <i>By Hugh Walpole.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Figure in the Carpet, The.</span> <i>By Henry James.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Fool's Tragedy, The.</span> <i>By A. Scott Craven.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Fortitude.</span> <i>By Hugh Walpole.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Glasses.</span> <i>By Henry James.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Golightlys, The.</span> <i>By Laurence North.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Guy and Pauline.</span> <i>By Compton Mackenzie.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Impatient Griselda.</span> <i>By Laurence North.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Imperfect Branch, The.</span> <i>By Richard Lluellyn.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">In Accordance with the Evidence.</span> <i>By O. Onions.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Iron Age, The.</span> <i>By F. Brett Young.</i><br />
+L.S.D. <i>By Bohun Lynch.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Lesson of the Master, The.</span> <i>By Henry James.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Lot Barrow.</span> <i>By Viola Meynell.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Marriage of Quixote, The.</span> <i>By Donald Armstrong.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Making Money.</span> <i>By Owen Johnson.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Meleager.</span> <i>By H. M. Vaughan.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Millionaire, The.</span> <i>By Michael Artzibashef.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Modern Lovers.</span> <i>By Viola Meynell.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Narcissus.</span> <i>By Viola Meynell.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Old Mole.</span> <i>By Gilbert Cannan.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Old House, The.</span> <i>By Feodor Sologub.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">One Kind and Another.</span> <i>By Barry Pain.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Outward Appearance, The.</span> <i>By Stanley V. Makower.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Passionate Elopement, The.</span> <i>By Compton Mackenzie.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Peter Paragon.</span> <i>By John Palmer.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Pupil, The.</span> <i>By Henry James.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Questing Beast, The.</span> <i>By Ivy Low.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Record of a Silent Life, The.</span> <i>By Anna Preston.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Reverberator, The.</span> <i>By Henry James.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Round the Corner.</span> <i>By Gilbert Cannan.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Salamander, The.</span> <i>By Owen Johnson.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Sanine.</span> <i>By Michael Artzibashef.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Sea Hawk, The.</span> <i>By Rafael Sabatini.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Security.</span> <i>By Ivor Brown.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Sinister Street.</span> I. <i>By Compton Mackenzie.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Sinister Street.</span> II. <i>By Compton Mackenzie.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Story of Louie, The.</span> <i>By Oliver Onions.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Tales of the Revolution.</span> <i>By M. Artzibashef.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Telling the Truth.</span> <i>By William Hewlett.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">True Dimension, The.</span> <i>By Warrington Dawson.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Turn of the Screw, The.</span> <i>By Henry James.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Uncle's Advice.</span> <i>By William Hewlett.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Undergrowth.</span> <i>By F. &amp; E. Brett Young.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Underman, The.</span> <i>By Joseph Clayton.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Unofficial.</span> <i>By Bohun Lynch.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Widdershins.</span> <i>By Oliver Onions.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Years of Plenty.</span> <i>By Ivor Brown.</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Young Earnest.</span> <i>By Gilbert Cannan.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="c">BALLANTYNE PRESS: LONDON AND EDINBURGH</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="transcriber"
+style="padding:2%;border:3px dotted gray;">
+<tr><th align="center">The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext transcriber:</th></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">managed somehow that he should chose Monica=>managed somehow that he should choose Monica</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">were akin to the birds in their shubberies=>were akin to the birds in their shrubberies</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">the tapestries even more beautiful that himself had woven.=>the tapestries even more beautiful that he himself had woven.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"The train's quite punctual," said Mr. Hazelwood=>"The train's quite punctual," said Mr. Hazlewood</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Guy and Pauline, by Compton Mackenzie
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GUY AND PAULINE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 39556-h.htm or 39556-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Guy and Pauline, by Compton Mackenzie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: Guy and Pauline
+
+Author: Compton Mackenzie
+
+Release Date: April 28, 2012 [EBook #39556]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GUY AND PAULINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
+
+THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT
+CARNIVAL
+SINISTER STREET: VOLUME ONE
+SINISTER STREET: VOLUME TWO
+
+KENSINGTON RHYMES
+
+_First published September_ 15, 1915
+
+
+
+
+GUY AND
+PAULINE
+
+_By COMPTON MACKENZIE_
+
+LONDON: MARTIN SECKER
+
+NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI MCMXV
+
+TO
+
+GENERAL
+SIR IAN HAMILTON
+G.C.B., D.S.O.
+
+AND THE GENERAL STAFF OF THE
+MEDITERRANEAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAP.
+
+I. AUTUMN
+                                   PAGE
+
+_September: October: November_        9
+
+II. WINTER
+_December: January: February_        63
+
+III. SPRING
+_March: April: May_                 109
+
+IV. SUMMER
+_June: July: August_                167
+
+V. ANOTHER AUTUMN
+_September: October: November_      219
+
+VI. ANOTHER WINTER
+_December: January: February_       271
+
+VII. ANOTHER SPRING
+_March: April: May_                 315
+
+VIII. ANOTHER SUMMER
+_June: July: August_                359
+
+IX. EPIGRAPH
+_Guy: Pauline_                      391
+
+
+
+
+AUTUMN
+
+
+
+
+_September_
+
+
+The slow train puffed away into the unadventurous country; and the bees
+buzzing round the wine-dark dahlias along the platform were once again
+audible. The last farewell that Guy Hazlewood flung over his shoulder to
+a parting friend was more casual than it would have been, had he not at
+the same moment been turning to ask the solitary porter how many cases
+of books awaited his disposition. They were very heavy, it seemed; and
+the porter, as he led the way toward the small and obscure purgatory
+through which every package for Shipcot must pass, declared he was
+surprized to hear these cases contained merely books. He would not go so
+far as to suggest that hitherto he had never faced the existence of
+books in such quantity, for the admission might have impugned official
+omniscience; yet there was in his attitude just as much incredulity
+mingled with disdain of useless learning as would preserve his dignity
+without jeopardizing the financial compliment his services were owed.
+
+"Ah, well," he decided, as if he were trying to smooth over Guy's
+embarrassment at the sight of these large packing-cases in the
+parcel-office. "You'll want something as'll keep you busy this
+winter--for you'll be the gentleman who've come to live down Wychford
+way?"
+
+Guy nodded.
+
+"And Wychford is mortal dead in winter. Time walks very lame there, as
+they say. And all these books, I suppose, were better to come along of
+the bus to-night?"
+
+Guy looked doubtful. It was seeming a pity to waste this afternoon
+without unpacking a single case.
+
+"The trap...." he began.
+
+But the porter interrupted him firmly: he did not think Mr. Godbold
+would relish the notion of one of these packing-cases in his new trap.
+
+"I could give you a hand...." Guy began again.
+
+The porter stiffened himself against the slight upon his strength.
+
+"It's not the heffort," he asserted. "Heffort is what I must look for
+every day of my life. It's Mr. Godbold's trap."
+
+The discussion was given another turn by the entrance of Mr. Godbold
+himself. He was not at all concerned for his trap, and indeed by an
+asseverated indifference to its welfare he conveyed the impression that,
+new though it were, it was so much firewood, if the gentleman wanted
+firewood. No, the trap did not matter, but what about Mr. Hazlewood's
+knees?
+
+"Ah, there you are," said the porter, and he and Mr. Godbold both stood
+dumb in the presence of the finally insuperable.
+
+"I suppose it must be the bus," said Guy. On such a sleepy afternoon he
+could argue no longer. The books must be unpacked to-morrow; and the
+word lulled like an opiate the faint irritation of his disappointment.
+The porter's reiterated altruism was rewarded with a fee so absurdly in
+excess of anything he had done, that he began to speak of a possibility
+if after all the smallest case might not be squeezed ... but Mr. Godbold
+flicked the pony, and the trap rattled up the station road at a pace
+quite out of accord with the warmth of the afternoon. Presently he
+turned to his fare:
+
+"Mrs. Godbold said to me only this morning, she said, 'You ought to have
+had a luggage-flap behind and that I shall always say.' And she was
+right. Women is often right, what's more," the husband postulated.
+
+Guy nodded absently: he was thinking about the books.
+
+"Very often right," Mr. Godbold murmured.
+
+Still Guy paid no attention.
+
+"Very often," he repeated, but as Guy would neither contradict nor agree
+with him, Mr. Godbold relapsed into meditation upon the justice of his
+observation. The pony had settled down to his wonted pace and jogged on
+through the golden haze of fine September weather. Soon the village of
+Shipcot was left behind, and before them lay the long road winding
+upward over the wold to Wychford. Guy thought of the friend who had left
+him that afternoon and wished that Michael Fane were still with him to
+enjoy this illimitable sweep of country. He had been the very person to
+share in the excitement of arranging a new house. Guy could not remember
+that he had ever made a suggestion for which he had not been asked; nor
+could he call to mind a single occasion when his appreciation had
+failed. And now to-night, when for the first time he was going to sleep
+in his own house, his friend was gone. There had been no hint of
+departure during the six weeks of preparation they had spent together at
+the Stag Inn, and it was really perverse of Michael to rush back to
+London now. Guy jumped down from the trap, which was climbing the hill
+very slowly, and stretched his long legs. He was rather bored by his
+loneliness, but as soon as he had stated so much to himself, he was
+shocked at the disloyalty to his ambition. After all, he reassured
+himself, he was not going back to a dull inn-parlour: to-night he was
+going to sleep in an hermitage for the right to enjoy the seclusion of
+which he had been compelled to fight very hard. It was weak to imagine
+he was lonely already, and to fortify himself against this mood, he
+pulled out of his pocket his father's last letter and read it again
+while he walked up the hill behind the trap.
+
+     FOX HALL, GALTON, HANTS.
+
+     _September 10._
+
+     _Dear Guy,_
+
+     _I agree with some of what you say, but I disagree with a good deal
+     more, and I am entirely opposed to your method of procedure, which
+     is to put it very mildly rather casual. Your degree was not so good
+     as it ought to have been, but I did not reproach you, because in
+     the Consular Service you had chosen a career which did not call
+     specially for a first. At the same time you could, if you had
+     worked, have got a first quite easily. Your six months with the
+     Macedonian Relief people seems to have knocked all your consular
+     ambitions on the head rather too easily, I confess, to make me feel
+     very happy about your future. And now without consulting me you
+     take a house in the country for the purpose of writing poetry! You
+     imply in answer to my remonstrances that I am unable to appreciate
+     the 'necessity' for your step. That may be, but I cannot help
+     asking where you would be now if I at your age, instead of helping
+     my father with his school, had gone off to Oxfordshire to write
+     poetry. Perhaps I had ambitions to make a name for myself with the
+     pen. If I had, I quenched them in order to devote myself to what I
+     considered my duty. I do not reproach you for refusing to carry on
+     the school at Fox Hall. Your dear mother's last request was that I
+     should not urge you to be a schoolmaster, unless you were drawn to
+     the vocation. Her wishes I have respected, and I repeat that I am
+     not hurt at your refusal. At the same time I cannot encourage what
+     can only be described as this whim of yours to bury yourself in a
+     remote village where, having saddled yourself with the
+     responsibilities of a house, you announce your intention of living
+     by poetry! I am the last person to underestimate the value of
+     poetry, but as a livelihood it seems to me as little to be relied
+     upon as the weather. However, you are of age. You have L150 a year
+     of your own. You are with the exercise of the strictest economy
+     independent. And this brings me to the point of your last letter
+     in which you ask me to supplement your own income with an allowance
+     L150 a year from me. This inclination to depend upon your father is
+     not what I conceive to be the artist's spirit of independence. This
+     over-drawing upon your achievement fills me with dismay for the
+     future. However, since I do not wish you to begin hampered by debt
+     and as you assure me that you have spent all your own money on this
+     idiotic house, I will give you L150, to be paid in quarterly
+     instalments of L37 10s. as from the 21st of this month for one
+     year. Furthermore, at the end of next year if you find that poetry
+     is less profitable than even you expect, I will offer you a place
+     at Fox Hall, thereby securing for you the certainty of a life
+     moderately free from financial worries. After all, even a
+     schoolmaster has some spare time, and I daresay our greatest poets
+     did much of their best work in their_ spare _time. The idea of
+     writing poetry all day and every day appeals to me as enervating
+     and ostentatious._
+
+     _Your affectionate father,_
+
+     _John Hazlewood._
+
+Guy stood still when he had finished the letter, and execrated mutely
+the damnable dependence that compelled him to accept gratefully and
+humbly this gift of L150. Yet with no money of his own coming in till
+December, with actually a housekeeper on her way from Cardiff and his
+house already furnished, he must accept the offer. In a year's time he
+would have proved the reasonableness of his request; and he began to
+compose a scene between them, in which his father would almost on bended
+knees beg him to accept an allowance of L300 a year in consideration of
+the magnificent proof he had afforded to the world of being in the
+direct line of English poets.
+
+"And I mustn't forget to send him a sonnet on his birthday," said Guy to
+himself.
+
+This notion restored his dignity, and he hurried on to overtake the trap
+which was waiting on the brow of the hill.
+
+"You were saying something about women being right," he reminded Mr.
+Godbold, as he sat down again beside him. "Has it ever struck you that
+fathers are nearly always wrong?"
+
+"That wouldn't do for me at all," said Mr. Godbold, shaking his head.
+"You see I'm the father of nine, and if I wasn't always right, sir, I
+shouldn't be no better than a bull in a china-shop where I live. I've
+_got_ to be right, Mr. Hazlewood."
+
+"I suppose that's what the Pope felt," Guy murmured.
+
+"Now do you reckon this here Pope they speak of really exists in a
+manner of speaking?" Mr. Godbold asked, as the trap bowled along the
+level stretch of upland road. "You know there's some of these
+narrow-minded mortals at Wychford as will have it that Mr. Grey, our
+parson, is in with the Pope, and I said to one or two of them the other
+night while we was arguing in the post-office, I said, 'Have any of you
+wise men of Gotham ever seen this Pope as you're so knowing about?'"
+
+"And had they?" asked Guy encouragingly.
+
+"Not one of them," said Mr. Godbold. "And I thought to myself as I was
+walking up home, I thought now what if there wasn't no such thing as a
+Pope any more than there's women with fish-tails and all this rubbish
+you read of in books. If you ask my opinion of books, Mr. Hazlewood, I
+tell you that I think books is as bad for some people as wireworms is
+for carnations. They seem to regular eat into them."
+
+Guy laughed. Misgivings about the wisdom of his choice vanished, and he
+was being conscious of a very intimate pleasure in thus driving back to
+Wychford from the station. The country tossed for miles to right and
+left in great stretches of pasturage, and when Mr. Godbold pulled up for
+a moment to look at a trace, the air brilliantly dusted with autumnal
+gold seemed to endow him with the richness of its silence: along the
+sparse hedgerow chicory flowers burned with the pale intense blue of the
+September sky above, and Guy felt like them worshipful of the cloudless
+scene. The road ran along the upland for half-a-mile before it dipped
+suddenly down into the valley of the Greenrush from which the spire of
+Wychford church came delicately up into the air, like a coil of smoke
+ascending from the opalescent corona that hung over the small town
+clustered against the farther hillside. Down in that valley close to the
+church was Plashers Mead; and Guy watched eagerly for the first sight of
+his long low house. Already the sparkle of the more distant curves of
+the Greenrush was visible; but Plashers Mead was still hidden by the
+slope of the bank. Presently this broke away to a ragged hedge, and the
+house displayed itself as much an integral part of the landscape as an
+outcrop of stone.
+
+"Tasty little place," commented Mr. Godbold, while the trap jolted
+cautiously down the last twist of the hilly road. "But I reckon old
+Burrows was glad to let it. You're young though, and I daresay you won't
+mind being flooded out in winter. Two years ago Burrows's son's wife's
+nephew was floating paper boats in the front hall. But you're young, and
+I daresay you'll enjoy it."
+
+The pony swept round the corner and pulled up with a jerk at the wooden
+gateway in the grey wall overhung by lime-trees that concealed from the
+high road the moist fields and garden of Plashers Mead.
+
+"I'm sleeping here to-night, you know, for the first time," said Guy. He
+had tried all the way back not to make this announcement, but the sight
+of his own gateway destroyed his reserve.
+
+"Well, you'll have a fine night, that's one good job," Mr. Godbold
+predicted.
+
+"And the moon only just past the full," said Guy.
+
+"That's right," Mr. Godbold agreed; and the tenant passed through the
+gateway into the garden where every path had its own melody of running
+water. He examined with proprietary solicitude the espaliers of
+apple-trees and admired for the twentieth time the pledge they offered
+by their fantastic forms of his garden's antiquity. He pinched several
+pippins that seemed ripe, but they were still hard; and he could find
+nothing over which to exert his lordship, until he saw by the edge of
+the path a piece of groundsel. Having solemnly exterminated the weed,
+Guy felt that the garden must henceforth recognize him as master, and he
+walked on through a mass of dropsical cabbages and early kale until he
+came face to face with the house, the sudden view of which like this
+never failed to give him a peculiar pleasure. The tangled garden, long
+and narrow, was bounded on the right, as one entered, by the Greenrush,
+over which hung a thicket of yews that completely shut out the first
+straggling houses of Wychford. On the left the massed espaliers ended
+abruptly in a large water-meadow reaching to the foot of the hill along
+which the high road climbed in a slow diagonal. By the corner of the
+house the garden had narrowed to the apex of a thin triangle, so that
+the windows looked out over the water-meadow and, beyond, up the wide
+valley of the Greenrush to where the mighty western sky rested on
+rounded hills. At this apex the Greenrush flung a tributary stream to
+wash the back of the house and one side of the orchard, whence it wound
+in extravagant curves towards the easterly valley. The main branch,
+dammed up to form a deep and sluggish mill-stream, flowed straight on,
+dividing Guy's domain from the churchyard. At the end of the orchard on
+this side was a lock-gate through which a certain amount of water
+continuously escaped from the mill-stream, enough indeed to make the
+orchard an island, as it trickled in diamonded shallows to reinforce the
+idle tributary. Somewhere in the farther depths of the eastern valley
+all vagrant waters were united, and somewhere still more remote they
+came to a confluence with their father the Thames.
+
+Guy sat upon the parapet of the well under the shade of a sycamore tree
+and regarded with admiration and satisfaction the exterior of his house.
+He looked at the semi-circular porch of stone over the front-door and
+venerated the supporting cherubs who with puffed-out cheeks had blown
+defiance at wind and rain since the days of Elizabeth. He counted the
+nine windows, five above and four below, populating with the shapes of
+many friends the rooms they lightened. He looked at the steep roof of
+grey stone-tiles rich with the warm golden green of mossy patterns. He
+looked at the four pear-trees against the walls of the house barren now
+for many years. He looked at himself in silhouette against the silver
+sky of the well-water; and then he went indoors.
+
+The big stone-paved hall was very cool, and the sound of the stream at
+the back came babbling through lattices open to the light of a green
+world. Guy could not make up his mind whether the inside of the house
+smelt very dry or very damp, for there clung about it that odour
+peculiar to rustic age, which may be found equally in dry old barns and
+in damp potting-sheds. He wished he could furnish the hall worthily. At
+present it contained only a high-back chair, an alleged contemporary of
+Cromwell, which was doddering beside the hooded fireplace; a
+warming-pan; and an oak-chest which remained a chest only so long as
+nobody either sat upon it or lifted the lid. There was also a
+grandfather-clock which had suffered an abrupt resurrection of four
+minutes' duration when it was recently lifted out of the furniture-van,
+but had now relapsed into the silence of years. Leading out of the hall
+was a small empty room which had been dedicated to the possession of his
+friend Michael Fane: together they had planned to paper it with gold and
+paint the ceiling black. Michael, however, had still another year at
+Oxford, and the room with an obelisk of lining-paper standing upright on
+the bare floor was now a little desolate. On the other side of the hall
+was the dining-room which Guy, by taxing his resources, had managed to
+furnish very successfully. It was a square room painted emerald-green
+above the white wainscot. Two inset cupboards were filled with glass and
+china: there were four Chippendale chairs and an oval Sheraton table,
+curtains of purple silk, some old English watercolours and two
+candlesticks of Sheffield plate. Beyond the dining-room was the kitchen,
+the corridor to which was endowed with a swinging baize-door considered
+by the landlord to be the finest feature of the house. The problem of
+equipping the kitchen had seemed insoluble until Guy heard of a sale in
+the neighbourhood. He had bicycled over to this and bought the contents
+of the large kitchen at auction. The result was that the dresser
+encroached upon the table, that the table had one leg in the fender and
+that a row of graduated dish-covers, the largest of which would have
+sheltered two turkeys, occupied whatever space was left. All that
+remained of Guy's own money had been invested in his kitchen, and he
+accounted for the large size of everything by the fact of the auction's
+having been held in the open air, where everything had looked so much
+smaller. Now, as he contemplated dubiously the result, he wondered what
+Miss Peasey would say to it. She and the books would arrive together at
+half-past nine to-night. He hoped his unknown housekeeper would not be
+irritated by these dish-covers, and as a precautionary measure he
+unhooked the largest, carried it upstairs and deposited it on the floor
+of an unfurnished bedroom. The staircase ran steep and straight up from
+the hall into a long corridor with more casements opening on the orchard
+behind. The bedroom at one end was dedicated to the hope of Michael
+Fane's occupation and was always referred to in letters as his: '_By the
+way I put the largest dish-cover in your bedroom_.' The next two
+bedrooms were also empty and belonged in spirit to the friends with whom
+Guy had lived during his last year at Oxford. The fourth was his own,
+very simply and sparsely furnished in comparison with the bedroom up in
+the roof which was intended for Miss Peasey. The preparation of that for
+an elderly unmarried woman had involved a certain voluptuousness of rep
+and fumed oak and heavily decorated china, the fruit of the second-best
+bedroom in the house of the dish-covers. As Guy went up the crooked
+stairs and knocked his head on three successive beams, he hoped Miss
+Peasey would not be as disproportionately large as the kitchen dresser.
+Her handwriting had been spidery enough, and he pictured her hopefully
+as small and wizened. Miss Peasey's bower with the big dormer window
+surveying the tree-tops of the orchard was certainly a success, and Guy
+saw that Michael had with happy intuition of female aspiration hung on
+the wall opposite her bed a large steel-engraving of Dore's Martyrs,
+which had been included with two hammocks and a fishing-rod in one of
+the odd lots lightly bid for at the auction. There did not seem anything
+else she could want; so, having killed a bluebottle with a tartan
+pincushion, he came downstairs.
+
+Guy had left his own room to the last, partly because he regretted so
+much the delay in the arrival of those books and partly because, however
+inadequately equipped was the rest of the house, this room was always
+the final justification of his tenancy. It was a larger room than any of
+the others, for the corridor did not cut off its share of the back. It
+possessed, in addition to the usual window looking out over the western
+side of the valley, a very large bay which hung right over the stream,
+with a view of the orchard, of the church-steeple, of the water-meadows
+beyond and of the wold rolling across the horizon. This morning Michael
+and he had pushed the furniture into place, had set in order the great
+wicker chairs and nailed against the wall the frames of green canvas.
+The floor was covered with a sweet-smelling mat of Abingdon rushes; and
+the curtains of his old rooms in Balliol were hung in place, dim green
+curtains sown with golden fleurs-de-lys. The ivory image of an emaciated
+saint standing on the mantelshelf between candlesticks of old wrought
+iron was probably a Spanish Virgin, but Guy preferred to say she was
+Saint Rose of Lima because '_O Rose of Lima_' seemed a wonderful
+apostrophe to begin a poem. Nothing indeed remained for the room's
+perfection but to fill the new bookshelves on either side of the
+fireplace. Why had he not hired a cart in Shipcot? They would have been
+here by now, and he would actually have been able to begin work
+to-night, setting thus a noble period to these last six weeks of
+preparation.
+
+Guy dragged a chair into the bay window and, balancing his long legs on
+the sill, he made numerous calculations in which Miss Peasey's wages,
+the weekly bills for food, and the number of times he would have to go
+up to London were set against L150 a year. When he woke up, the
+lime-trees that bordered the high road had flung their shadows half-way
+across the meadow, and the air was a fume of golden gnats against the
+dipping sun. Within ten minutes the sun vanished, and the mists began to
+rise. Guy, feeling rather chilly and ashamed of himself for falling
+asleep, rose hurriedly and went up into the town. He interviewed the
+driver of the omnibus and told him to look out for his books, and as an
+afterthought he mentioned the arrival of Miss Peasey. He wished now he
+had written and told his housekeeper to spend the night in Oxford; and
+he hoped she would not be prejudiced against Plashers Mead by a
+five-mile drive in a cold omnibus after her tiring journey from Cardiff.
+He dawdled about the steep village street for a while, gossiping with
+tradesmen at their doors and watching the warmth fade out of the grey
+houses in the falling dusk. Then he went to eat his last meal in the
+Stag Inn.
+
+After supper Guy returned to Plashers Mead, wandering round the house,
+dropping a great deal of candle-grease everywhere and working himself up
+into a state of anxiety over Miss Peasey's advent. It would be terrible
+if she demanded her fare back to Wales the moment she arrived; and to
+propitiate her he put the best lamp in the kitchen, whence (as with such
+illumination it looked more than ever protuberant) he took another
+dish-cover up to Michael's bedroom. Since it was still but a few minutes
+after eight and the omnibus would not come for another hour and a half,
+he lit all the wax candles in his own room and wondered what to do. The
+tall shadows wavering in the draught were seeming cold and uncomfortable
+without a fire, so he restlessly threw back the curtains of the bay
+window to watch the rising of the moon. At that instant her rim appeared
+above the black hills, and presently a great moon of dislustred gold
+swam along the edge of the earth. Although she appeared to shed no
+light, the valley responded to her presence, and Guy was lured from his
+room to walk for a while in the dews.
+
+Out in the orchard a heavy mist wrapped him in wet folds of silver; yet
+overhead there was clear starlight, and he could watch the slow
+burnishing of the moon's face in her voyage up the sky. It was a queer
+country in which he found himself, where all the tree-tops seemed to be
+floating away from invisible trunks, and where for a while no sound was
+audible but his own footsteps making a music almost of violins in the
+saturated grass. The moon wrought upon the vapours a shifting damascene;
+and far behind, as it seemed, a rufous stain showed where the candles in
+his room were still alight. Gradually a variety of sounds began to play
+upon the silence. He could hear the dry squeak of a bat and cows
+munching in the meadows on the other side of the stream. The stream
+itself babbled and was still, babbled and was still; while along the
+bank voles were taking the water with splashes that went up and down a
+scale like the deep notes of a dulcimer. Far off, an owl hooted, an
+otter barked; and then as he crossed the middle of the orchard he was
+hearing nothing but apples fall with solemn thud, until the noise of the
+lock-gate swallowed all lighter sounds. Here the mist had temporarily
+dissolved, and in the moonlight he could see water gushing forth like an
+arch of lace and the long bramble-sprays combing the shallows below.
+Soon the orchard was left behind, and he was in the mist of a wide
+meadow, where all was silent again except for the faint sobbing of the
+grass to his footsteps. He walked straight into the moon's face,
+stumbling from time to time over molehills with an eery fragrance of
+fresh-turned soil, and wishing he could ever say in verse a little of
+the magic this autumnal night was shedding upon his fancy.
+
+"By gad, if I can't write here, I ought to be shot," he declared.
+
+The church-clock struck the half-hour as appositely as if his own father
+had said something about the need for hurrying up and showing what he
+could do.
+
+"Ah, but I'm not going to be hurried," said Guy aloud. And since the
+clock could not answer him again, it was as good as having the best of
+an argument.
+
+Guy walked on, and after a while could hear once more the purling of the
+stream. He thought there was something strangely human about this river
+in the way it wandered so careless of direction. When he had left these
+banks, they had been going away from him: now here they were coming back
+like himself toward the moon, so that presently he was able without
+changing his course to walk under their border of willows. The mist had
+drifted away from the stream, leaving the spires of loosestrife plainly
+visible and more dimly on the other side the forms of huge cattle at
+pasture. There was, too, a smell of meadowsweet softening with a summer
+languor the sharp September night. The willows gave way to overhanging
+thickets of hawthorn, as the river suddenly swept round to make a noose
+that was completed but a few yards ahead of where he was standing. He
+could not see on account of the bushes the size of the peninsula so
+formed, and when suddenly he heard from the depths a sound of laughter,
+so full was his brain of moonshine that if he had come face to face with
+a legendary queen of fairies, he would hardly have been surprized. It
+was with the deliberate encouragement of a vision surpassing all the
+fantasies of moon and mist that Guy stopped; and indeed, on a sensuous
+impulse to pamper his imagination with an unsolved mystery he had almost
+turned round to go back. Curiosity, however, was too strong; for, as he
+paused irresolute, the fairy mirth tinkling again from the recesses of
+that bewitched enclosure died away upon the murmur of a conversation,
+and he could not leave any longer inviolate that screen of hawthorns.
+
+In the apogee of the river's noose two girls, clearly seen against the
+silver glooms beyond, were bending over a basket. Their heads were close
+together, and it was not until Guy was almost on top of them that he
+realized how impertinent his intrusion might seem. He drew back
+blushing, just as one of the girls became aware of his presence and
+jumped up with an 'oh' that floated away from her as lightly as a moth
+upon the moonshine. Her sister (Guy decided at once they were sisters)
+jumped up also and luckily for him, since it offered the opportunity of
+a natural apology, overturned the basket. For a moment the three of them
+gazed at one another over the mushrooms that were tumbled upon the grass
+to be an elfin city of the East, so white and cold were their cupolas
+under the moon.
+
+"Can't I help to pick them up?" Guy asked, wondering to himself why on
+this night of nights that was the real beginning of Plashers Mead he
+should be blessed by this fortunate encounter. The two girls were
+wearing big white coats of some rough tweed or frieze on which the mist
+lay like gossamer; and, as neither of them had a hat, Guy could see that
+one was very dark and the other fair.
+
+"We wondered who you were," said the dark one.
+
+"I live at Plashers Mead," said Guy.
+
+"I know, I've seen you often," she answered.
+
+"And Father says every day 'My dears, I really must call upon that young
+man.'"
+
+It was the fair one who spoke, and Guy recognized that it was her
+laughter he had first heard.
+
+"My other sister is somewhere close by," said the dark one.
+
+Guy was kneeling down to gather up the mushrooms, and he looked round to
+see another white figure coming toward them.
+
+"Oh, Margaret, do let's introduce him to Monica. It will be such fun,"
+cried the fair sister.
+
+Guy saw that Margaret was shaking her head, but nevertheless when the
+third sister came near enough she did introduce him. Monica was more
+like Margaret, but much fairer than the first fair sister; and with her
+reserve and her pale gold hair she seemed, as she greeted him, to be
+indeed a wraith of the moon.
+
+"Shall I carry the mushrooms back for you?" Guy offered.
+
+"Oh, no thanks," said Monica quickly. "The Rectory is quite out of your
+way."
+
+He felt the implication of an eldest sister's disapproval, and not
+wishing to spoil the omens of romance, he left the three sisters by the
+banks of the Greenrush and was soon on his way home through the webs of
+mist.
+
+How extraordinary that he and Michael should have spent six weeks at
+Wychford without realizing that the Rector had three such daughters.
+Godbold had gossiped about him only this afternoon, reporting that he
+was held by some of his parishioners to be in with the Pope: they might
+more justly suspect him of being in with Titania. Monica, Margaret ...
+he had not heard the name of the third. Monica had seemed a little
+frigid, but Margaret and ... really when the omnibus arrived he must
+find out the name of the Rector's third daughter, of that one so
+obviously the youngest with her light brown hair and her laugh of which
+even now, as he paused, he fancied he could still hear the melodious
+echo. Monica, Margaret and ... Rose perhaps, for there had been
+something of a dewy eglantine about her. Surely that was indeed the echo
+of their voices; but, as upon distance the wayward sound eluded him, the
+belfry-clock with whirr and buzz and groan made preparation to strike
+the hour. Nine strokes boomed, leaving behind them a stillness absolute.
+The poet thought of time before him, of the three sisters by the river,
+of fame to come, and of his own fortune in finding Plashers Mead. Four
+months ago he had been in Macedonia, full of proconsular romance, and
+now he was in England with a much keener sense of every moment's
+potentiality than he had ever known in the dreams of oriental dominion.
+This sublunary adventure indicated how great a richness of pastoral life
+lay behind the slumber of a forgotten town; and it was seeming more than
+ever a pity Michael had not waited until to-night, so that he also might
+have met Monica and Margaret and that smallest innominate sister with
+the light brown hair. Guy could not help arranging with himself for his
+friend to fall in love with one of them; and since he at once allotted
+Monica to Michael, he knew that he himself preferred one of the others.
+But which? Oh, it was ridiculous to ask such questions after seeing
+three girls for three minutes of moonlight. Perhaps it really had been
+sorcery and in the morning, when he met them in Wychford High Street,
+they would appear dull and ordinary. They could not be so beautiful as
+he thought they were, he decided, since if they were he must have heard
+of their beauty. Nevertheless it was in a mood of almost elated
+self-congratulation that Guy found himself hurrying through the orchard
+toward the candlelight of his room.
+
+The arrival of Miss Peasey, now that it was upon him, banished
+everything else; and instead of dreaming deliciously of that encounter
+in the water-meadows, he stood meditating on the failure of the kitchen.
+As he regarded the enormous dresser; the table trampling upon the
+fender; the seven dish-covers mocking his poor crockery, Guy had little
+hope that Miss Peasey would stay a week: and then suddenly, worse than
+any failure of equipment, he remembered that she might be hungry. He
+looked at his watch. A quarter-past nine. Of course she would be hungry.
+She probably had eaten nothing but a banana since breakfast in Cardiff.
+Guy rushed out and surprized the landlord of the Stag by begging him to
+send the hostler down at once with cold beef and stout and cheese.
+
+"There's the bus," he cried. "Don't forget. At once. My new housekeeper.
+Long journey. And salad. Forgot she'd be hungry. Salt and mustard. I've
+got plates."
+
+The omnibus went rumbling past, and Guy followed at a jog-trot down the
+street, saw it cross the bridge and, making a spurt, caught it up just
+as a woman alighted by the gate of Plashers Mead.
+
+"Ah, Miss Peasey," said Guy breathlessly. "I went up the street to see
+if the bus was coming. Have you had a comfortable journey?"
+
+"Mr. Hazlewood?" asked the new housekeeper blinking at him.
+
+The guard of the omnibus at this moment informed Guy that he had some
+cases for Plashers Mead.
+
+"Where is Mr. Hazlewood then?" asked Miss Peasey turning sharply.
+
+Over her shoulder Guy saw that the guard was apparently punching the
+side of his head, and he said more loudly:
+
+"I'm Mr. Hazlewood."
+
+"I thought you were. I'm a little bit deaf after travelling, so you'll
+kindly speak slightly above the usual, Mr. Hazlewood."
+
+"I hope you've had a comfortable journey," Guy shouted.
+
+"Oh, yes, I think I shall," she said with what Guy fancied was meant to
+be an encouraging smile. "I hope you haven't lost any of my parcels,
+young man," she continued with a severe glance at the guard.
+
+"Four and a stringbag. Is that right, mum?" he bellowed. "She's as deaf
+as an adder, Mr. Hazlewood," he explained confidentially. "We had a
+regular time getting of her into the bus before we found out she
+couldn't hear what was being said to her. Oh, very obstinate she was."
+
+"This is the garden," Guy shouted, as they passed in through the gate.
+
+"Yes, I daresay," Miss Peasey replied ambiguously.
+
+Guy wondered how she would ever be got upstairs to her room.
+
+"This is the hall," he shouted. "Rather unfurnished I'm afraid."
+
+"Oh, yes, I'm quite used to the country," said Miss Peasey.
+
+Guy was now in a state of nervous indecision. Just as he was going to
+shout to Miss Peasey that the kitchen was through the baize-door, the
+hostler from the Stag came up to know whether mutton would do instead of
+beef, and just as he said pork would be better than nothing, the guard
+arrived with Miss Peasey's tin box and wanted to know where he should
+put it. The hall seemed to be thronged with people.
+
+"You'd like your boxes upstairs, wouldn't you?" he shouted to the
+housekeeper.
+
+"Oh, do you want to come upstairs?" she said cheerfully.
+
+"No, your boxes. The kitchen's in here."
+
+He really hustled her into the kitchen and, having got her at last in a
+well-lighted room, he begged her to sit down and expect her supper. By
+this time two men who had been summoned by the driver of the omnibus to
+bring in Guy's books, were staggering and sweating into the hall.
+However, the confusion relaxed in time; and before the clock struck ten
+Guy was alone with Miss Peasey and without an audience was managing to
+make her understand most of what he was saying.
+
+"I'll come down in about half an hour," he told her, "and show you your
+room."
+
+"It's a long way," said Miss Peasey, when the moment was arrived to
+conduct her up the winding staircase to her bower in the roof. Guy had
+calculated that she would miss all the beams, and so from a desire to
+make the best of the staircase he had not mentioned them. He sighed with
+relief when she passed into her bedroom, unbumped.
+
+"Oh, quite nice," she pronounced looking round her.
+
+"In the morning, we'll talk over everything," said Guy, and with a
+hurried good-night he rushed away.
+
+In the hall he attacked with a chisel the first packing-case. One by one
+familiar volumes winked at him with their gold lettering in the
+candlelight. He chose Keats to take upstairs and, having read St.
+Agnes' Eve, stood by the window of his bedroom, poring upon the moonlit
+valley.
+
+In bed his mind skipped the stress of Miss Peasey's arrival and fled
+back to the meadows where he had been walking.
+
+"Monica, Margaret...." he began dreamily. It was a pity he had forgotten
+to find out the name of that sister who was so like a wild rose. Never
+mind: he would find out to-morrow. And for the second time that day the
+word lulled him like an opiate.
+
+
+
+
+_October_
+
+
+It was a blowy afternoon early in October, and Pauline was sitting by
+the window of what at Wychford Rectory was still called the nursery. The
+persistence of the old name might almost be taken as symbolic of the way
+in which time had glided by that house unrecognized, for here were
+Monica, Margaret and Pauline grown up before anyone had thought of
+changing its name even to schoolroom. And with the old name it had
+preserved the character childhood had lent it. There was not a chair
+that did not appear now like the veteran survivor of childish wars and
+misappropriations, nor any table nor cupboard that did not testify to an
+affectionate ill-treatment prolonged over many years. On the walls the
+paper which had once been vivid in its expression of primitive gaiety
+was now faded: but the pattern of berries, birds and daisies still
+displayed that eternally unexplored tangle as freshly as once it was
+displayed for childish fancies of adventure. Pauline had always loved
+the window-seat, and from here she had always seen before anyone else at
+the Rectory the first flash of Spring's azure eyes, the first greying of
+Winter's locks. So, now on this afternoon she could see the bullying
+Southwest wind thunderous against whatever laggards of Summer still
+tried to shelter themselves in the Rectory garden. Occasionally a few
+raindrops seemed to effect a frantic escape from the fierce assault and
+cling desperately to the window-panes, but since nobody could call it a
+really wet day Pauline had been protesting all the afternoon against her
+sisters' unwillingness to go out. Staying indoors was such a surrender
+to the season.
+
+"We ought to practise that Mendelssohn trio," Monica argued.
+
+"I hate Mendelssohn," Pauline retorted.
+
+"Well, I shall practise the piano part."
+
+"Oh, Monica, it will sound so dreadfully empty," cried Pauline. "Won't
+it, Margaret?"
+
+"I'm reading Mansfield Park. Don't talk," Margaret murmured. "If I could
+write like Jane Austen," she went on dreamily, "I should be the happiest
+person in the world."
+
+"Oh, but you are the happiest person already," said Pauline. "At least
+you ought to be, if you'd only...."
+
+"You know I hate you to talk about him," Margaret interrupted.
+
+Pauline was silent. It was always a little alarming when Margaret was
+angry. With Monica one took for granted the disapproval of a fastidious
+nature, and it was fun to teaze her; but Margaret with her sudden
+alternations of hardness and sympathy, of being great fun and
+frightfully intolerant, it was always wiser to propitiate. So Pauline
+stayed in the window-seat, pondering mournfully the lawn mottled with
+leaves, and the lily-pond that was being seamed and crinkled by every
+gust of the wind that skated across the surface. The very high grey wall
+against which the Japanese quinces spread their peacock-tails of foliage
+was shutting her out from the world to-day, and Pauline wished it were
+Summer again so that she could hurry through the little door in the wall
+and across the paddock to the banks of the Greenrush. In the Rectory
+punt she would not have had to bother with sisters who would not come
+out for a walk when they were invited.
+
+The tall trees on either side of the lawn roared in the wind and
+showered more leaves upon the angry air. What a long time it was to
+Summer, and for no reason that she could have given herself Pauline
+began to think about the man who had taken Plashers Mead. Of course it
+was obvious he would fall in love either with Monica or with Margaret,
+and really it must be managed somehow that he should choose Monica.
+Everybody fell in love with Margaret, which was so hard on poor Richard
+out in India who was much the nicest person in the world and whom
+Margaret must never give up. Pauline looked at her sister and felt
+afraid the new tenant of Plashers Mead would fall in love with her, for
+Margaret was so very adorable with her slim hands and her sombre hair.
+
+"Really almost more like a lily than a girl," thought Pauline. Somehow
+the comparison reassured her, since it was impossible to think of
+anyone's rushing to gather a lily without a great deal of hesitation.
+
+"I wish poor Richard would write and tell her she is like a lily,
+instead of always writing such a lot about the bridge he is building,
+though I expect it's a very wonderful bridge."
+
+After all, Monica with her glinting evanescence was just as beautiful as
+Margaret, and even more mysterious; and if she only would not be so
+frightening to young men, who would not fall in love with her! Pauline
+wondered vaguely if she could not persuade Margaret to go away for a
+month, so that the new tenant of Plashers Mead might have had time to
+fall irremediably in love with Monica before she came back. Richard
+would certainly be dreadfully worried out in India when he heard of a
+young man at Plashers Mead, and certainly rather ... yes, certainly in
+church on Sunday he had appeared rather charming. It was only last
+Spring that poor Richard had wished he could be living in Plashers Mead
+himself, and they had had several long discussions which never shed any
+light upon the problem of how such an ambition would be gratified.
+
+"I expect Monica will be like ice, and Margaret will seem so much easier
+to talk to, and if I dared to suggest that Monica should unbend a
+little, she would freeze me as well. Oh, it's all very difficult,"
+sighed Pauline to herself, "and perhaps I'd better not try to influence
+things. Only if he does seem to like Margaret much better than Monica, I
+shall have to bring poor Richard into the conversation, which always
+makes Margaret cross for days."
+
+As she came to this resolution, Pauline looked half apprehensively at
+her sister reading in the tumbledown armchair by the fire. How angry
+Margaret would be if she guessed what was being plotted, and Pauline
+actually jumped when she suddenly declared that Mansfield Park was
+almost the best book Jane Austen ever wrote.
+
+"Is it, darling Margaret?" said Pauline with a disarming willingness to
+be told again that it certainly was.
+
+"Or perhaps Emma," Margaret murmured, and Pauline hid herself behind the
+curtains. How droll Father had been about the 'new young creature' at
+Plashers Mead. It had been so difficult to persuade him to interrupt one
+precious afternoon of planting bulbs to do his duty either as a
+neighbour or as Rector of the parish. And when he came back all he would
+say of the visit was:
+
+"Very pleasant, my dears, oh, yes, he showed me everything, and he
+really has a most remarkable collection of dish-covers, quite
+remarkable. But I ought not to have deserted those irises that Garstin
+sent me from the Taurus. Now perhaps we shall manage that obstinate
+little plum-coloured brute which likes the outskirts of a pine-forest,
+so they tell me."
+
+Just as Pauline was laughing to herself at the memory of her father's
+visit, the Rector himself appeared on the lawn. He was in his
+shirt-sleeves: his knees were muddy with kneeling: and Birdwood the
+gardener, all blown about by the wind, was close behind him, carrying an
+armful of roots.
+
+Pauline threw up the window with a crash and called out:
+
+"Father, Father, what a darling you look, and your hair will be swept
+right away, if you aren't careful."
+
+The Rector waved his trowel remotely, and Pauline blew him kisses, until
+she was made aware of protests in the room behind her.
+
+"Really," exclaimed Monica. "You are so noisy. You're almost vulgar."
+
+"Oh, no, Monica," cried Pauline dancing round the room. "Not vulgar. Not
+a horrid little vulgar person!"
+
+"And what a noise you do make," Margaret joined in. "Please, Pauline,
+shut the window."
+
+At this moment Mrs. Grey opened the door and loosed a whirlwind of
+papers upon the nursery.
+
+"Who's vulgar? Who's vulgar?" asked Mrs. Grey laughing absurdly. "Why,
+what a tremendous draught!"
+
+"Mother, shut the door, the door," expostulated Margaret and Monica
+simultaneously. "And do tell Pauline to control herself sometimes."
+
+"Pauline, control yourself," said Mrs. Grey.
+
+When the papers were settling down, Janet the maid came in to say there
+was a gentleman in the drawing-room, and in the confusion of the new
+whirlwind her entrance raised, Janet was gone before anyone knew who the
+gentleman was.
+
+"Ugh," Margaret grumbled. "I never can be allowed to read in peace."
+
+"I was practising the Mendelssohn trio, Mother," said Monica
+reproachfully.
+
+"Let us all practise. Let us all practise," Mrs. Grey proposed, beaming
+enthusiastically upon her daughters. "That would be charming."
+
+"Father is so sweet," said Pauline. "He's simply covered with mud."
+
+"Has he got his kneeler?" asked Mrs. Grey.
+
+Pauline rushed to the window again.
+
+"Mother says 'have you got your kneeler'?"
+
+The Rector paused vaguely, and Birdwood tried to indicate by kicking
+himself that he had the kneeler.
+
+"Ah, thoughtful Birdwood," said Mrs. Grey in a satisfied voice.
+
+"And now do you think we might have the window shut?" asked Margaret
+resignedly.
+
+Monica was quite deliberately thumping at the piano part she was
+practising. Mrs. Grey sat down and began to tell a long story in which
+three poor people of Wychford got curiously blended somehow into one, so
+that Pauline, who was the only daughter that ever listened, became very
+sympathetic over a fourth poor person who had nothing to do with the
+tale.
+
+"And surely Janet came in to say something about the drawing-room," said
+Mrs. Grey as she finished.
+
+"She said a gentleman," Pauline declared.
+
+"Oh, how vague you all are," exclaimed Margaret, jumping up.
+
+"Well, Margaret, you were here," Pauline said. "And so was Monica."
+
+"But I was practising," said Monica primly. "And I didn't hear a word
+Janet said."
+
+There was always this preliminary confusion at the Rectory when a
+stranger was announced, and it always ended in the same way by Mrs. Grey
+and Monica going down first, by Pauline rushing after them and banging
+the door as they were greeting the visitor, and by Margaret strolling in
+when the stage of comparative ease had been attained. So it fell out on
+this occasion, for Monica's skirt was just disappearing round the
+drawing-room door when Pauline, horrified at the idea of having to come
+in by herself, cleared the last three stairs of the billowy flight with
+a leap and sent Monica spinning forward as the door propelled her into
+the room.
+
+"Monica, I am so sorry."
+
+"Pauline! Pauline!" said Mrs. Grey reprovingly. "So like an avalanche
+always."
+
+Guy, who had by now been waiting nearly a quarter of an hour, came
+forward a little shyly.
+
+"How d'ye do, how d'ye do," said Mrs. Grey quickly and nervously. "We're
+so delighted to see you. So good of you ... charming really. Pauline is
+always impetuous. You've come to study farming at Wychford haven't you?
+Most interesting. Don't tug at me, Pauline. Monica, do ring for tea. Are
+you fond of music?"
+
+Pauline withdrew from the conversation after the whispered attempt to
+correct her mother about Mr. Hazlewood's having taken Plashers Mead in
+order to be a farmer. She wanted to contemplate the visitor without
+being made to involve herself in the confusions of politeness. 'Was he
+dangerous to Richard?' she asked herself, and alas, she had to tell
+herself that indeed it seemed probable he might be. Of course he was
+inevitably on the way to falling in love with Margaret, and as she
+looked at him with his clear-cut pale face, his tumbled hair and large
+brown eyes which changed what seemed at first a slightly cynical
+personality to one that was almost a little wistful, Pauline began to
+speculate if Margaret might not herself be rather attracted to him. This
+was an unforeseen complication, for Margaret so far had only accepted
+homage. Pauline definitely began to be jealous for Richard whose homage
+had been the most prodigal of any; and as Guy drawled on about his first
+adventure of house-keeping she told herself he was affected. The
+impression, too, of listening to someone more than usually
+self-possessed and cynical revived in her mind; and those maliciously
+drooping lids were obliterating the effect of the brown eyes. Sitting by
+herself in the oriel-window Pauline was nearly sure she did not like
+him. He had no business to be at the Rectory when Richard was building a
+bridge out in India; and now here was Margaret strolling graciously in
+and almost at once obviously knowing so well how to get on with this
+idler. Oh, positively she disliked him. So cold and so cruel was that
+mouth, and so vain he was, as he sat there bending forward over
+hand-clasped, long, stupid, crossed legs. What right had he to laugh
+with Margaret about their father's visit? This stranger had assuredly
+never appreciated him. He was come here to spoil the happiness of
+Wychford, to destroy the immemorial perfection of life at the Rectory.
+And why would he keep looking up at herself? Margaret could be pleasant
+to anybody, but this intruder would soon find that she herself was loyal
+to the absent. Pauline wished that, when he met them all on that night
+of the moon, she had been so horridly rude as to make him avoid the
+family for ever. How could Margaret sit there talking so unconcernedly,
+when Richard might be dying of sunstroke at this very moment? Margaret
+was heartless, and this stranger with his drawl and his undergraduate
+affectation would encourage her to sneer at everything.
+
+"What's the matter, Pauline dearest?" her mother turned round to ask.
+
+"Nothing," answered Pauline, biting her lips to keep back surely the
+most unreasonable tears she had ever felt were springing.
+
+"You're not cross with me for calling you a landslide?" persisted Mrs.
+Grey, smiling at her from the midst of a glory momentarily shed by a
+stormy ray of sunshine.
+
+"Oh, mother," said Pauline, now fairly in the midway between laughter
+and tears. "It was an avalanche you called me."
+
+"Why do you always sit near a window?" asked Monica.
+
+"She always rushes into a corner," said Margaret.
+
+Pauline jumped up from her chair and would have run out of the room
+forthwith; but in passing the first table she knocked from it a silver
+bowl of pot-pourri and scattered the contents over the carpet. Down she
+knelt to hide her confusion and repair the damage, and at the same
+moment Guy plunged down beside her to help. She caught his eyes so
+tenderly humorous that she too laughed.
+
+"I think it must be my fault," he said. "Don't you remember how, last
+time we met, your sister upset the mushrooms?"
+
+Pauline knew she was blushing, and when the rose-leaves were all
+gathered up, tea came in. Her attention was now entirely occupied by
+preventing her mother from doing the most ridiculous things with cakes
+and sugar and milk, and when tea was over, Guy got up to go.
+
+There was a brief discussion after his departure, in which Margaret was
+so critical of his dress and of his absurdities that Pauline was
+reassured, and presently indeed found herself taking their visitor's
+part against her sisters.
+
+"Quite right, quite right, Pauline," said Mrs. Grey. "He's charming ...
+charming ... charming! Margaret and Monica so critical. Always so
+critical."
+
+Presently the family hurried out into the drive to protest against the
+Rector's planting any more bulbs, to tell him how unkind he had been not
+to come in to tea, and to warn him that the bell would sound for
+Evensong in two minutes. He was dragged out of the shrubbery where he
+had been superintending a clearance of aucubas, preparatory to planting
+a drift of new and very deep yellow primroses.
+
+"Really, my dears, I have never seen Primula Vulgaris so fine in texture
+or colour. My friend Gilmour has spent ten years working up the stock.
+As large as florins."
+
+So he boasted of new wonders next Spring in the Rectory garden, while
+his wife and daughters brushed him and dusted him and helped to button
+up his cassock.
+
+"Doesn't Father look a darling?" demanded Pauline, as they watched the
+tall handsome dreamer striding along the drive towards the sound of the
+bell, that was clanging loud and soft in its battle with the wind.
+
+"Oh, Pauline, run after him," said Mrs. Grey, "and remind him it's the
+Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity. He started wrong last Sunday, and
+to-day's Wednesday, and it so offends some of the congregation."
+
+Pauline overtook her father in the church-porch, and he promised he
+would be careful to read the right collect. She had not stayed to get a
+hat and therefore must wait for him outside.
+
+"Very well, my dear child, I shan't be long. Do go and see if those
+Sternbergias I planted against the south porch are in flower. Dear me,
+they should be, you know, after this not altogether intolerably overcast
+summer. Sun, though, sun! they want sun, poor dears!"
+
+"But, Father, I can't remember what Sternbergias look like."
+
+"Oh, yes, you can," said the Rector. "Sternbergia Lutea. Amaryllidaceae.
+A perfectly ordinary creature." And he vanished in the gloom of the
+priest's door.
+
+As Pauline came round the corner the wind was full in her face, and
+under the rose-edged wrack of driving clouds the churchyard looked
+desolate and savage. There were no flowers to be seen but beaten down
+Michaelmas daisies and bedabbled phlox. The bell had stopped immediately
+when the Rector arrived; and the wind seemed now much louder as it went
+howling round the great church or rasping through the yews and junipers.
+The churchyard was bounded on the northerly side by the mill-stream,
+along which ran a wide path between a double row of willows now hissing
+and whistling as they were whipped by the blasts. Pauline walked slowly
+down this unquiet ambulatory, gazing curiously over to the other bank of
+the stream where the orchard of Plashers Mead was strewn with red
+apples. There in the corner by the house that was just visible stood
+the owner playing with a dog, a bobtail too, which was the kind Pauline
+liked best. She wanted very much to wave, but of course it was
+impossible for the Rector's daughter to do anything like that in the
+churchyard. Yet if he did chance to walk in her direction, she would,
+whatever happened, shout to him across the stream to bring the dog next
+time he came to the Rectory. Pauline walked four times up and down the
+path, but first the dog disappeared and then the owner followed him, and
+presently Pauline discovered that the path beside the abandoned stream
+was very dreary. The crooked tombstones stood up starkly: the wind
+sighed across the green graves of the unknown: the fiery roses were
+fallen from the clouds. Pauline turned away from the path and went to
+take shelter behind the East end of the church. From here, as she
+fronted the invading night, she could see the grey wall of the Rectory
+garden and the paddock sloping down to the river. How sad it was to
+think of the months that must pass before that small meadow would be
+speckled with fritillaries or with irises blow white and purple. The
+wind shrieked with a sudden gust that seemed more violent, because where
+she was standing not a blade of grass twitched. Pauline looked up to
+reassure herself that the steeple was not toppling from the tower; as
+she did so, a gargoyle grinned down at her. The grotesque was
+frightening in the dusk, and she hurried round to the priest's door. The
+Rector came out as she reached it, and accepted vaguely the information
+that there were no flowers to be seen but Michaelmas daisies and phlox.
+
+"Ah, I told Birdwood to confiscate those abominable dahlias which
+wretched Mrs. Godbold will plant every year. I gave her some of that new
+saxifrage I raised. What more does the woman want?"
+
+Pauline hung upon his arm, while they walked back to the Rectory through
+the darkling plantation.
+
+"Isn't it a perfect place?" she murmured, hugging his arm closer when
+they came to the end of the mossy path and saw the twinkling of the
+drawing-room's oriel on the narrow south side, and the eleven steep
+gables that cleft the now scarcely luminous sky, one after another all
+the length of the house.
+
+"I doubt if anything but this confounded cotoneaster would do well
+against this wall," replied the Rector.
+
+He never failed to make this observation when he reached his front-door;
+and his family knew that one day the cotoneaster would be torn down for
+a succession of camellias to struggle with the east winds of unkind
+Oxfordshire. In the hall Mrs. Grey and Margaret were bending over a
+table.
+
+"Guy has left his card," said Margaret.
+
+"Is that the man who came to see me about the rats?" asked the Rector.
+
+"No, no, Francis," said Mrs. Grey. "Guy is the young man at Plashers
+Mead."
+
+"Isn't Francis sweet?" cried Pauline, reaching up to kiss him.
+
+"Hush, Pauline. Pauline, you must not call your father Francis in the
+hall," said Mrs. Grey.
+
+"How touching of Guy to leave a card," Pauline murmured, looking at the
+oblong of pasteboard shimmering in the gloom.
+
+"Now we've just time to practise the Mendelssohn trio before dinner,"
+declared Mrs. Grey. "And that will make you warm."
+
+The Rector wandered off to his library. Margaret and Pauline went with
+their mother up shadowy staircases and through shadowy corridors to the
+great music-room that ran half the length of the roof. Monica was
+already seated at the piano, all white and golden herself in the
+candlelight. Languidly Margaret unpacked her violoncello: Pauline tuned
+her violin. Soon the house was full of music, and the wind in the night
+was scarcely audible.
+
+
+
+
+_November_
+
+
+When Guy left the Rectory that October afternoon, he felt as if he had
+put back upon its shelf a book the inside of which, thus briefly glanced
+at, held for him, whenever he should be privileged to open it again, a
+new, indeed an almost magical representation of life. On his fancy the
+Greys had impressed themselves with a kind of abundant naturalness; but
+however deeply he tried to think he was already plunged into the heart
+of their life, he realized that it was only in such a way as he might
+have dipped into the heart of a book. The intimacy revealed was not
+revealed by any inclusion of himself within the charm; and he was a
+little sad to think how completely he must have seemed outside the
+picture. Hence his first aspiration with regard to the family was
+somehow to become no longer a spectator, but actually a happy player in
+their representation of existence. Ordinarily, so far as experience had
+hitherto carried him, it had been easy enough to find himself on terms
+of intimacy with any group of human beings whose company was
+sufficiently attractive. For him, perhaps, it had even been particularly
+easy, so that he had never known the mortification of a repulse. No
+doubt now by contriving to be himself and relying upon the interest that
+was sure to be roused by his isolation and poetic ambitions, he would
+very soon be accorded the freedom of the Rectory. Yet such a prospect,
+however pleasant to contemplate, did not satisfy him, and he was already
+troubled by a faint jealousy of the many unknown friends of the Greys to
+whom in the past the privilege of that freedom must have been
+frequently accorded. Guy wanted more than that: in the excess of his
+appreciation he wanted them to marvel at a time when they had not been
+aware of his existence: in fact he was anxious to make himself necessary
+to their own sense of their own completeness. As he entered his solitary
+hall, he was depressed by the extravagance of such a desire, saying to
+himself that he might as well sigh to become an integral figure of a
+pastoral by Giorgione, or of any work of art the life of which seems but
+momentarily stilled for the pleasure of whomsoever is observing it.
+
+Guy was for a while almost impatient even of his own room, for he felt
+it was lacking in any atmosphere except the false charm of novelty. He
+had been here three weeks now, he and deaf Miss Peasey; and were the two
+of them swept away to-morrow, Plashers Mead would adapt itself to
+newcomers. There was nothing wrong with the house: such breeding would
+survive any occupation it might be called upon to tolerate. On the other
+hand were chance to sweep the Greys from Wychford, so essentially did
+the Rectory seem their creation that already it was unimaginable to Guy
+apart from them. And as yet he had only dipped into the volume. Who
+could say what exquisite and intimate paragraphs did not await a more
+leisurely perusal? Really, thought Guy, he might almost suppose himself
+in love with the family, so much did the vision of them in that shadowy
+drawing-room haunt his memory. Indeed they were become a picture that
+positively ached in his mind with longing for the moment of its
+repetition. For some days he spent all his time in the orchard, throwing
+sticks for his new bobtail; denying himself with an absurd
+self-consciousness the pleasure of walking so far along the mill-stream
+even as the bank opposite to the Rectory paddock; denying himself a
+fortuitous meeting with any of the family in Wychford High Street; and
+on Sunday denying himself the pleasure of seeing them in church, because
+he felt it might appear an excuse to be noticed. The vision of the
+Rectory obsessed him, but so elusively that when in verse he tried to
+state the emotion merely for his own satisfaction he failed, and he took
+refuge from his disappointment by nearly always being late for meals.
+Often he would see Miss Peasey walking about the orchard with desolate
+tinkle of a Swiss sheep-bell, the only instrument of summons that the
+house possessed. Miss Peasey herself looked not unlike a battered old
+bell-wether, as she wandered searching for him in the wind; and Guy used
+to watch her from behind a tree-trunk, laughing to himself until Bob the
+dog trotted from one to another, describing anxious circles round their
+separation.
+
+"Your dinner's been waiting ten minutes, Mr. Hazlewood!"
+
+"Doesn't matter," Guy would shout.
+
+"Mutton to-day," Miss Peasey would say, and, "a little variety," she
+always added.
+
+Miss Peasey's religion was variety, and her tragedy was an invention
+that never kept pace with aspiration. For three weeks Guy had been given
+on Sunday roast beef which lasted till Wednesday; while on Thursday he
+was given roast mutton, which as a depressing cold bone always went out
+from the dining-room on Saturday night. Every morning he was asked what
+he would like for dinner, to which he always replied that he left it to
+her. Once indeed in a fertile moment he had suggested a curry, and Miss
+Peasey, brightening wonderfully, had chirped:
+
+"Ah, yes, a little variety."
+
+But in the evening the taste of hot tin that represented Miss Peasey's
+curry made him for ever afterward leave the variety to her own fancy,
+thereby preserving henceforth that immutable alternation of roast beef
+and roast mutton which was the horizon of her house-keeping.
+
+These solitary meals were lightened by the thought of the Rectory.
+Neither beef nor mutton seemed of much importance, when his mind's eye
+could hold that shadowy drawing-room. There was Monica with her pale
+gold hair in the stormy sunlight, cold and shy, but of such a marble
+purity of line that but to sit beside her was to admire a statue whose
+coldness made her the more admirable. There was Margaret, carved slimly
+out of ivory, very tall with weight of dusky hair, and slow fastidious
+voice that spoke dreamily of the things Guy loved best. There was
+Pauline sitting away from the others in the window seat, away in her
+shyness and wildness. Was not the magic of her almost more difficult to
+recapture than any? A briar rose she was whose petals seemed to fall at
+the touch of definition, a briar rose that was waving out of reach, even
+of thought. Guy wished he could visualize the Rector in his own
+drawing-room; but instead he had to set him in Plashers Mead, of which
+no doubt he had thought the owner a young ass; and Guy blushed to
+remember the nervous idiocy which had let him take the Rector solemnly
+into the kitchen to look at dish-covers in a row, and deaf Miss Peasey
+sitting by as much fire as the table would yield to her chair. But if
+the Rector were missing from the picture, at any rate he could picture
+Mrs. Grey, shy like her daughters and with a delicious vagueness all her
+own. She was most like Pauline, and indeed in Pauline Guy could see her
+mother, as the young moon holds in her lap the wraith of the old
+moon....
+
+"Why, you haven't eaten anything," remonstrated Miss Peasey, breaking in
+upon his vision. "And I've made you a rice pudding for a little
+variety."
+
+The shadowy drawing-room faded with the old chintz curtains and fragile
+almost immaterial silver; the china bowls of Lowestoft; the dull white
+panelling and faintly aromatic sweetness. Instead remained a rice
+pudding that smelt and looked as solid as a pie.
+
+However, that very afternoon Guy was greatly encouraged to get an
+invitation to dinner at the Rectory from the hands of the gardener.
+Birdwood was one of those servants who seem to have accepted with the
+obligations of service the extreme responsibilities of paternity; and
+Guy hastened to take advantage of the chance to establish himself on
+good terms with one who might prove a most powerful ally.
+
+"Not much of a garden, I'm afraid," he said deprecatingly to Birdwood,
+as they stood in colloquy outside. The gardener shook his head.
+
+"It wouldn't do for the Rector to see them cabbages and winter greens.
+'I won't have the nasty things in my garden,' he says to me, and he'll
+rush at them regular ferocious with a fork. 'I won't have them,' he
+says. 'I can't abear the sight of them,' he says. Well, of course I
+knows better than go for to contradict him when he gets a downer on any
+plant, don't matter whether it's cabbage or calceolaria. But last time,
+when he'd done with his massacring of them, I popped round to Mrs. Grey,
+and I says, winking at her very hard, but of course not meaning any
+disrespectfulness, winking at her very hard, I says, 'Please, mum, I
+want one of these new allotments from the glebe.' 'Good Heavings,
+Birdwood,' she says, 'whatever on earth can you want with for an
+allotment?' With that I winks very hard again and says in a low voice
+right into her ear as you might say, 'To keep the wolf from the door,
+mum, with a few winter greens.' That's the way we grow our vegetables
+for the Rectory, out of an allotment, though we have got five acres of
+garden. Now you see what comes of being a connosher. You take my advice,
+Mr. Hazlenut, and clear all them cabbages out of sight before the Rector
+comes round here again."
+
+"I will certainly," Guy promised. "But you know it's a bit difficult for
+me to spend much money on flowers."
+
+"_We_ don't spend money over at the Rectory," said Birdwood, smiling in
+a superior way.
+
+"No?"
+
+"_We_ don't spend a penny. _We_ has every mortal plant and seed and
+cutting given to us. And not only that, but we gives in our turn. Look
+here, Mr. Hazlenut, I'm going to hand you out a bit of advice. The first
+time as you go round our garden with the Rector, when you turn into the
+second wall-garden, and see a border on your right, you catch hold of
+his arm and say, 'Why, good Heavings, if that isn't a new berberis."
+
+"Yes, but I don't know what an old berberis looks like," said Guy
+hopelessly. "Let alone a new one."
+
+"Never mind what the old ones look like. It's the new I'm telling you
+of. Don't you understand that everyone who comes down, from Kew even,
+says, 'That's a nice healthy little lot of Berberis Knightii as you've
+got a hold of.' 'Ha,' says the Rector. 'I thought as you'd go for to say
+that. But it ain't Knightii,' he chuckles, 'and what's more it ain't got
+a name yet, only a number, being a new importation from China,' he says.
+You go and call out what I told you, and he'll be so pleased, why, I
+wouldn't say he won't shovel half of the garden into your hands straight
+off."
+
+"Do the young ladies take an interest in flowers?" Guy asked.
+
+"Of course they try," said Birdwood condescendingly. "But neither them
+nor their mother don't seem to learn nothing. They think more of a good
+clump of dellyphiniums than half-a-dozen meconopises as someone's gone
+mad to discover, with a lot of murderous Lammers from Tibbet ready to
+knife him the moment his back's turned."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Oh, I was like that myself once. I can remember the time when I was as
+fond of a good dahlia as anything. Now I goes sniffing the ground to
+see if there's any Mentha Requieni left over from the frost."
+
+"Sniffing the ground?"
+
+"That's right. It's so small that if it wasn't for the smell anyone
+wouldn't see it. That's _worth_ growing that is. Only, if you'll
+understand me, it takes anyone who's used to looking at peonies and
+suchlike a few years to find out the object of a plant that isn't any
+bigger than a pimple on an elephant."
+
+Guy was reluctant to let Birdwood go without bringing him to talk more
+directly of the family and less of the flowers. At the same time he felt
+it would be wiser not to rouse in the gardener any suspicion of how much
+he was interested in the Rectory: he was inclined to think he might
+resent it, and he wanted him as a friend.
+
+"Who is working in your garden?" asked Birdwood, as he turned to go.
+
+"Well, nobody just at present," said Guy apologetically.
+
+"All right," Birdwood announced. "I'll get hold of someone for you in
+less than half a pig's whisper."
+
+"But not all the time," Guy explained quickly. He was worried by the
+prospect of a gardener's wages coming out of his small income.
+
+"Once a week he'll come in," said Birdwood.
+
+Guy nodded.
+
+"What's his name?"
+
+"Graves he's called, but being deaf and dumb, his name's not of much
+account."
+
+"Deaf and dumb?" repeated Guy. "But how shall I explain what I want
+done?"
+
+"I'll show you," said Birdwood. "I'll come round and put you in the way
+of managing him. Work? I reckon that boy would work any other mortal in
+Wychford to the bone. Work? Well, he can't hear nothing, and he can't
+say nothing, so what else can he do? And he does it. Good afternoon, Mr.
+Hazlenut."
+
+And Birdwood retired, whistling very shrilly as he went down the path to
+the gate.
+
+Two nights later, Guy with lighted lantern in his hand set out to the
+Rectory. He did not venture to go by the orchard and the fields and so,
+crossing the narrow bridge over the stream, enter by way of the garden.
+Such an approach seemed too familiar for the present stage of his
+friendship, and he took the more formal route through an alley of
+mediaeval cottages that branched off Wychford High Street. Mysterious
+lattices blinked at him, and presently he felt the wind coming fresh in
+his face as he skirted the churchyard. The road continued past the back
+of a long row of almshouses, and when he saw the pillared gate of the
+Rectory drive, over which high trees were moaning darkly, Guy wondered
+if he were going to a large dinner-party. No word had been said of any
+one else's coming, but with Mrs. Grey's vagueness that portended
+nothing. He hoped that he would be the only guest and, swinging his
+lantern with a pleased expectancy, he passed down the drive. Suddenly a
+figure materialized from the illumination he was casting and hailed him
+with a questioning 'hulloa'?
+
+"Hulloa," Guy responded.
+
+"Oh, beg your pardon," exclaimed the other. "I thought it was Willsher."
+
+"My name's Hazlewood," said Guy a little stiffly.
+
+"Mine's Brydone. We may as well hop in together."
+
+Guy rather resented the implication of this birdlike intrusion in
+company with the doctor's son, a lanky youth whom he had often noticed
+slouching about Wychford in a cap ostensibly alive with artificial
+flies. Apparently Willsher must also be expected, against whom Guy had
+already conceived a violent prejudice dating from the time he called at
+his father's office to sign the agreement for the tenancy of Plashers
+Mead. It was of ill augury that the Greys should apparently be supposing
+that he would make a trio with Brydone and Willsher.
+
+"Brought a lantern, eh?" said Brydone.
+
+"Yes, this is a lantern," Guy answered coldly.
+
+"You'll never see me with a lantern," Brydone declared.
+
+Guy would like to have retorted that he hoped he would never even see
+Brydone without one. But he contented himself by saying with all that
+Balliol could bring to his aid of crushing indifference,
+
+"Oh, really?"
+
+Somebody behind them was running down the drive and shouting 'Hoo-oo' in
+what Guy considered a very objectionable voice. It probably was
+Willsher.
+
+"Hullo, Charlie," said Brydone.
+
+"Hullo, Percy," said Willsher, for it was he.
+
+"Know this gentleman? Mr. Hazlewood?"
+
+"Only officially. Pleased to meet you," said the new-comer.
+
+"Not at all," answered Guy. He felt furious to think that the Greys
+would suppose he had arranged to arrive with these two fellows.
+
+"Done any fishing yet?" asked Brydone.
+
+"No, not yet," said Guy.
+
+"Well, your bit of river has been spoilt. Old Burrows let everyone go
+there. But when you want some good fishing, Willsher and I rent about a
+mile of stream farther up and we'll always be glad to give you a day.
+Eh, Charlie?"
+
+Charlie replied with much cordiality that Percy had taken the very words
+of invitation out of his mouth; and Guy, unable any longer to be frigid,
+said that he had some books at which they might possibly care to come
+and look one afternoon. Mr. Brydone and Mr. Willsher both declared they
+would be delighted, and the latter added in the friendliest way that he
+knew an old woman in Wychford who was very anxious to sell a Milton
+warranted to be a hundred years old at least. Was that anything in Mr.
+Hazlewood's way? Guy explained that a Milton of so recent a date was not
+likely to be much in his way, and Mr. Brydone remarked that no doubt if
+it had been a Stilton, it would have been another matter. His friend
+laughed very heartily indeed at this joke, and in an atmosphere of
+almost hilarious good fellowship, that was to Guy still a little
+mortifying, they rang the Rectory bell.
+
+None of the family had reached the drawing-room when they were shown in,
+and Guy was afraid they were rather early.
+
+"Always like this," said Brydone. "Absolutely no notion of time.
+Shouldn't be surprized if we had to wait another quarter of an hour.
+Known them for years, and they've always been like this. Eh, Charlie?"
+
+The solicitor's son shook his head gravely. He seemed to feel that as a
+man of business he should display a slight disapproval of such a casual
+family.
+
+"Ever since I was a kid I can remember it," he said.
+
+Guy tried to tell himself that all this talk of intimacy was merely due
+to the accidental associations of country life over many years. But it
+was with something very like apprehension that he waited for the Greys
+to come down. It would be dreadful to find that Brydone and Willsher had
+a status in the Rectory. When, however, their hosts appeared, Guy
+realized with a tremendous relief that Brydone and Willsher obviously
+existed outside his picture of the Rectory. To be sure, they were
+Charlie and Percy to Monica, Margaret and Pauline; but galling as this
+was, Guy told himself that after a lifelong acquaintance nothing else
+could be expected.
+
+It pleased Guy really that the dinner was not a great success, for he
+was able to fancy that the Greys were encumbered by the presence of
+Brydone and Willsher. Monica was silent; Margaret was deliberately
+talking about things that could not possibly interest either of the
+young men; and Pauline was trying to save the situation by wild
+enthusiasms which were continually being repressed by her sisters. Mrs.
+Grey alternated between helping to check Pauline and behaving in exactly
+the same way herself. As for the Rector, he sat silent with a twinkle in
+his eye. Guy wished regretfully, when the time came to depart, that he
+could have stayed another few minutes to mark his superiority to the
+other guests; but alas, he was still far from that position, and no
+doubt he would never attain to it.
+
+"Oh, have you brought a lantern?" asked Pauline excitedly in the hall.
+"Oh, I wish I could walk back with you. I love lantern-light."
+
+"Pauline! Pauline! Do think what you're saying," Mrs. Grey protested.
+
+"I like lantern-light too," Margaret proclaimed.
+
+"When you come to see us again," said Pauline, "will you bring your
+dog?"
+
+"Oh, I say, shall I?" asked Guy flushing with pleasure.
+
+"Such a lamb, Margaret," said Pauline, kissing her sister impulsively
+and being straightly reproved for doing so.
+
+The good-nights were all said, and Guy walked up the drive with Brydone
+and Willsher.
+
+"Queer family, aren't they?" commented the doctor's son.
+
+"Extraordinarily charming," said Guy.
+
+"I've known them all my life," said Willsher a little querulously. "And
+yet I never seem to know them any better."
+
+Guy was so much elated by this admission that he repeated more warmly
+his invitation to come and see him and his books, and parted from the
+two friends very pleasantly.
+
+Two or three days later Guy thought he might fairly make his dinner
+call, and with much forethought did not take Bob with him, so that soon
+there might be an excuse to come again to effect that introduction. Mrs.
+Grey and Monica were out; and Guy was invited to have tea in the nursery
+with Margaret and Pauline. He was conscious that an honour had been paid
+to him, partly by intuition, partly because neither of the girls said a
+conventional word about not going into the drawing-room. He felt, as he
+sat in that room fragrant with the memories of what must have been an
+idyllic childhood, the thrill that, as a child, he used to feel when he
+read: '_The Queen was in her parlour eating bread and honey_.' This was
+such another parlour infinitely secluded from the world; and he thought
+he had never experienced a more breathless minute of anticipation than
+when he followed the girls along the corridor to their nursery. The
+matting worn silky with age seemed so eternally unprofaned, and on the
+wall outside the door the cuckoo calling five o'clock was like a
+confident bird in some paradise where neither time nor humanity was of
+much importance. Janet, the elderly parlourmaid, came stumping in behind
+them with the nursery tea-things; and, as Guy sat by the small hob-grate
+and saw the moist autumnal sun etherealize with wan gold the tattered
+volumes of childhood, the very plumcake on the tea-table was endowed
+with the romantic perfection of a cake in a picture-book. When the sun
+dipped behind the elms, Guy half expected that Margaret and Pauline
+would vanish too, so exactly seemed they the figures that, were this
+room a mirage, he would expect to find within as guardians of the rare
+seclusion. Guy never could say what was talked about, that afternoon;
+for when he found himself outside once again in the air of earth, he was
+bemused with the whole experience, as if suddenly released from
+enchantment. Out of a multitude of impressions, which had seemed at the
+time most delicately strange and potent, only a few incidents quite
+common-place haunted his memory tangibly enough to be seized and
+cherished. Tea-cups floating on laughter against that wall-paper of
+berries, birds and daisies; a pair of sugar-tongs clicking to the
+pressure of long white fingers (so much could he recapture of Margaret);
+crumpets in a rosy mist (so much was Pauline); a copper kettle singing;
+the lisp of the wind; a disarray of tambour-frames and music, these were
+all that kept him company on his way back to Plashers Mead through the
+colourless twilight.
+
+Chance favoured Guy next day by throwing him into the arms of the
+Rector, who asked if he were fond enough of flowers to look round the
+garden at a dull season of the year. Guy was so much elated that, if
+love of flowers meant more frequent opportunities of going to the
+Rectory, he would have given up poetry to become a professional
+gardener. Of course there was nothing to see, according to the Rector--a
+few Nerines of his own crossing in the greenhouse; a Buddleia Auriculata
+honeycomb-scented in the angle of two walls; the double Michaelmas
+daisy, an ugly brute already condemned to extermination; a white Red Hot
+Poker, evidently a favourite of the Rector's by the way he gazed upon it
+and said so casually Kniphofia Multiflora, as if it were not indeed a
+treasure blooming in Oxfordshire's dreary Autumn.
+
+"Tulips to go in next week," said the Rector, rolling the prospect upon
+his tongue with meditative enjoyment. "A friend of mine has just sent me
+some nice fellows from Bokhara and Turkestan. I ought to get them in
+this week, but Birdwood must finish with these roses. And I've got a lot
+of Clusiana too that ought to be in. I am going to try her in
+competition with shrubbery roots and see if _they'll_ make her behave
+herself."
+
+"Could I come in and help?" offered Guy.
+
+"Well, now that would certainly be most kind," said the Rector; and his
+thin handsome face lit up with the excitement of infecting Guy with his
+own passion. "But aren't you busy?"
+
+"Oh, no. I usually work at night."
+
+So Guy came to plant tulips and from planting tulips to being asked to
+lunch was not far, and from finishing off a few left over to being asked
+to tea was not far either. Moreover when the tulips were all planted,
+there were gladioli to be sorted and put away. Incidentally too the punt
+had to be caulked and the boathouse had to be strengthened, so that in
+the end it was half way into November before Guy realized he had been
+coming to the Rectory almost every day. The more he came, however, the
+more he was fascinated by the family. They still eluded him, and he was
+always aware, particularly between Margaret and Pauline, of a life in
+which as yet he hardly shared. At the same time, so familiar now were
+the inner places of the house and most of all the nursery, he felt as if
+happily there would come a day when to none of the sisters would he seem
+more noticeable than one of their tumbledown armchairs.
+
+Once or twice he stayed to dinner, and the long dining-room with the
+sea-grey wall-paper and curtains of the strawberry-thief design was
+always entered with a particular contentment of spirit. The table was
+very large, for somebody always forgot to take out the extra leaf put in
+for a dinner sometime last summer, or perhaps two summers ago. The
+result was that the Rector was far away in the shadows at one end; Mrs.
+Grey equally remote at the other; while Guy would in turn be near to
+Margaret or Pauline or even Monica in the middle. Old fashioned glasses
+with spirals of green and white blown in their stems; silver that was
+nearly diaphanous with use and age; candlesticks solid as the Ionic
+columns they counterfeited, or tapering and fluted with branches that
+carried the candle-flames like flowers, everything seemed as if it had
+been created for this room alone. From the wall a lacquered clock as
+round and big and benign as the setting sun wavered in the coppery
+shadows of the fire, and with scarcely the sound of a tick showed forth
+time. Guy had never appreciated the sacredness of eating in good company
+until he dined casually like this at the Rectory. He never knew what he
+ate and always accepted what was put before him like manna; yet he was
+always conscious of having enjoyed the meal, and next morning he used to
+face, unabashed, Miss Peasey's tale of ruined tapioca which had waited
+for him too long.
+
+The seal of perfection was generally set on these unexpected dinners by
+chamber-music afterward, when under the arched roof of the big
+music-room for an hour or more of trios and quartets Guy contemplated
+that family. The Greys could not have revealed the design of their life
+with anything but chamber-music, and setting aside any expression of
+inward things, thought Guy, how would it be possible to imagine them
+more externally decorative than seated so at this formal industry of
+art? He liked best perhaps the trios, when he and Mrs. Grey, each in a
+Caroline chair with tall wicker back, remained outside, and yet withal
+as much in the picture as two donors painted by an old Florentine.
+Monica in a white dress sat straight and stiff with pale gold hair that
+seemed the very colour of the refined, the almost rarefied accompaniment
+upon which her fingers quivered and rippled. Something of her own
+coldness and remoteness and crystalline severity she brought to her
+instrument, as if upon a windless day a fountain played forth its
+pattern. Margaret's amber dress deepened from the shade of Monica's
+hair, and Margaret's eyes glowed deep and solemn as the solemn depths of
+the violoncello over which she hung with a thought of motherhood in the
+way she cherished it. Was it she, wondered Guy, who was the ultimate
+lure of this house, or was it Pauline? Of her, as she swayed to the
+violin, nothing could be said but that from a rose-bloomed radiance
+issued a sound of music. And how clearly in the united effect of the
+three sisters was written the beauty of their lives. Guy could almost
+see every hour of their girlhood passing in orderly pattern, as the
+divine Hours dance along a Grecian frieze. There was neither passion nor
+sentiment in the music: there was neither sorrow nor regret. It was
+heartless in its limpid beauty; it was remote as a cloud against the
+sunrise; cold as water was it, and incommunicable as a dream; yet in
+solitude when Guy reconjured the sound afterward, it returned to his
+memory like fire.
+
+A great occasion for Guy was the afternoon when first the Greys came to
+tea with him at Plashers Mead. Himself went into Wychford and bought the
+cakes, so many that Miss Peasey held up her hands with that ridiculously
+conventional gesture of surprize she used, exclaiming:
+
+"Oh, dear, this is a variety!"
+
+Guy led them solemnly round the house and furnished the empty rooms with
+such vivid descriptions that their emptiness was scarcely any longer
+perceptible. In his own room he waited anxiously for judgment. Margaret
+was of course the first to declare an opinion. She did not like his
+curtains nor his green canvas, and she was by no means willing to accept
+his excuse that they were relics of undergraduate taste.
+
+"If you don't like them now, why do you have them? Why not plain white
+for the walls and no curtains at all, until you can get ones you really
+do like?"
+
+Pauline was afraid his feelings would be hurt and declared with such
+transparent dishonesty how greatly she loved everything in the room that
+Guy, grateful though he was to her intended sweetness, was more
+discouraged than ever. Monica objected to his having Our Lady on the
+mantelshelf, and would not admit her as Saint Rose of Lima; but Guy was
+enough in awe of Monica not to justify the identification with Saint
+Rose by his desire for a poetic apostrophe. As for Mrs. Grey, she
+behaved as she always did when Monica and Margaret were being critical,
+that is by firing off 'charmings!' in a sort of benevolent musketry; but
+if Guy was not convinced by her 'charmings!' he could not resist her
+when she said:
+
+"I think Guy's room is charming ... charming!"
+
+He felt his room could be an absolute failure if from the ashes of its
+reputation he were alluded to actually for the first time as 'Guy.' Gone
+then was Mr. Hazlewood: fled were those odious 'misses.' He turned to
+Pauline and said momentously, boldly:
+
+"I say, Pauline, you haven't seen my new kitten."
+
+She blushed, and Guy stood breathless with the attainment of the first
+peak. Then triumphantly he turned to Mrs. Grey:
+
+"Monica and Margaret are very severe, aren't they?"
+
+How easy it was after all, and he wished he had addressed them directly
+by their Christian names instead of taking refuge in a timid reference.
+Now all that was wanting for his pleasure was that Monica, Margaret or
+Pauline should call him Guy. He wondered which would be the first. And
+vaguely he asked himself which he wanted to be the first.
+
+Pauline was talking to Margaret in the bay-window.
+
+"Do you remember," she was saying, "when Richard came to look at
+Plashers Mead and we pretended he was going to take it?"
+
+Margaret frowned at her for answer; but for Guy the afternoon so lately
+perfected was spoilt again; and when they were gone, all the evening he
+glowered at phantom Richards who, whether Adonises or Calibans, were all
+equally obnoxious and more than obnoxious, positively minatory. Next day
+he felt he had no heart to make an excuse to visit the Rectory; and he
+was drearily eating some of the cakes of the tea-party, when Mr. Brydone
+and Mr. Willsher paid him their first call. Guy did not think they would
+appreciate the empty rooms, however eloquently he narrated their future
+glories; so he led his visitors forthwith to the cakes, listening to the
+talk of trout and jack. After a while he asked with an elaborate
+indifference if either of them had lately been round to the Rectory.
+
+"Too clever for me," said Brydone shaking his head. "Besides, Pauline
+kicked up a fuss a fortnight ago because we asked if we could have the
+otter-meet in their paddock."
+
+"They were never sporting, those Rectory kids," said Willsher gloomily.
+
+"Never," his friend agreed, shaking his head. "Do you remember when
+Margaret egged on young Richard Ford to punch your head because your old
+terrier chivied the Greys' cat round the churchyard?"
+
+"I punched _his_ head, I remember," said Willsher in wrathful
+reminiscence.
+
+"Does Richard Ford live here?" Guy asked.
+
+"His father's the Vicar of Little Fairfield, the next parish, you know.
+Richard's gone to India. He's an engineer, awfully nice chap and head
+over heels in love with the fair Margaret. I believe there's a sort of
+engagement."
+
+In that moment by the lightening of his heart Guy knew that he was in
+love with Pauline.
+
+Outside, the November night hung humid and oppressive.
+
+"I thought we should get it soon," said Willsher, and as the two friends
+vanished in the mazy garden, Guy looking up felt rain falling softly yet
+with gathering intensity. He stood for a while in his doorway, held by
+the whispering blackness. Then suddenly in a rapture of realization he
+slammed the door and, singing at the top of his voice, marched about the
+hall. Once upon a time 'to-morrow' had been wont to drowse him: now the
+word sounded upon his imagination like a golden trumpet.
+
+
+
+
+WINTER
+
+
+
+
+_December_
+
+
+The rain which began the day after the Greys' visit to Plashers Mead
+went on almost without a break for a whole week. December with what it
+could bring of deadness, gloom and moisture came drearily down on
+Wychford, and Pauline as she sat high in her window-seat lamented the
+interminable soak.
+
+"I can't think why Guy hasn't been near the Rectory lately," she
+grumbled.
+
+"I expect he's tired of us," said Margaret.
+
+"You don't really think so," Pauline contradicted. "You're much much
+_much_ too conceited to think so really."
+
+Margaret laughed.
+
+"You don't mind a bit when I call you conceited," Pauline went on,
+challenging her sister. "I believe you're so conceited that you're proud
+even of being conceited. Why doesn't Guy come and see us, I wonder."
+
+"Why should he come?" Monica asked rather severely. "Perhaps he's doing
+some work for a change."
+
+"I believe he's hurt," Pauline declared.
+
+"Hurt?" repeated her sisters.
+
+"Yes, because you were both so frightfully critical of his room. Oh, I
+_am_ glad that Mother and I aren't critical."
+
+"Well, if he's hurt because I said he oughtn't to have an image of Our
+Lady on his mantelshelf," said Monica, "I really don't think we need
+bother any more about him. Was I to encourage him in such stupid little
+Gothic affectations?"
+
+"Oh, oh," cried Pauline. "I think he's frightened of you, Monica dear,
+and of your long sentences, for I'm sure I am."
+
+"He wasn't at all frightened of me," Monica asserted. "Didn't you hear
+him call me Monica?"
+
+"And surely," Margaret put in, "you didn't really like those stupid mock
+mediaeval curtains. No design, just a lot of meaningless fleurs-de-lys
+looking like spots. It's because I think Guy has got a glimmering of
+taste that I gave him my honest opinion. Otherwise I shouldn't have
+bothered."
+
+"No, I didn't like the curtains," Pauline admitted. "But I thought they
+were rather touching. And, oh, my dears, I can't tell you how touching I
+think the whole house is, with that poor woman squeezing her way about
+that enormous kitchen-furniture!"
+
+Pauline looked out of the window as she spoke, and there at last was Guy
+standing on the lawn with her father, who was explaining something about
+a root which he held in his hand. On the two of them the rain poured
+steadily down. Pauline threw up the sash and called out that they were
+to come in at once.
+
+"I am glad he's ... why what's the matter, Margaret?" she asked, as she
+saw her sister looking at her with an expression of rather emphatic
+surprize.
+
+"Really," commented Margaret. "I shouldn't have thought it was necessary
+to soothe his ruffled feelings by giving him the idea that you've been
+watching at the window all the week for his visit."
+
+"Oh, Margaret, you are unkind," and, since words would all too soon have
+melted into tears, Pauline rushed from the nursery away to her own white
+fastness at the top of the house. She did not pause in her headlong
+flight to greet her mother in the passage; nor even when she entangled
+herself in Janet's apron could she say a word.
+
+"Good gracious, Miss Pauline," gasped Janet. "And only just now the cat
+went and run between my legs in the hall."
+
+Pauline's bedroom was immediately over the nursery; but so roundabout
+was the construction of the Rectory that, to reach the one from the
+other, all sorts of corridors and twisting stairways had to be passed;
+and when finally she flung herself down in her small armchair she was
+breathless. Soon, however, the tranquillity of the room restored her.
+The faded blue linen so cool to her cheeks quieted all the passionate
+indignation. On the wall Saint Ursula asleep in her bed seemed
+inconsistent with a proud rage; nor did Tobit laughing in the angel's
+company encourage her to sulk. Therefore almost before Guy had taken off
+his wet overcoat, Pauline had rushed downstairs again; had kissed
+Margaret; and had put three stitches in the tail of the scarlet bird
+that occupied her tambour-frame. Certainly when he came into the
+drawing-room she was as serene as her two sisters, and much more serene
+than Mrs. Grey, who had just discovered that she had carefully made the
+tea without a spoonful in the pot, besides mislaying a bottle of
+embrocation she had spent the afternoon in finding for an old
+parishioner's rheumatism.
+
+Pauline, however, soon began to worry herself again because Guy was
+surely avoiding her most deliberately, and not merely avoiding her but
+paying a great deal of attention to Margaret. Of course she was glad for
+him to like Margaret, but Richard out in India must be considered. She
+could not forget that promise she had made to Richard last June, when
+they were paddling upstream into the sunset. Guy was charming; in a way
+she could be almost as fond of him as of Richard, but what would she say
+to Richard if she let Guy carry off Margaret? Besides, it was unkind not
+to have a word for her when she was always such a good listener to his
+tales of Miss Peasey, and when they could always laugh together at the
+same absurdities of daily life. Perhaps he had felt that Margaret, who
+had been so critical over his curtains, must be propitiated--and yet now
+he was already going without a word to herself: he was shaking hands
+with her so formally that, though she longed to teaze him for wearing
+silk socks with those heavy brogues, she could not. He seemed to be
+angry with her ... surely he was not angry because she had hailed him
+from the window.
+
+"What was the matter with Guy?" she asked when he was gone, and when
+everybody looked at her sharply, Pauline felt herself on fire with
+blushes; made a wild stitch in the tail of the scarlet bird; and then
+rushed away to look for the lost embrocation, refusing to hear when they
+called after her that Mother had been sitting on it all the afternoon.
+
+The windows along the corridors were inky blue, almost turning black, as
+she stared at them, half frightened in the unlighted dusk: outside, the
+noise of the rain was increasing every moment. She would sit up in her
+bedroom till dinner-time and write a long letter to India. By
+candlelight she wrote to Richard, seated at the small desk that was full
+of childish things.
+
+     WYCHFORD RECTORY
+
+     OXON.
+
+     _Tuesday._
+
+     _My dear Richard,_
+
+     _Thank you for your last letter which was very interesting. I
+     should think your bridge was wonderful. Will you come back to
+     England when it's finished? There is not much to tell you except
+     that a man called Guy Hazlewood has taken Plashers Mead. He is very
+     nice, or else I should have hated him to take the house you wanted.
+     He is very tall--not so tall as father, of course--and he is a
+     poet. He has a very nice bobtail and a touching housekeeper who is
+     deaf. Birdwood likes him very much; so I expect you would too.
+     Birdwood wants to know if it's true that people in India--oh,
+     bother, now I've forgotten what it was, only I know he's got a bet
+     with Godbold's nephew about it. Guy--you mustn't be jealous that we
+     call him Guy because he really is very nice--has just been in to
+     tea. Margaret is a darling, but I wish you'd take my advice and
+     write more about_ her _when you write. Of course I don't know what
+     you do write, and I'm sure she really is interested in your bridge,
+     but of course you must remember that she's not used to the kind of
+     bridges you're building. But she's a darling and I'm simply longing
+     for you to be married so that I can come and stay with you when I'm
+     an old maid which I've quite made up my mind I'm going to be. Guy
+     has been gardening with Father a good deal. Father says he's_
+     fairly _intelligent. Isn't Father sweet? He drank your health at
+     dinner the other night without anybody's reminding him it was your
+     birthday. I think Guy likes Monica best. I don't think he cares at
+     all for Margaret except of course he must admire her--Margaret is
+     such a darling! Oh, a merry Christmas because it will be Christmas
+     before you get this letter. Percy Brydone and Charlie Willsher came
+     to dinner last month. They were so touching and bored._
+
+     _Lots of love from_
+
+     _Your loving_
+
+     _Pauline_.
+
+     _Don't forget about writing to Margaret more about herself._
+
+Pauline put the letter in its crackling envelope with a sigh for the
+unformed hand in which it was written. Nothing brought home to her so
+nearly as this handwriting of hers the muddle she was always apt to make
+of things. How it sprawled across the page, so unlike Monica's that was
+small and neat and exquisitely formed or Margaret's that was decorated
+with fantastic and beautiful affectations of manner. It was obvious, of
+course, that her sisters must always be the favourites of everybody, but
+it had been rather unkind of Guy to avoid her so obviously to-day.
+Richard had always realized that even if she were impulsive and foolish
+she was also tremendously sympathetic.
+
+"For I really am sympathetic," she assured her image in the glass, as
+she tried to make the light brown hair look tidy enough to escape
+Margaret's remonstrances at dinner. If Guy were hopelessly in love with
+Margaret, how sympathetic she would be; and she would try to explain to
+him how interesting an unhappy love-affair always made people. For
+instance there was Miss Verney whom everybody thought was just a cross
+old maid; but if they had only seen, as she had seen, that cracked
+miniature, what romance even her cats would possess. She must take Guy
+to see Miss Verney or bring Miss Verney to see Guy: a meeting must
+somehow be arranged between these two, who would surely be drawn
+together by their misfortunes in love. Guy was exactly the person whom
+an unhappy love-affair would become. It would be so interesting in ten
+years' time, when she would be nearly thirty and old enough to be Guy's
+confidante without anybody's interference, to keep back the inquisitive
+world from Plashers Mead. No doubt by then Guy would be famous: he
+always spoke with such confidence of fame. Monica and Margaret would
+both be married, and she would still be living at the Rectory with her
+father and mother. Pauline, as she pictured the future, saw no change in
+them, but rather sacrificed to the ravages of time her own appearance
+and Guy's, so that at thirty she fancied both herself and him as already
+slightly grey. The gong sounded from the depths of the house, and
+hastily she snatched from her wardrobe the first frock she found: it
+happened to be a white one, more suitable to June than to December,
+with a skirt of many flounces all stiffly starched. After rustling down
+passages and stairs she reached the dining-room just as the others were
+going into dinner.
+
+"Pauline, how charming you look in that frock," her mother exclaimed.
+"Why it's like Summer just to see you."
+
+Pauline was very happy that night because her mother and sisters petted
+her with the simple affection for which she was always longing.
+
+The next day seemed fine enough to justify Mrs. Grey, Margaret and
+Monica in making an expedition into Oxford to see about Christmas
+presents; and in the afternoon, while Pauline was sitting alone in the
+nursery, Guy was shown in by Janet. Pauline felt very shy and blushful
+when she met him so intimately as this, after all her plans for him on
+the night before. He too seemed ill at ease, and she was sadly positive
+he missed Margaret. The sense of embarrassment lasted until tea-time,
+when Janet came in to say that the Rector hearing of Mr. Hazlewood's
+arrival had decided to have tea in the nursery.
+
+"Oh, what fun," cried Pauline clapping her hands. "Janet, do give him
+the mug with 'A PRESENT FOR A GOOD BOY' on it."
+
+"Dear me, Miss Pauline, what things you do think of, I do declare. Well,
+did you ever? Tut-tut! Fancy, for your father too!"
+
+Nevertheless Janet sedately put the mug on the tray. When she was gone
+Pauline turned to Guy, and said:
+
+"I'm sure Father thinks he ought to come and chaperone us. Isn't he
+sweet?"
+
+Presently the Rector appeared looking very tall in the low doorway. He
+nodded cheerfully to Guy:
+
+"Seen Vartani? You know, he's that pale blue fellow from Nazareth. Very
+often he's a washy lilac, but this is genuinely blue."
+
+"No, I don't think I noticed it--him, I mean," said Guy apologetically.
+
+"Oh, Father, of course he didn't! It's a tiny iris," she explained to
+Guy, "and Father puts in new roots every year...."
+
+"Bulbs, my dear, bulbs," corrected Mr. Grey. "It's one of the Histrio
+lot."
+
+"Well, bulbs. And every year one flower comes out in the middle of the
+winter rain and lasts about ten minutes, and then all the summer
+Birdwood and Father grub about looking for the bulb, which they never
+find, and then Father gets six new ones."
+
+They talked on, the three of them, about flowery subjects while the
+Rector drank his tea from the mug without a word of comment on the
+inscription. Then he went off to write a letter, and Guy with a
+regretful glance at the room supposed he ought to go.
+
+"Oh, no, stay a little while," said Pauline. "Look, it's raining again."
+
+It was only a shower through which the declining sun was lancing silver
+rays. As they watched it from the window without speaking, Pauline
+wondered if she ought to have given so frank an invitation to stay
+longer. Would Margaret have frowned? And how odd Guy was this afternoon.
+Why did he keep looking at her so intently as if about to speak, and
+then turn away with a sigh and nothing said.
+
+"I do love this room," said Guy at last.
+
+"I love it too," Pauline agreed.
+
+"May I ask you something?"
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+"You spoke to Margaret the other day about someone called Richard. Do
+you like him very much?"
+
+"Yes, of course. Only you mustn't ask me about him. Please don't. I've
+promised Margaret I wouldn't talk about him. Please, please, don't ask
+me any more."
+
+"But leaving Margaret out of it, do you like him ... well ... very much
+better than me, for instance?"
+
+Guy used himself for comparison with such an assumption of carelessness
+as might give the impression that only by accident did he mention
+himself instead of the leg of the table, or the kitten.
+
+"Oh, I couldn't tell you that. Because if I said I liked you even as
+much, I should feel disloyal to Richard, and he's the best friend I've
+got. Oh, do let's talk about something else. Please do, Mr. Hazlewood."
+
+"Oh, look here, I'm going," exclaimed Guy, and he went instantly.
+
+Pauline felt unhappy to think she had hurt his feelings; but he should
+not expect her to like him better than Richard. If Richard were married
+to Margaret, it might be different; but suppose that Margaret fell in
+love with Guy? Pauline felt her heart almost stop beating at the notion,
+and she made up her mind that if such a calamity befell it would be
+entirely her fault. The idea that she should so betray Richard's
+confidence made her miserable for the rest of the evening. Yet, though
+she was unhappy about Richard, it was always the picture of Guy hurrying
+from the nursery and his reproachful backward look that was visibly
+before her mind. And in the morning when she woke up, it was with a
+strange unsatisfactory feeling such as she had never known before.
+Yesterday came back to her remembrance with a great emptiness, seeming
+to her a day which had somehow never been properly finished. Here was
+the rain again raining, raining; and the old prospect of dreary weather
+that would not change for months.
+
+A week went by without any sign of Guy. There were no amusing evenings
+now when he stayed to dinner: there were no delightful days of planting
+bulbs in the garden: there was nothing indeed to do, but visit bedridden
+old ladies to whom fine or bad weather no longer mattered. Yet nobody
+else except herself seemed at all unhappy it. Actually not one of the
+family commented upon Guy's absence.
+
+"I really am afraid that Margaret _is_ heartless," said Pauline to her
+image in the glass. "She doesn't seem to care a bit whether he is here
+or not."
+
+Then suddenly the weather changed. The country sparkled with hoar frost,
+and everybody forgot about the rain, asking if ever before such weather
+had been known for Christmas. Guy was invited to dinner at the Rectory,
+and Pauline forgot about her problems in the pleasure that the jolly
+afternoon brought. Self-consciousness under the critical glances of
+Monica and Margaret vanished in the atmosphere of intimacy shed by the
+occasion. She could laugh and make a great noise without being reproved,
+and Guy himself was obviously more at home than he had ever been. There
+seemed a likelihood that now once again the progress of simple
+friendship would advance undisturbed by the complications of love, and
+Pauline was glad to be able to assure herself that Guy did not that
+afternoon display the slightest sign of a hopeless passion for Margaret.
+He was more in his mood and demeanour of last month, and diverted them
+greatly with an account of struggling to explain to Graves, the deaf and
+dumb gardener, what he wanted done in the garden.
+
+"But didn't Birdwood help you?" they asked laughing.
+
+"Well, Birdwood showed me what I ought to do," said Guy. "But it seemed
+such a rough method of information that I hadn't the heart to adopt it.
+You see, as far as I could make out, it consisted of pulling up a
+cabbage by the root, hitting Graves on the head with it, and then
+nodding violently. That meant 'clear away these cabbages.' Or if
+Birdwood wanted to say 'plant broccoli here,' he dug Graves in the ribs
+with the dibbler and rubbed his nose in the unthinned seedlings."
+
+"What does Miss Peasey say?" asked Pauline who was in a state of the
+highest amusement, because deaf and dumb Graves was one of the villagers
+who lived under her particular patronage.
+
+"Well, at first Miss Peasey was rather huffed, because she thought
+Graves was mocking her by pretending to be deaf. Now, however, she comes
+out and watches him at work and hopes that next Spring there'll be a
+little more variety in the garden."
+
+The sunny sparkling weather lasted for a few days after Christmas; and
+one morning Pauline, walking by herself on Wychford down, met Guy.
+
+"I wondered if I should see you," he said.
+
+"Did you expect to see me, then?"
+
+"Well, I knew you often came here, and this morning I couldn't resist
+coming here myself."
+
+Pauline felt a sudden impulse to run away; and yet most unaccountably
+the impulse led her into walking along with Guy at a brisk pace over the
+close-cropped glittering turf. Round them trotted Bob in eddies of
+endless motion.
+
+"Listen," said Guy. "I'm sure I heard a lark singing."
+
+They stopped, and Pauline thought that never was there so sweet a
+silence as here upon the summit of this green down. Guy's lark could not
+be heard. There was not even the faint wind that sighs across high
+country. There was nothing but gorse and turf and a turquoise sky
+floating on silver deeps and distances above the winter landscape.
+
+"When the gorse is out of bloom, kissing's out of fashion," he said,
+pointing to a golden spray.
+
+Pauline had heard the jingle often enough, but spoken solemnly like this
+by Guy on Wychford down it flooded her cheeks with blushes, and in a
+sort of dear alarm the truth of it declared itself. She was startlingly
+aware of a new life, as it were demanding all sorts of questions of her.
+She felt a shyness that nearly drove her to run away from her companion
+and yet at the same moment brought a complete incapacity for movement of
+any kind, an incapacity too that was full of rapture. She longed for him
+to say something of such convincing ordinariness as would break the
+spell and prove to her that she was still Pauline Grey; while with all
+her desire for the spell to be broken, she was wondering if every moment
+she were not deliberately offering herself to enchantment.
+
+"Have you ever felt," Guy was asking, "a long time after you've met
+somebody, as if you had suddenly met them again for the first time?"
+
+Pauline shook her head vaguely. Then with an effort she recaptured her
+old self and said laughing:
+
+"But then, you see, I never think about anything."
+
+"Sleeping beauty, sleeping beauty," said Guy.
+
+And with an abrupt change of manner, he began to throw sticks for Bob,
+so that the lucid air was soon loud with continuous barking.
+
+"I wonder if we shall ever meet again on Wychford down," said Guy as
+together they swung along the rolling highroad towards the village.
+
+A horse and trap caught them up before Pauline could answer the
+speculation, and Mr. Godbold, as he passed, wished them both a very good
+morning.
+
+"Godbold seems extraordinarily interested in us," Guy remarked, when for
+the third time before he turned the corner Mr. Godbold looked back at
+them.
+
+"Oh, I wonder...." Pauline began, expressing with her lips sudden
+apprehension.
+
+"You mean, he thought it strange to see us together?"
+
+"People in the country...." she began again.
+
+"Why don't you hurry on alone?" Guy asked. "And I'll come in to Wychford
+later."
+
+"Don't be stupid. What do the Wychford people matter? Besides I should
+hate to do anything like that."
+
+She was half angry with Guy for the suggestion. It seemed to cast a
+shadow on the morning.
+
+When Pauline got back home, she told them all about her meeting with
+Guy: nobody had a word of disapproval, not even Margaret, and the faint
+malaise of uncertainty vanished.
+
+After tea, however, Mrs. Grey came in looking rather agitated.
+
+"Pauline," she began at once. "You must not meet Guy alone like that
+again."
+
+"Oh, darling Mother, you _are_ looking so pink and flustered," said
+Pauline.
+
+"No, there's nothing to laugh at. Nothing at all. I was most annoyed.
+Four of the people I visited actually had the impertinence to ask me if
+you and Guy were engaged."
+
+Pauline went off into peals of laughter and danced about the room; but
+when she was alone and thought again of what the gossips were saying,
+she suddenly realized it was not altogether for Richard's sake that she
+had dreaded the idea of Guy's falling in love with Margaret.
+
+
+
+
+_January_
+
+
+Plashers Mead and the Rectory were not the only romantic houses in
+Wychford. Indeed the little town as a whole had preserved by reason of
+its remoteness from railways and important highroads the character given
+to it during the many years of prosperity which lasted until the reign
+of Charles the First. From that time it had slowly declined; and now
+with a stagnation that every year was more deeply accentuated by modern
+conditions it was still declining. New houses were never built, and even
+the King's Head, a pledge of commercial confidence in the Hanoverian
+succession, seemed to flaunt with an inappropriate modernity its red
+bricks mellowed by the passage of two centuries. Apart from this rival
+to the Stag Inn the fabric of Wychford was uniformly grey, to which,
+notwithstanding Miss Peasey's declaration of sameness, variety was amply
+secured by the character of the architecture. Gables and mullions; oaken
+eaves and corbels carefully ornamented; latticed oriels and sashed bows;
+roofs of steep unequal pitch to which age had often added strange
+undulations; chimney stacks of stone and gothic entries, all these gave
+variety enough; and if the whole effect was too sober for Miss Peasey's
+taste, the little town on the hillside was now safe for ever from the
+brightening of the dolls-house spirit.
+
+Wychford could still be called a town, for it possessed a few
+side-streets, along the grassgrown cobbles of which there still existed
+many houses of considerable beauty and dignity. These had lapsed into a
+more apparent decay, because a dwindling population had avoided their
+direct exposure to the bleak country and had left them empty. In the
+High Street this melancholy of bygone fame was less noticeable, and here
+scarcely a house was unoccupied. Some buildings, indeed, had been
+degraded to unworthy usages; and it was sad to see Perpendicular
+fireplaces filled with cheap lines in drapery, or to find an ancient
+chantry trodden by pigs and fowls. Generally, however, the High Street
+to the summit of its steep ascent had an air of sedate prosperity that
+did not reflect the reality of a slow depopulation.
+
+About half way up the hill on the other side of the town from Plashers
+Mead and the Rectory was a side-street called Abbey Lane that, instead
+of leading to open country, was bounded by a high stone wall. This
+blocked the thoroughfare except so far as to allow a narrow path to
+skirt its base and give egress along some untidy cottage-gardens to a
+cross-road farther up the hill.
+
+In the middle of the wall confronting the street two columns surmounted
+with huge round finials showed where there had once been a gate wide
+enough to admit a coach. Above the wall a belt of high trees obscured
+the view and gave a dank shadow to the road beneath. At one corner a
+small wooden wicket with a half obliterated proclamation of privacy
+enabled anyone to pass through the wall and enter the grounds of
+Wychford Abbey. This wicket opened directly on a path that wound through
+a plantation of yews interspersed with tall beeches and elms whose
+overarching tops intensified even in wintry leaflessness the prevalent
+gloom. The silence of this plantation made Wychford High Street seem in
+remembrance a noisy cheerful place, and the mere crackling of twigs and
+beech-mast induced the visitor to walk more quietly, fearful of
+profaning the mysteriousness even by so slight an indication of human
+presence. The plantation continued in tiers of trees down the hill to
+the Greenrush, which had been deepened by a dam to support this gloom
+of overhanging branches with slow and solemn stream. The path, however,
+kept to the level ground and emerged presently upon a large square of
+pallescent grass the farther side of which was bounded by a deserted
+house.
+
+There were no ruins of the ecclesiastical foundation to fret a gothic
+moonlight, but Wychford Abbey did not require these to justify the
+foreboding approach; and the great Jacobean pile, whose stones the
+encroaching trees had robbed of warmth and vitality, brooded in the
+silence with a monstrous ghostliness that was scarcely heightened by the
+signs of material decay. Nevertheless the casements whose glass was
+filmy like the eyes of blind men or sometimes diced with sinister gaps;
+the cracks and fissures in the external fabric; the headless supporters
+of the family coat; and the roof slowly being torn tile from tile by
+ivy, did consummate the initial impression. Within, the desolation was
+more marked. A few rotten planks had been nailed across the front door,
+but these had been kicked down by inquisitive explorers, and the hall
+remained perpetually open to the weather. In some of the rooms the
+floors had jagged pits, and there was not one which was not defiled by
+jackdaws, owls and bats. Strands of sickly ivy, which had forced an
+entrance through the windows, clawed the dusty air. A leprosy had
+infected the plaster ceilings so that the original splendour of their
+mouldings had become meaningless and scarcely any longer discernible;
+and the marble of the florid mantelpieces was streaked with abominable
+damp. The back of the house seemed to go beyond the rest in the
+expression of utter abandonment. Crumbling walls with manes of ivy
+enclosed a series of gardens rank with docks and nettles and almost
+impenetrable on account of the matted briars. As if to add the final
+touch of melancholy the caretaker (for somewhere in the depths of the
+house existed ironically a caretaker) had cultivated in this wilderness
+some dreary patches of potatoes. Beyond the forsaken parterres stretched
+a great unkempt shrubbery where laurels, peterswort and hollies
+struggled in disorderly and overgrown profusion for the pleasure of
+numberless birds, and where a wide path still maintained its slow
+diagonal down the hillside to the river's edge.
+
+Such were the surroundings Guy chose to embower the doubts and
+hesitations that followed close upon the morning when on Wychford down
+he had been so nearly telling Pauline he loved her. Perhaps the almost
+savage gloom of this place helped to confirm his profound hopelessness.
+A black frost had succeeded the sparkle of Christmastide. The banks of
+the river in such weather were impossible, for the wind came biting
+across the water-meadows and piped in the withered reeds and rushes with
+an intolerable melancholy. Here in the grounds of Wychford Abbey there
+was comparative warmth, and the desolation suited the unfortunate end he
+was predicting for his hopes. To begin with, it was extremely improbable
+that Pauline cared about him. His assay with regard to Richard had not
+been encouraging, and his worst fears of being too late for real
+inclusion within the charm of the Rectory were surely justified. He had
+known all along how much exaggerated were his ambitions, and he wished
+now that in the first moment of their springing he had ruthlessly
+strangled them. Moreover, even if Pauline did ultimately come to care
+for him, how much farther was he advanced upon the road of a happy
+issue? It were presumptuous and absurd with only L150 a year to propose
+marriage, and if he gave up living here and became a schoolmaster at
+home, he knew that the post would be made conditional upon a willingness
+to wait as many years for marriage as the wisdom of age decreed.
+Besides, he could not take Pauline from Wychford and imprison her at Fox
+Hall to dose little boys with Gregory's Powder or check the schedule of
+their underclothing. The only justification for taking Pauline away
+from the Rectory would be to make her immortal in poetry. Yet
+encouraging as lately one or two epithets had certainly been, he was
+still far from having written enough to fill even a very thin book; and
+really as he came to review the past three months he could not say that
+he had done much more or much better than in the days when Plashers Mead
+was undiscovered. Time had lately gone by very fast not merely on
+account of the jolly days at the Rectory, but also because weeks that
+were terminated by weekly bills seemed to be endowed with a double
+swiftness.
+
+"I really must eat less meat," said Guy to himself. "It's ridiculous to
+spend eleven shillings and sixpence every week on meat ... that's
+roughly L30 a year. Why, it's absurd. And I don't eat it. Bother Miss
+Peasey! What an appetite she has got."
+
+He wondered if he could break through the barrier of his housekeeper's
+deafness so far as to impress upon her the fact that she ate too much
+meat. She spent too much, also, on small things like pepper and salt.
+This reckless buying of pepper and salt made the grocer's bill an
+eternal irritation, for it really seemed absurd to be spending all one's
+money on pepper and salt. Yet people did live on L150 a year. Coleridge
+had married with less than that and apparently had got on perfectly
+well, or would have if he had not been foolish in other ways. How on
+earth was it done? He really must try and find out how much for instance
+Birdwood spent every week on the necessities of life. That was the worst
+of Oxford ... one came down without the slightest idea of the elementary
+facts of domestic economy. There had been a lot of soda bought last
+week. He remembered seeing it in one of those horrid little slippery
+tradesmen's books. Soda? What was it for? Vaguely Guy thought it was
+used to soften water, but there were plenty of rain tubs at Plashers
+Mead, and soda must be an unjustifiable extravagance. Then Miss Peasey
+herself was getting L18 a year. It seemed very little, so little indeed
+that when he paid her every month, he felt inclined to apologize for the
+smallness of the amount, but little as it was it only left him with
+L132. Knock off L30 for meat and he had L102. L18 must go in rent and
+there was left L84. Then there was milk and bread and taxes and the
+subscription to the cricket-club and the subscription to all the other
+vice-presidencies to which the town had elected him. There was also
+Graves his deaf and dumb gardener, and a new bucket for the well. Books
+and clothes, of course, could be obtained on credit, but even so
+sometime or other bills came in. Guy made a number of mental
+calculations, but by no device was he able to make the amount required
+come to less than L82. That left L2 for Pauline, and then by the way
+there was the dog-licence which he had forgotten. Thirty-two and
+sixpence for Pauline! Guy roamed through the sad arbours of Wychford
+Abbey in the depths of depression, and watched with a cynical amusement
+the birds searching for grubs in the iron ground. He began to feel a
+positive sense of injury against love which had descended with
+proverbial wantonness to complicate mortal affairs. He tried to imagine
+the Rectory without Pauline, and when he did so all the attraction was
+gone. Yet distinctly when he had first met the Greys, he had not thought
+more often of Pauline than of her sisters. What perversity of
+circumstance had introduced love?
+
+"It's being alone," said Guy. "I feed myself upon dreams. Michael was
+perfectly right. Wychford is a place of dreams."
+
+He would cure this love-sickness. That was an idea for a sonnet. Damn!
+'_I attempt from love's sickness to fly._' It need not be said again. At
+the same time, poem or not, he would avoid the Rectory and shut himself
+close in that green room which Margaret and Monica had thought so crude
+with undergraduate taste. If this cold went on, there would be skating;
+and he began to picture Pauline upon the ice. The vision flashed like a
+diamond through these gloomy groves, and with the soughing of the skates
+in his ears and the thought of Pauline's hands criss-cross in his own,
+Guy's first attack on love ended in complete surrender. Skating meant
+long talks with never a curious eye to cast dismay; and in long talks
+and rhythmic motion possibly she might come to love him. Guy's footsteps
+began to ring out upon the iron-bound walk, and of all the sad ghosts
+that should have haunted his path, there was not one who walked now
+beside him; for, as he dreamed upon the vision of Pauline, the
+melancholy of that forsaken place was lightened with a sort of April
+exultation and the promise of new life to gladden the once populous
+gardens where lovers might have been merry in the past.
+
+However, when he was back in his house, Guy's earlier mood returned, and
+he made up his mind anew not to go to the Rectory. Nothing would do for
+him but the metaphysics and passion of Dr. John Donne; and on the dreary
+evening when the frost yielded to rain before there had been one day's
+skating, Guy was as near as anyone may ever have been to conversing with
+that old lover's ghost who died before the god of Love was born. All his
+plans wore mourning, and the bills that week rose two-and-sixpence-halfpenny
+higher than their highest total so far. Guy moped in his green library
+and, as he read through the manuscripts of poetry that with the progress
+of the night seemed to him worse and worse, he wished he could recapture
+some of that self-confidence which had carried him so serenely through
+Oxford; and he asked himself if Pauline's love would endow him once more
+with that conviction of ultimate fame, to the former safe tenure of
+which he now looked back as from a disillusioned old age.
+
+Another week passed, and Guy wondered what they were thinking of him at
+the Rectory for his neglect of all they might justly suppose had been
+offered him. Absence from Pauline did not seem to have effected much so
+far except a complete paralysis of his power to work with that diligence
+he had always preached as the true threshold of art. Perhaps he had been
+always a little too insistent upon the merit of academic industry, too
+conscious of a deliberate embarkation upon a well-built career, too
+careful of mere equipment in his exploration of Parnassus. So long as he
+had been exercizing his technical accomplishment, everything had seemed
+to be advancing securely toward the moment when inspiration should
+vitalize the promise of his craftsmanship. Now inspiration was at hand,
+and accomplishment had betrayed him. These effusions of restless love
+which he had lately produced were surely the most wretched cripples ever
+sent to climb the Heliconian slope. Guy looked at his notebook and
+marked how many apostrophes, the impulses to declaim which had seemed to
+scorch his imagination with bright ardours, had, alas, failed to kindle
+his uninflammable pencil. He derived a transient consolation from
+Browning's Pauline which was surely as inadequate as his own verse to
+celebrate the name. '_Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me._' That opening
+half-line was the only one which moved him. But after all Browning did
+not esteem his own Pauline and had written it when he was twenty.
+Himself was twenty-two, and could not declare his passion in one lyric.
+A graceful sonnet for his father's birthday would not compensate for
+this dismaying failure. Moreover in rhymes, thought Guy, Pauline was no
+niggard; and with a flicker of sardonic humour he recalled how many
+Swinburne had found for Faustine.
+
+It was Godbold who fed the vexations and torments of untried love with
+the bitterest medicine of all. He had come down to see Guy about an old
+chair that had to be fetched from a neighbouring village and, when his
+business was over, seemed inclined to chat for a while.
+
+"Have you ever noticed, Mr. Hazlewood," he began, "as there's a lot of
+people in this world who know more than a man knows himself?"
+
+Guy indicated that the fact had struck him.
+
+"Well, now, just because I happen to see you with Miss Pauline the other
+morning, there's half-a-dozen wise gabies in Wychford who've almost
+married you to her out of hand."
+
+Guy tried not to look annoyed.
+
+"Oh, you may well frown, Mr. Hazlewood, for as I said to them, it's
+nothing more than nonsense to tie up a young man and a young woman just
+because they happen to take a walk together on a fine morning."
+
+"I hope this sort of intolerable gossip isn't still going on," said Guy
+savagely.
+
+"Oh, well, you see, sir, Wychford is a middling place for gossip. And if
+it wasn't one of the Miss Greys it would be some other young Miss
+roundhereabouts. Human nature, like pigeons, is set on mating."
+
+"I hope you'll contradict this ridiculous rumour," said Guy.
+
+"Oh, I have done already. In fact I may say that one of my principles,
+Mr. Hazlewood, is to contradict everything. As I said to them, when they
+was talking about it in the post-office the other night, and that
+post-office is a rare place for gossip! Perhaps you've noticed that the
+nosiest man in a town always gets made postmaster? Where had I got
+to?--ah, yes, I said to them, 'You know a great lot about other people's
+business,' I said, 'but when I tell you that old Mrs. Mathers who lives
+in the last cottage but one in Rectory Lane says she's taken particular
+note as Mr. Hazlewood has never been near the Rectory for the last
+fortnight unless it was once when she heard footsteps and hadn't time
+to get to the window to see who it was on account of the kettle being on
+the boil at that moment, where's your Holy Matrimony?' I said. With that
+up speaks Miss Burge from the back of the shop whose father used to keep
+the King's Head before he dropped dead of the apoplexy on Shipcot
+platform. 'That doesn't say he hasn't gone round by the field the same
+as Mr. Burrows's servant used to when she was being courted by
+We'll-mention-no-names.' 'No, and that he hasn't either,' said I
+smacking the counter, for I was feeling a bit angry by now at all this
+poking about in other people's business, 'that he hasn't,' I said,
+'because the Rectory cook asked me most particular if there was anything
+the matter down at Plashers Mead seeing as Mr. Hazlewood hadn't been
+near the Rectory for a fortnight. That doesn't look like Holy
+Matrimony,' I said, and with that I walked out of the post-office. Mr.
+Hazlewood," Godbold concluded very earnestly, "the gossip of Wychford is
+something as no one would believe, if they hadn't heard it, as I have,
+every mortal day of my life."
+
+Guy could have laughed on his own account, but the notion of Pauline's
+being dragged into the chatter made him furious. Yet what could he do?
+If he went frequently to the Greys' house, he must be engaged according
+to Wychford. And if he did not go....
+
+"I suppose they'll be saying next that the engagement has been broken
+off," he enquired with cold sarcasm.
+
+"Oh, they have said it. Depend upon it, Mr. Hazlewood, it undoubtedly
+has been said."
+
+It began to appeal to Guy as extremely undignified--the way in which he
+had let Godbold chatter on like this.
+
+"I'm afraid I must be getting back to my work," he said curtly.
+
+"That's right. Work's the best answer to talk. Did you feel it much here
+in that rainy spell?"
+
+"The meadows were a bit splashy of course, but the water never got
+anywhere near the house."
+
+"But it will. Don't you make any mistake. It will. Only of course we've
+had a dry autumn. Why, last June year Miss Peasey could have been
+fishing for minnows in her kitchen. Now that seems a nice upstanding
+sort of woman. A Wesleen, they tell me? I haven't seen her in church
+that I can remember, and which would account for it. But I never talk to
+the chapel folk, they being that uncivilized. She's rather deaf, isn't
+she?"
+
+"Yes, and therefore cannot gossip," Guy snapped.
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Godbold doubtfully. "Some of the most
+unnatural scandals I ever heard were made by deaf women. Though that
+doesn't mean I'm saying Miss Peasey is a talker."
+
+"I'm sure she isn't," Guy agreed. "Good-night, Mr. Godbold."
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Hazlewood, don't you be discouraged by the gossip in
+Wychford. I always say, if you believe nothing you hear, next to nothing
+of what you read, and only half of what you see, no one can touch you.
+Good-night once more, sir. And don't you fret over what people say. I
+remember they once said I tried to work a horse which had the blind
+staggers, and Mrs. Godbold was that aggravated she went and washed a
+shirt of mine twice over, worrying herself. Good-night, Mr. Hazlewood."
+
+This time the red-bearded carrier of Wychford (not an inappropriate
+profession for him) really departed, leaving Guy in a state of
+considerable resentment at the thought of the Wychford commentary.
+
+That night the raw drizzle turned to snow; and when he looked out of his
+window next morning, it was lying thick over the country and was making
+his bedroom seem as grey as the loaded clouds above. That exhilaration
+of a new landscape which comes with snow drove away some of Guy's
+depression, and after breakfast he went out, curious to contemplate its
+effect upon the Abbey. In the black frost the great pile had seemed to
+possess scarcely more substance than a shredded leaf; and when it lay
+sodden beneath the dripping trees, a manifest decay had made extinction
+infamous with the ooze of a rotting fungus. The weather now had brought
+a strange restoration to the abandoned house, and so completely had the
+covering of snow hidden most of the signs of dissolution that Wychford
+Abbey seemed no longer dead, but asleep in the quiet of a winter
+morning. The lawn in front stretched before it in decent whiteness, and
+the veiling of the ragged unhealthy grass took away from the front of
+the house that air of wan caducity, endowing the stones by contrast with
+tinted warmth and richness. The decrepit roof was hidden, and Wychford
+Abbey dreamed under its weight of snow with all the placid romance of a
+house on a Christmas card. The dark plantation was deprived of its
+gloom, and what was usually a kind of haunted stillness was now
+aspectful peace. Guy went over the crinching ground and strolled down
+the broad walk through the shrubbery. Everywhere the snow glistened with
+the footprints of many birds, but not a single call broke a silence
+which was cold and absolute except for the powdery whisper of the snow
+where it was sliding from the holly leaves.
+
+When Guy reached the bottom of the shrubbery, he sat down on a fallen
+trunk by a backwater, which dried up here in the drift of dead leaves;
+and he watched the surface of it glazing perceptibly, yet not so fast
+but that the faint motion of the freezing air could write upon the
+smoothness a tremulous reticulation. He had not been resting long when
+he saw Margaret coming toward him down the walk, and with so light a
+tread that in her white coat she might have been a figment created for
+his fancy by the snow. He wondered if a sense of the added beauty her
+presence gave the scene were in her mind. Probably it was, for Margaret
+had a discreet vanity that would never gratify itself so well as when
+she was alone; and plainly she must suppose herself alone, since here on
+this snowy morning she would not have expected to meet anybody. Guy
+thought it would be considerate to draw aside without spoiling her dream
+whatever the subject of the meditation. However, as he rose from the log
+to take the narrow path along the back-water and so turn homeward across
+the fields by the river, Margaret saw him and waved with a feathery
+gesture. As Guy went up the path to greet her, he was thinking how much
+her hair was like a dark leaf that had shaken off the snow, so easily
+might her blanched attire have fallen upon her from the clouds; then, as
+he came close, every charming fancy was suddenly spoilt by a remembrance
+of Wychford gossip, and he turned hastily round to see if there were
+prying glances in the laurels.
+
+"What are you looking at?" she asked.
+
+"A squirrel," said Guy quickly. He would not have had his absence from
+the Rectory ascribed to any fear of gossip; moreover, since a meeting
+with Margaret did not make his conscience the thrall of public opinion,
+he would not have her discreet vanity at all impaired. Therefore it was
+a squirrel he saw.
+
+"We've been wondering what has become of you," she said.
+
+"Well, I've been working rather hard; and as a matter of fact I was
+going to the Rectory this afternoon. Isn't the snow jolly after the
+rain? Especially here, don't you think?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I've got to go and visit an old woman who lives almost in Little
+Fairfield, and I thought I'd avoid as much as I could of the high road."
+
+"Shall I come with you?" asked Guy, but in so doubtful a voice that
+Margaret laughingly declared she was sure he was in a state of being
+offended with the Rectory.
+
+"Oh, Margaret, don't be absurd. Offended?"
+
+"Over the curtains?" she asked.
+
+"Why if it wouldn't betray a gross insensibility to your opinion, I
+should tell you I thought no more about what you said. Besides, we've
+had reconciling Christmas since then."
+
+"Ah, but you see, Pauline is always impressing on Monica and me our
+cruelty to you, and by this time Mother has been talked into believing
+in our hard and impenitent hearts."
+
+"Pauline is...." Guy broke off and saw another squirrel. He could not
+trust himself to speak of Pauline, for in this stillness of snow he felt
+that the lightest remark would reveal his love; and there was in nature
+this morning a sort of suspense that seemed to rebuke unuttered secrets.
+
+"Well, as you're walking with me to Fairfield--or nearly to
+Fairfield--your neglect of us shall be forgiven," Margaret promised.
+"Here we are out of the warm trees already. I'm glad I came this way,
+though I think it was rather foolish. Look how deep the snow seems on
+that field we've got to cross."
+
+"It isn't really," said Guy, vaulting over the fence that ran round the
+confines of the Abbey wood.
+
+"Ah, now you've spoilt it," she exclaimed. But Margaret did not pause a
+moment to regret the ruffling of that sheeted expanse and they walked on
+silently, watching the toes of their boots juggle with the snow.
+
+"It generally is a pity," said Guy after a while.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Impressing one's existence on so lovely and inviolate a thing as this."
+He indicated the untrodden field in front of them.
+
+"But look behind you," said Margaret. "Don't you think our footprints
+look very interesting?"
+
+"Interesting, perhaps," Guy admitted. "Yet footprints in snow never seem
+to be going anywhere."
+
+"Now I know quite well what you're doing," Margaret protested. "You're
+making that poor little wobbly track of ours try to bear all sorts of
+mysterious and symbolic intensities of meaning. Just because you're
+feeling annoyed with a sonnet, footprints in the snow mustn't lead
+anywhere. Why, Guy, if I told you what sentimental import my 'cello
+sometimes gives to a simple walk before lunch.... I mean of course when
+I've been playing badly."
+
+She sighed, and Guy wondered if the violoncello had been used with as
+little reference as a sonnet to the real cause of the mood.
+
+"Why did you sigh just now?" he asked after another minute or two of
+silent progress.
+
+"I wonder whether I'll tell you. No, I don't think I will. And yet...."
+
+"And yet perhaps after all you will," said Guy eagerly. "And if you do,
+I'll tell you something in turn."
+
+"That's no bribe," said Margaret laughing. "You foolish creature, don't
+you think I know what you'll tell me?"
+
+Guy shook his head.
+
+"I don't think you do. You may suspect. But for that matter, so may I.
+Isn't what you might have told me something that might most suitably be
+told on the way to Fairfield?"
+
+"You've been talking about me to Pauline," said Margaret angrily.
+
+"Never," he declared. "But you don't suppose you can have all these
+mysterious allusions to Richard without my guessing that his father is
+Vicar of Fairfield. Dear Margaret, forgive me for guessing and tell me
+what you were going to tell."
+
+"Have you heard I was engaged to Richard Ford?" she asked.
+
+"I heard he was in love with you."
+
+"Oh he is, he is," she murmured, and Guy thinking of Richard in India
+wondered if he ever dreamed of Margaret walking like this in a snowy
+England. The clock in Fairfield church struck eleven with an icy tinkle
+that on the muted air sounded very thinly. "But the problem for me,"
+Margaret went on, "is whether I'm in love with him, or if Richard is
+merely the nicest person who has been in love with me so far."
+
+"Well, if you'd asked me that three months ago," Guy said, "I would have
+answered decidedly that you weren't in love with him if you had one
+doubt. But now ... well, you know really now I'm rather in the state of
+mind that wants everybody to be in love. And why do you think you're not
+in love with him?"
+
+"I haven't really explained well," said Margaret. "What I'm sure of is
+that I'm not as much in love with him as I want to be in love."
+
+"You're living opposite a looking-glass," said Guy. "That's what is the
+matter."
+
+They had reached the stile leading over into the high road, and Margaret
+gazed back wistfully at the footprints in the snow, before they crossed
+it and went on their way.
+
+"Yes," she said. "I am conceited. But my conceit is really cowardice. I
+long for admiration, and when I am admired I despise it. I lie in bed
+thinking how well I play the 'cello, and when I have the instrument by
+me I don't believe I can play even moderately well. I am really fond of
+him, but the moment I think that anybody else is thinking about my being
+fond of him I almost hate his name. I can't bear the idea of going to
+live in India and I detest bridges--you know he builds bridges--and yet
+I couldn't possibly write to him and say that he must think no more
+about me. I'm really a mixture of Monica and Pauline, and so I'm not as
+happy as either of them."
+
+"Yes, I suppose Pauline is very happy," said Guy in a depressed voice.
+
+"What am I to do?" Margaret asked.
+
+"I'm sure you're much more in love than you think," he declared quickly,
+for he had the ghost of a temptation to tell her she was foolish to
+think any more of a love so uncertain as hers. There was enough jealousy
+of his standing at the Rectory to give him the impulse to rob Richard of
+his foothold, but the meanness destroyed itself on this virginal morning
+almost before Guy realized it had tried to exist. "Yes, I'm sure you're
+really in love," he repeated. "I think I can understand what you feel."
+
+"Do you?" said Margaret shaking her head a little sadly. "I'm afraid
+it's only a very willing sympathy on your part, for I'm sure I don't
+understand myself. That's why I'm conceited, perhaps. I'm trying to
+build up a Margaret Grey for other people to look at, which I admire
+like any pretty thing one makes oneself, and perhaps why I can't fall
+really in love is because I'm afraid of someone's understanding me and
+showing me to myself."
+
+"You'd have to be very clever to disappoint that person," said Guy. "And
+why shouldn't Richard Ford be the one?"
+
+"Oh, he'll never discover me," said Margaret. "That's what's so dull."
+
+"Aren't you a little unreasonable?" Guy asked.
+
+"Of course I am. Now don't let's talk about me any more: I'm really not
+worth discussing--only just because my family is so exquisite and
+because I adore them, I never talk about Richard to them. Here's the old
+woman's cottage. I shan't be more than a few minutes."
+
+Guy felt honoured by Margaret's confidence, but his heart was so full
+of Pauline that he transferred all the substance of what she had been
+saying to suit his own case. Would Pauline never know if she were in
+love? Would he be doomed to the position of Richard? Or worse, would
+Pauline fly from his love in terror of anything so disturbing to the
+perfection of her life at present? On the whole he was inclined to think
+that this was exactly what she would do; and he felt he would never have
+the courage to startle her with the question. When he thought of the
+girls to whom in the past of long vacations he had made protestations of
+devotion that were light as the thistledown in the summery meadows where
+they were uttered, it was incredible that the asking of Pauline should
+speed his heart like this. With other girls he had always imagined them
+slightly in love with him, but for Pauline to be in love with him seemed
+hopeless, though he qualified his humility by assuring himself that she
+could be in love with nobody. Did Margaret really have a suspicion that
+he was in love with Pauline? If she had, why had she not drawn his
+confidence before she gave her own? She came out from the cottage as he
+propounded this, and he told her, when their faces were set towards
+Wychford and a chilly wind that was rising, how he had been thinking
+about her confidence all the while she was in the cottage. Moreover, he
+was under the impression this was the truth.
+
+"But don't think about me any more," she commanded.
+
+"Never?"
+
+"Not until I speak first. Isn't it cold? You must have been frozen
+waiting for me."
+
+They hurried along talking mostly, though how the topic arose Guy never
+knew, about whether Alice in Wonderland were better than Alice Through
+the Looking-glass or not. The quotations that went to sustain the
+argument were so many that they arrived back very quickly, it seemed, at
+the stile leading into the snowy field.
+
+"Will you go home the same way?" Guy suggested. "Look, nobody has spoilt
+our tracks. They're jollier than ever, and do you see those rooks
+farther down the field? It will snow again this afternoon and our
+footprints will vanish."
+
+By the time they reached the Abbey wood Guy had made up his mind that as
+they walked up through the shrubbery, unless people were listening
+there, he would tell Margaret how deeply he was in love with Pauline.
+The resolution taken, his throat seemed to close up with nervousness,
+and vaulting over the fence he tripped and fell in a snow drift.
+
+"Why this violent activity all of a sudden?" Margaret asked.
+
+He laughed gloomily and vowed it was the exhilarating weather. Up the
+broad walk they went slowly, and every yard was bringing them dreadfully
+nearer to Wychford High Street and the profanation of this snowy
+silence. Abruptly a robin began to sing from a bough almost overhead;
+and, Guy realizing half-unconsciously that unless he told Margaret now,
+his words would die upon that robin's rathe melody, said:
+
+"Margaret, you'll probably be angry, but I must tell you that I'm in
+love with your sister."
+
+He drove his stick deep into the snow to give his eyes the excuse of
+looking down.
+
+"With Pauline," she said softly.
+
+He congratulated himself upon the cunning with which he had at least
+thrown something on Margaret of the responsibility, as he almost called
+it. Had she said Monica, it would have killed his hope at once.
+
+"Of course I know it must sound ridiculous, but...."
+
+"Is she in love with me?" asked Margaret with tender mockery. "Well, I
+think she may be. Perhaps I'm almost sure she is."
+
+"Margaret," said Guy seizing her hand. "I hope you'll be the happiest
+person in the world always. You know, don't you, that I'm dying for you
+to be happy."
+
+There may have been tears in her eyes as she responded with faintest
+pressure of her hand to his affection.
+
+"And you won't forget all about me and take no more interest in what
+will seem my maddening indecision, when you and Pauline are happy?"
+
+"My dear, as if I could," he exclaimed.
+
+"Lovers can forget very easily," said Margaret. "You see I've thought
+such a lot about being in love that I've got everyone else's conduct
+clearly mapped out in my mind."
+
+Guy stopped dead; and, as he stopped, the robin now far behind them
+ceased his song, and even the flute of the wind sounding on distant
+hollows and horizons cracked in the frost so that the stillness was
+sharp as ice itself.
+
+"Margaret, what makes you think Pauline cares for me? How dare I be so
+fortunate?"
+
+"Because you know you are fortunate," said Margaret, nor could falling
+snow have touched his arm more lightly than she. "Why do you suppose I
+told you about Richard if it was not because I thought you appreciated
+Pauline?"
+
+"Ah, how I shall always love the snow," Guy exclaimed, grinding the
+slippery ball upon his heel to powder.
+
+"But now I've got a disappointment for you," said Margaret. "Pauline and
+Monica are going into Oxford to-day for a week."
+
+"You won't tell anybody what I've told you?" he begged.
+
+"Of course not. Secrets are much too fascinating not to be kept as long
+as possible."
+
+He opened the wicket, and presently they parted in the High Street.
+
+"I shall come in this afternoon," he called after her. "Unless you're
+bored with me."
+
+She invited him with her muff and seemed to float out of sight.
+Suddenly Guy remembered that sometime this morning (it seemed as long
+ago as when Wychford Abbey was alive) Bob had been with him. He was glad
+of an excuse to go back and look for the dog in those now consecrated
+arbours. There the robin still sang his rather pensive tune; and there
+from a high ash-bough a missel-thrush, wearing full ermine of the
+Spring, saluted the vestal day.
+
+
+
+
+_February_
+
+
+Pauline started to Oxford with Monica, feeling rather disappointed she
+had not seen Guy before she went; for Margaret had come home with news
+of having walked with him to Fairfield, and it was tantalizing, indeed a
+little disturbing, to leave him behind with Margaret.
+
+"Nothing is said to Margaret," Pauline protested at lunch, "when _she_
+goes out for a walk with Guy. Father, don't you think it's unfair?"
+
+"Well, darling Pauline," interrupted Mrs. Grey with an anxious glance
+towards her second daughter. "You see, Margaret is in a way engaged."
+
+"I'm not engaged," Margaret declared.
+
+"But I'm asking Father," Pauline persisted. "Father, don't you think
+it's unfair?"
+
+The Rector was turning over the pages of a seed-catalogue and answered
+Pauline's question with that engaging irrelevancy to which his family
+and parish were accustomed.
+
+"It's disgraceful for these people to offer seeds of Incarvillea Olgae.
+My dears, you remember that anaemic magenta brute, the colour of a
+washed-out shirt? Ah," he sighed, "I wish they'd get that yellow
+Incarvillea over. I am tempted to fancy it might be as good as Tecoma
+Smithii, and of course coming from that Yang-tse-kiang country, it would
+be hardy."
+
+"Francis dear!" Pauline cried. "Don't you think it's unfair?"
+
+"Pauline," said her mother. "You must _not_ call your father Francis in
+the dining-room."
+
+The Rector oblivious of everything continued to turn slowly the pages of
+his catalogue.
+
+"Oh, bother going to Oxford," said Monica looking out of the window to
+where Janet with frozen breath listened for the omnibus under gathering
+snow clouds.
+
+"Now, really," Pauline exclaimed, diverted from her complaint of
+Margaret's behaviour by another injustice. "Isn't Monica too bad? She's
+grumbling, though it was she who made the plan to stay with the
+Strettons. And though they're her friends and not mine, I've been made
+to go too."
+
+"Well, I hate staying with people," Monica explained.
+
+"So do I," said Pauline. "And you accepted the invitation for me that
+day you were in Oxford buying Christmas presents, when you forgot to buy
+the patience-cards I wanted to give poor Miss Verney, so that I had to
+give her a horrid little china dog though she hates dogs."
+
+"Now I'm sure it'll be charming, yes, charming, when you get there,"
+Mrs. Grey affirmed hopefully.
+
+"Oh, how glad I am I'm not going," said Margaret.
+
+"I think you ought to go instead of me," Pauline told her.
+
+"They're not my friends," Margaret replied with a shrug.
+
+"No, but they're more your friends than mine," Pauline argued. "Because
+you're nearer to Monica. They're four years off being my friends and
+only two from being yours."
+
+"Miss Monica," said Janet coming into the room. "The bus has come out
+from the King's Head yard, and you'll be late."
+
+There was instantly a confusion of preparation by Mrs. Grey and Pauline,
+while Monica sighed at the trouble of departure and Margaret with
+exasperating indifference sat warm and triumphant by the fire.
+
+"Good gracious," the Rector exclaimed, flinging the catalogue down and
+speaking loud enough to be heard over the feverish search for Pauline's
+left glove. "These people have the impudence to advertize Penstemon
+Lobbii as a novelty when it's really our old friend Breviflorus. What on
+earth is to be done with these scoundrels?"
+
+The horn of the omnibus sounded at the end of Rectory Lane; and the fat
+guard was marching through the snow with the girls' luggage. The
+good-byes were all said; and presently Pauline with her muff held close
+to her cheeks against the North wind was sitting on top of the omnibus
+that was toiling up the Shipcot road. As she caught sight of Plashers
+Mead etched upon the white scene, she wished she had left a message with
+Margaret to say in what deep disgrace Guy was. On they laboured across
+five miles of snow-stilled country with sparse flakes melting upon the
+horses' flanks and never a wayfarer between Wychford and Shipcot to
+pause and stare at them.
+
+On the second night of their stay with the Strettons, Monica, when she
+and Pauline were going to bed, suddenly turned round from the
+dressing-table and demanded in rhetorical dismay why they had come.
+
+"Never mind," said Pauline. "We've only got five more evenings."
+
+"Well, that's nearly a week," Monica sighed. "And I'm tired to death of
+Olive already."
+
+"But I'm much worse off," Pauline declared dolefully. "Because I have to
+sit next to the Professor, who does frighten me so. You see, he will
+include me in the conversation. Last night at dinner, after he'd been
+talking to that don from Balliol who knew Guy and whom I was dying to
+ask ... to talk to myself, I mean, he turned round to me and said, 'I am
+afraid, Miss Pauline, that Aramaic roots are not very interesting to
+you.' Well, of course I got muddled between Aramaic and aromatic, and
+said that Father had just been given a lot which were very poisonous."
+
+Monica laughed that sedate laugh of hers, which always seemed to Pauline
+like a clock striking, so independent was it of anybody's feelings.
+
+"Monica darling, I don't want to be critical," said Pauline. "But you
+know sometimes your laugh sounds just a little--a very little
+self-satisfied."
+
+"I think I am rather self-satisfied," Monica agreed, combing her golden
+hair away from her high pale forehead. "And Margaret is conceited, and
+you're twice as sweet as both of us put together."
+
+"Oh, no I'm not, oh, no, no, Monica dearest, I'm not," Pauline
+contradicted hurriedly. "No, really I'm very horrid. And, you know, when
+I'm bored I'm sure I show it. Oh dear, I hope the Strettons didn't
+notice I was bored. Mrs. Stretton was so touching with the things they
+had brought back from Madeira, and I do hate things people bring back
+from places like Madeira."
+
+"And when you're not bored with anybody," said Monica, "you're rather
+apt to make that too obvious also."
+
+"Monica, why are you saying that?" Pauline asked with wide-open eyes.
+
+"Even supposing Guy is in love with you," said Monica, slowly blowing
+out the candles on the dressing-table as she spoke, so that nothing was
+left but the rosy gas, "I don't think it's necessary to show him quite
+so clearly that you're in love with _him_.
+
+"Monica!"
+
+"Darling little sister, I do so want you ... oh, how can I put it? Well,
+you know, when you break the time in a trio, as you sometimes do...."
+
+"But I'm not in love with Guy," Pauline interrupted. "At least, oh,
+Monica, why do you choose a house like this to tell me such things?" she
+asked with tears and blushes fighting in her countenance.
+
+"Pauline, it's only that I want you to keep in time."
+
+"I can't possibly stay with the Strettons another five days," declared
+Pauline in deepest gloom. "You ought not to say things like that here."
+
+She was looking round this strange bedroom for the comfort of familiar
+pictures, but there was nothing on these pink walls except a view of the
+Matterhorn. Monica was kneeling to say her prayers, and in the stillness
+the frost outside seemed to be pressing against the window-panes.
+Pauline thought it was rather unfair of Monica to fade like this into
+unearthly communications; and she knelt down to pray somewhat vagrant
+prayers into the quilted eiderdown that symbolized the guest-room's
+luxurious chill. She longed to look up in aspiration and behold Saint
+Ursula in that tall bed of hers or cheerful Tobit walking with his dog
+in the angel's company, and in the corner her own desk that was full of
+childish things. She rose from her knees at the same moment as Monica,
+who at once began to talk lightly of the tiresome people at dinner and
+seemed utterly unconscious of having wounded Pauline's thoughts. Yet
+when the room was dark, for a long while these wounded thoughts danced
+upon the wintry air that breathed of Wychford. '_Even supposing Guy is
+in love with you._' It was curious that she could not feel very angry
+with Monica. '_Even supposing Guy is in love with you._' It really
+seemed a pity to fall asleep: it was like falling asleep when music was
+being played.
+
+The subject of Guy was not mentioned again, but during the days that
+remained of the visit, Pauline scarcely felt that she was living in the
+Strettons' house, and was so absent in her demeanour that Monica was
+disturbed into what was for her a positive sociableness to counteract
+Pauline's appearance of inattention. To consummate the vexation of the
+visit there came a sudden thaw two days before they left, and Oxford was
+ankle-deep in slush. Finally Pauline and Monica were dragged through
+the very nadir of depression when on their last night they were taken
+out to dinner in trams and goloshes through such abominable conditions
+of weather.
+
+"Fancy not ordering a cab," whispered Monica with cold disapproval.
+
+"Perhaps they can't afford it," Pauline suggested.
+
+"They can afford to go to Madeira," answered Monica, "and buy all those
+stupid knick-knacks."
+
+"Well, Monica, they are your friends, you know," said Pauline.
+
+However, the first of February arrived next morning, and Oxford was left
+behind. Pauline sighed with relief when they were seated in the train,
+and the twenty miles of country to Shipcot that generally seemed so dull
+were as green and welcome as if they were returning from a Siberian
+exile.
+
+"You know, Monica, I really don't think we ought to stay with people. I
+don't think it's honest to spend such a hateful week as that in being
+pleasant," she declared.
+
+"I didn't notice that you were taking much trouble to hide your
+boredom," said Monica. "It seems to me that I was always in a state of
+trying to steer people round your behaviour."
+
+"Oh, but Professor Stretton loves me," said Pauline.
+
+She was trying not to appear excited as the omnibus swished and slapped
+through the mud towards Wychford. She was determined that in future she
+would lead that enclosed and so serene life which she admired in her
+eldest sister. Nobody could criticize Monica except for her coldness,
+and Pauline knew that herself would never be able to be really as cold
+as that however much she might assume the effect.
+
+"Grand weather after the snow," said the driver.
+
+The roofs of Wychford were sparkling on the hillside, and earth seemed
+to be turning restlessly in the slow winter sleep.
+
+"This mud'll all be gone with a week of fine days like to-day," said the
+driver.
+
+Plashers Mead was in sight now, but it was Monica who pointed to where
+Guy and his dog were wandering across the meadows that were so vividly
+emerald after the snow.
+
+"I think it is," agreed Pauline indifferently.
+
+In the Rectory garden a year might have passed, so great was the
+contrast between now and a week ago. Now the snowdrops were all that was
+left of the snow; and a treasure of aconites as bright as new guineas
+were scattered along the borders. Hatless and entranced the Rector was
+roaming from one cohort of green spears to another, each one of which
+would soon be flying the pennons of Spring. Pauline rushed to embrace
+him, and he without a word led her to see where on a sunny bank Greek
+anemones had opened their deep-blue stars.
+
+"Blanda," he whispered. "And I've never known her so deep in colour.
+Dear me, poor old Ford tells me he hasn't got one left. I warned him she
+must have sun and drainage, but he would mix her with Nemorosa just to
+please his wife, which is ridiculous--particularly as they are never in
+bloom together."
+
+He bent over and with two long fingers held up a flower full in the
+sun's eye, as he might have stooped to chuck under the chin a little
+girl of his parish.
+
+Monica had brought back a new quartet, which they practised all that
+Candlemas Eve. When it was time to go to bed Mrs. Grey observed in a
+satisfied voice that after all it must have been charming at the
+Strettons.
+
+"Oh, no, Mother, it was terribly dull," Pauline protested.
+
+"Now, dear Pauline, how could it have been dull, when you've brought
+back this exquisite Schumann quartet?"
+
+Margaret came to Pauline's room to say good-night, sat with her while
+she undressed and tucked her up so lovingly that Pauline was more than
+ever delighted to be back at home.
+
+"Oh, Margaret, how sweet you are to me. Why? Is it because you really do
+miss me when I go away?"
+
+"Partly," said Margaret.
+
+"Why are you smiling so wisely? Have you put something under my pillow?"
+Pauline began to search.
+
+"There's nothing under your pillow, except all the thoughts I have
+to-night for you."
+
+Once more Margaret leaned over and kissed her, and Pauline faded into
+sleep upon the happiness of being at home again.
+
+Next day after lunch her mother and sisters went to pay a long postponed
+call upon a new family in the neighbourhood, because Margaret insisted
+they must take advantage of this glorious weather which would surely not
+last very long.
+
+Pauline spent the early afternoon with the Rector and Birdwood, writing
+labels while they sowed a lot of new sweet-peas which had been sent to
+the Rector for an opinion upon their merits. The clock was striking four
+when Guy strolled into the garden. Somehow Pauline's labels were not so
+carefully written after his arrival, and at last the Rector advised her
+to take Hazlewood and show him Anemone Blanda. They left the big
+wall-garden and went across the lawn in front of the house to the second
+wall-garden, where most of the Rector's favourites grew as it pleased
+them best.
+
+"Oh, they've all gone to bed," said Pauline.
+
+Guy knelt down, and opened the petals of one.
+
+"They're exactly the colour of your eyes," he said looking up at her.
+
+Pauline was conscious that the simple statement was fraught with a
+significance far greater than anything which had so far happened in her
+life. It was ringing in her ears like a bugle-call that sounded some
+far-flung advance, and involuntarily she drew back and began to talk
+nonsense breathlessly, while Guy did not speak. Nor must she let him
+speak, she told herself, for behind that simple comparison how many
+questions were trembling.
+
+"Oh, I wonder if the others are back yet," she finally exclaimed, and
+forthwith hurried from the garden toward the house. She wished she must
+not look back over her shoulder to see Guy following her so gravely. Of
+course, when they were standing in the hall, the others had not come
+back; and the house in its silence was a hundred times more portentous
+than the garden. And what would Guy be thinking of her for bringing him
+back to this voicelessness in which she could not any longer talk
+nonsense? Here the least movement, the slightest gesture, the most
+ordinary word would be weighted for both of them with an importance that
+seemed unlimited. For the first time the Rectory was strangely
+frightening; and when through the silent passages they were walking
+toward the nursery, it was the exploration of a dream. Yet, however
+undiscoverable the object that was leading them, she was glad to see the
+nursery door, for there within would surely come back to her the ease of
+an immemorial familiarity. Yet in that room of childhood, that room the
+most bound up with the simple progress of her life, she found herself
+counting the birds, berries and daisies upon the walls, as if she were
+beholding them vaguely for the first time. Why was she unpicking
+Margaret's work or folding into this foolish elaboration of triangles
+Monica's music? And why did Guy behave so oddly, taking up all sorts of
+unnatural positions, leaning upon the rickety mantelshelf, balancing
+himself upon the fender, pleating the curtains and threading his way
+with long legs in and out, in and out of the chairs?
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+He had stopped abruptly by the fireplace and was not looking at her when
+he spoke. Oh, he would never succeed in lifting even from the floor that
+match which with one foot he was trying to lift on to the other foot.
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+Now he was looking at her; and she must be looking at him, for there was
+nothing on this settee which would give her a good reason not to look at
+him. The room was so still that beyond the closed door the hoarse tick
+of the cuckoo-clock was audible; and what was that behind her which was
+fretting against the window-pane? And why was she holding with each hand
+to the brocade, as if she feared to be swept altogether out of this
+world?
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+Was it indeed her voice on earth that said 'yes'?
+
+"Pauline, I suppose you know I love you?"
+
+And she was saying 'yes.'
+
+"Pauline, do you love me?"
+
+And again she had said 'yes.'
+
+Outside in the corridor the cuckoo snapped the half-hour: then it seemed
+to tick faster and a thousand times faster. She must turn away from Guy,
+and as she turned she saw that what had been fretting the window-pane
+was a spray of yellow jasmine. Upon the cheek that was turned from him
+the dipping sun shed a warm glow, but the one nearer was a flame of
+fire.
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+He had knelt beside her in that moment; and leaning over to his
+nearness, Pauline looked down at her hand in his, as if she were gazing
+at a flower which had been gathered.
+
+
+
+
+SPRING
+
+
+
+
+_March_
+
+
+The doubts and the joys of the future broke upon Guy with so wide and
+commingled a vision, that before the others got home and even before
+Janet came in with tea he hurried away from that nursery, where over the
+half-stilled echoes of childhood he had heard the sigh of Pauline's
+assent. The practical side of what he had done could be confronted
+to-morrow, and with a presage of hopelessness the word might have lain
+heavily upon his mind, if on the instant of sinking it had not been
+radiantly winged with the realization of the indestructible spirit that
+would henceforth animate all the to-morrows of time. No day could now
+droop for him, whatever the difficulties it brought, whatever the
+hazards, when he had Pauline and Pauline's heart: and like disregarded
+moments the years of their life went tumbling down into eternity, as the
+meaning of that sighed out assent broke upon his conscience with fresh
+glory.
+
+"You'll tell your mother to-night?" he asked. "I think Margaret will
+know when she sees your shining eyes."
+
+"Are my eyes shining?"
+
+"Ah, don't you know they are, when you look into mine?"
+
+Guy could have proclaimed that he and she were stars flashing to one
+another across a stupendous night; but there were no similes that did
+not seem tawdry when he threw them round Pauline.
+
+"Child, child, beloved child," he whispered; and his voice faltered for
+the pitiful inadequacy of anything that he could call her. What words
+existed, with whatever tenderness uttered, with whatever passion
+consecrated by old lovers, that would not still be words, when they were
+used for Pauline? Guy watched for a moment the cheek that was closer to
+his lips write in crimson the story of her love. He wished he could tell
+his love for her with even the hueless apograph of such a signal; and
+yet, since anything he said was only worthy of utterance in so far as
+she by this ebb and flow of response made it worthy, why should he
+trouble that cheek which, sentient now as a rose of the sun, hushed all
+but wonder.
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+He bent over and touched her hand with his lips. Then the Rectory stairs
+had borne him down like a feather: the Rectory door had assumed a kind
+of humanity, so that the handle seemed to relinquish his grasp with an
+affectionate unwillingness. Out in the drive, where the purple trees
+were washed by the February dusk, he stood perplexed at himself because
+in a wild kiss he had not crushed Pauline to his heart. Had it been from
+some scruple of honour in case her father and mother should not
+countenance his love? Had it sprung out of some impulse to postpone for
+a while a joy that must be the sharpest he would ever know? Or was it
+that in the past he had often kissed too lightly so that now, when he
+really loved, he could not imagine the kiss unpassionate and fierce that
+would seal her immortally to love, yet leave her still a child?
+
+As he paused in that golden February dusk, Guy rejoiced he had told his
+love in such an awe of her girlhood; and when from the nursery window
+Pauline blew one kiss and vanished like a fay at mortal trespassing, he
+floated homeward upon the airy salute, weighing no more than a seed of
+dandelion to his own sense of being. Upon his way he observed nothing,
+neither passer-by nor carts in the muddy roads. As he crossed the
+bridge, the roar of the water into the mill-pool was inaudible, nor did
+he hear his melodious garden ways. And when Miss Peasey came to his
+room with the lamp, he could not realize for a moment who she was or
+what she was talking about. The hour or two before dinner went by as one
+tranced minute; in a dream he went down to dinner; in a dream he began
+to carve; in a dream the knife remained motionless in the joint, so that
+Miss Peasey coming to enquire after his appetite thought it was stuck in
+a skewer. Upstairs in the library again, he dreamed the evening away;
+and when the lamp hummed slowly and oilily to extinction he still sat
+on, till at last the fire perished and from complete darkness he roused
+himself and went to bed.
+
+Guy was under the cloud of a reaction when he rang the Rectory bell on
+the morning after. The door looked less amicable, and the dragon-headed
+knocker stared balefully while he was waiting to be let in. He wondered
+for whom of the family he ought to ask, but Mrs. Grey came nervously
+into the hall and invited him into the drawing-room.
+
+"Pauline has gone over to Fairfield," she began in jerky sentences.
+"Charming ... yes, charming, you came this morning."
+
+The sun had not yet reached the oriel of the drawing-room, that with
+shadows and fragrance was welcoming Guy where he sat in a winged
+armchair beside the fire. Time was seeming to celebrate the
+momentousness of his visit by standing still as in a picture, and he
+knew that every word and every gesture of Mrs. Grey would in his memory
+rest always enambered. He was glad, and yet in the captivating quiet a
+little sorry, that she began to speak at once:
+
+"Of course Pauline told me about yesterday. And of course I would sooner
+she were in love with a man she loved than with a man who had a great
+deal of money. But of course you mustn't be engaged at once. At least
+you can be engaged; you are engaged. Oh, yes, of course, if you weren't
+engaged, I shouldn't allow you to see each other, and you shall see
+each other occasionally. Francis has not said anything. The Rector will
+probably be rather doubtful. Of course I told him; only he happened to
+be very busy about something in the garden. But he would want Pauline to
+be happy. Of course she is my favourite--at least I should not say that.
+I love all my daughters, but Pauline is--well, she has the most
+beautiful nature in the world. My darling Pauline!"
+
+Mrs. Grey's eyes were wet, and Guy was so full of affectionate gratitude
+that it was only by blinking very hard at a small picture of Pauline
+hanging beside the mantelpiece he was able to keep his own dry.
+
+"I have a nicer picture than that, which I will give you," Mrs. Grey
+promised. "The one that I am fondest of, the one I keep beside my bed.
+Perhaps you would like a picture of her when she was seventeen? She's
+just the same now, and really I think she'll always be the same."
+
+"You are too good to me, Mrs. Grey," he sighed.
+
+"We are all so fond of you ... even the Rector, though he is not likely
+to show it. Pauline is perhaps more like me. Her impulsiveness comes
+from me."
+
+"Ought I to talk to the Rector about our engagement?" Guy asked.
+
+"Oh, no, no ... it would disturb him, and I don't think he'll admit that
+you are engaged. In fact he said something about children: but I would
+rather ... at least, of course, you are children. But Margaret says you
+can't be quite a child or you would not be in love with Pauline. And now
+if you go along the Fairfield road, you'll meet her. But that is only an
+exception. Not often. I think to-day she might be disappointed if you
+didn't meet her. And come to lunch, of course. Poetry is a little
+precarious, but at any rate for the present we needn't talk about the
+future. I wish your mother were still alive. I think she would have
+loved Pauline."
+
+"She would have adored her," said Guy fervently.
+
+"And your father? Of course you'll bring him to tea, when he comes to
+stay with you. That will be charming ... yes, charming. Now hurry, or
+you'll miss her."
+
+Guy had no words to tell Mrs. Grey of the devotion she had inspired; but
+all the way down the Fairfield road he blessed her and hoped that
+somehow the benediction would make itself manifest. Then, far away,
+coming over the brow of a hill he saw Pauline. It was one of those hills
+with a suggestion of the sea behind them, so sharply are they cut
+against the sky. This was one of those hills that in childhood had
+thrilled him with promise of the faintly imaginable; and even now he
+always approached such a hill with a dream and surmise of new beauty.
+Yet more wonderful than any dream was the reality of Pauline coming
+towards him over the glistening road. She was shy when he met her, and
+the answers she gave to his eager questions were so softly spoken that
+Guy was half afraid of having exacted too much from her yesterday. Did
+she regret already the untroublous time before she knew him? Yet it was
+better that she should walk beside him in still unbroken enchantment,
+that the declaration of his love should not have damaged the wings
+seeming always unfolded for flight from earth: so would he wish to keep
+her always, that never this Psyche should be made a prisoner by him. The
+elusive quality of Pauline which was shared in a slighter degree by her
+sisters kept him eternally breathless, for she was immaterial as a cloud
+that flushes for an instant far away from the sunset. And yet she was
+made with too much of earth's simple beauty to be compared with clouds.
+Her sisters had the ghostly serenity and remoteness that might more
+appropriately be called elusive. Pauline gave more the effect of an
+earthly thing that transcends by the perfection of its substance even
+spirit; and rather was she seeming, though poised for airy regions,
+still sweetly content with earth. She had not been more elusive than
+eglantine overarching a deep lane at Midsummer, for he had pulled down
+the spray, and it was the fear of a petal falling too soon from the
+tremulous flowers that gave him this sense of awe as he walked beside
+her.
+
+Yet once again Guy found his comparisons poor enough when he looked at
+Pauline, and he exclaimed despairingly:
+
+"There _are_ no words for you. I wanted to say to your mother what I
+thought about you. Oh, she was so charming."
+
+"She is a darling," said Pauline. "And so is Father."
+
+They were come to the stile where he and Margaret had watched their
+footprints on the snow.
+
+"And Margaret was very sympathetic, you know," he went on. "Really, if
+it hadn't been for her, I should never have dared to tell you I loved
+you. We talked about her and Richard...."
+
+"Margaret does love him. She does," Pauline declared. "Only she will ask
+herself questions all the time."
+
+How she changed when she was speaking of Richard, thought Guy a little
+jealously. Why could she not say out clearly like that her love for him?
+
+"You do love me this morning?" he asked. She was standing on the step of
+the stile, and he offered his hand to help her down. "Won't you say 'I
+love you'?"
+
+But only with her eyes could she tell him, and as, her finger-tips on
+his, she jumped from the step, she was imponderable as the blush upon
+her cheeks.
+
+"In the summer," said Guy, "you and I will be on the river together.
+Will you be shy when Summer comes?"
+
+"Monica says I'm not nearly shy enough."
+
+"What on earth does Monica expect?"
+
+They were under the trees of Wychford Abbey, and Guy told her of the
+days he had spent here, thinking of her and of the hopelessness of her
+loving him.
+
+"I could not imagine you would love me. Why do you?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"One day we'll explore the inside of the house together, shall we?"
+
+"Oh, no, I hate that place. Oh, no, Guy, we'll never go there. Come
+quickly, I hate that house. Margaret loves it and says I'm morbid to be
+afraid. But I shudder when I see it."
+
+They hurried through the dark plantation; and Guy under the influence of
+Pauline's positive terror felt strangely as if, were he to look behind,
+he would behold the house leering at them sardonically.
+
+People too eyed them, as they went down High Street and turned into
+Rectory Lane. Guy had a sensation of all the inhabitants hurrying from
+their business in the depths of their old houses to peer through the
+casements at Pauline and him; and he was glad when they reached the
+Rectory drive and escaped the silent commentary.
+
+When she was at home again Pauline's spirits rose amazingly; and all
+through lunch she was so excited, that her mother and sisters were
+continually repressing her noisiness. Guy on the contrary felt woefully
+self-conscious and was wondering all the while with how deep a dislike
+the Rector was regarding him and if after lunch he would not call him
+aside and solemnly expel him from the house. As they got up from the
+table, the Rector asked if Guy were doing anything particular that
+afternoon and on receiving an assurance that he was not, the Rector
+asked if he would help with the sweet-peas that still wanted sorting.
+Guy in a bodeful gloom said he would be delighted.
+
+"I shall be in the garden at two," said the Rector.
+
+"Shall I come as well and help?" Pauline offered.
+
+"No, I want you to take some things into the town for me," said the
+Rector.
+
+Guy's heart sank at this confirmation of his fears. Out in the hall
+Margaret took him aside.
+
+"Well, are you happy?"
+
+"Margaret, you've been beyond words good to me."
+
+"Always be happy," she said.
+
+Even Monica whispered to him that he was lucky, and Guy was so deeply
+impressed at being whispered to by Monica that it gave him a little
+courage for his interview. He joined the Rector in the garden punctually
+at two, and worked hard with labels and classifications.
+
+"_A7,_" the Rector read out. "_A lavender twice as big as Lady Grizel
+Hamilton._ _D21_. _An orange that will not burn._ Humph! I don't believe
+it. Do you believe that, Birdwood?"
+
+The gardener shook his head.
+
+"There never was an orange as didn't burn like a house on fire the
+moment the sun set eyes on it."
+
+"Of course it'll burn, and anyhow there's no such thing as an orange
+sweet-pea. If there is, it's Henry Eckford."
+
+"Henry isn't orange," said Birdwood. "Leastways not an orange like you
+get at Christmas."
+
+"More buff?"
+
+"Buff as he can be," said Birdwood. "What do you think, Mr. Hazlenut?"
+he went on, turning to Guy and winking very hard.
+
+"I really don't know him ... it...." said Guy.
+
+"_O5,_" the Rector began again. "_A cream and rose picotee Spenser._
+Yes, I daresay," he commented. "And with about as much smell as
+distilled water."
+
+So the business went on, with Guy on tenterhooks all the while for his
+own summing-up by the Rector. He thought the moment was arrived when
+Birdwood was sent off on an errand and when the Rector getting up from
+his kneeler began to shake the trowel at him impressively. But all he
+said was:
+
+"Tingitana's plumping up magnificently. And we'll have some flowers in
+three weeks--the first I shall have had since the Diamond Jubilee. Sun!
+Sun!"
+
+Guy jumped at the apostrophe, so nearly did it approximate to
+'son-in-law.' But of this relation nothing was said, and now Pauline was
+calling out that tea was ready.
+
+"Go in, my dear fellow," said the Rector. "I've still a few things to do
+in the garden. By the way was your father at Trinity, Oxford?"
+
+"No, he was at Exeter."
+
+"Ah, then, I didn't know him. I knew a Hazlewood at Trinity."
+
+The Rector turned away to business elsewhere, and Guy was left to puzzle
+over his casual allusion. Perhaps he ought to have raised the subject of
+being in love with Pauline, for which purpose the Rector may have given
+him an opening. Or did this enquiry about his father portend a letter to
+him from the Rector about his son's prospects? He certainly ought to
+have said something to make the Rector realize how much tact would be
+necessary in approaching his father. Pauline called again from the
+nursery window, and Guy hurried off to join the rest of the family at
+tea.
+
+In the drawing-room Mrs. Grey, Monica and Margaret all seemed anxious to
+show their pleasure in Pauline's happiness; and Guy in the assurance
+this old house gave him of a smooth course for his love ceased to worry
+any longer about parental problems and was content to live in the merry
+and intimate present. He realized how far he was advanced in his
+relation to the family when Brydone, the doctor's son, came in to call.
+Guy took a malicious delight in his stilted talk, as for half-an-hour he
+tried to explain to Monica, a grave and abstracted listener, how the
+pike would in March go up the ditches and the shallow backwaters and
+what great sport it was to snare them with a copper noose suspended from
+a long pole. There was, too, that triumphant moment he had long
+desired, when Brydone, rising to take his leave, asked if Guy were
+coming and when he was able to reply casually that he was not coming
+just yet.
+
+After tea Guy and Pauline, as if by an impulse that occurred to both of
+them simultaneously, begged Margaret to come and talk in the nursery.
+She seemed pleased that they wanted her; and the three of them spent the
+time till dinner in looking at the old familiar things of childhood; at
+photographs of Monica and Margaret and Pauline in short frocks; at
+tattered volumes scrawled in by the fingers of little girls.
+
+"I wish I'd known you when you were small," sighed Guy. "How wasted all
+these years seem."
+
+The gong went suddenly, and Margaret said that of course to-night he
+would stay to dinner.
+
+So once again he was staying to dinner and now on such terms as would
+make this an occasion difficult to forget. As he waited alone in the
+lamplit nursery, while Margaret and Pauline were dressing, he kissed
+Pauline in each faded picture stuck in those gay scrap-books of Varese.
+Nor did he feel the least ashamed of himself, although at Oxford his
+cynicism had been the admiration even of Balliol, where there had been
+no one like him for tearing sentiment into dishonoured rags. When the
+Rector came in to dinner, carrying with him a dusty botanical folio that
+swept all the glass and silver from his end of the table to huddle in
+the centre, Guy tried to make out if he were very much depressed by his
+not having yet gone home.
+
+"Dear me," said the Rector. "I was sure I had seen it in here."
+
+"Seen what, Francis?" asked his wife.
+
+"A plant you wouldn't know. A Cilician crocus."
+
+"Isn't Father sweet?" said Pauline. "Because of course Mother never
+knows any plant."
+
+"What nonsense, Pauline. Of course I know a crocus."
+
+Toward the end of dinner Mrs. Grey said rather nervously:
+
+"Francis dear, wouldn't you like to drink Pauline's health?"
+
+"Why, with pleasure," said the Rector. "Though she looks very well."
+
+Pauline jumped in her chair with delight at this, but Mrs. Grey waved
+her into silence and said:
+
+"And Guy's health too?"
+
+The Rector courteously saluted him; but the guest feared there was an
+undernote of irony in the bow.
+
+After dinner when Monica, Margaret and Pauline were preparing for a
+trio, Mrs. Grey said confidentially to Guy:
+
+"You mustn't expect Francis--the Rector to realize at once that you and
+Pauline are engaged. And of course it isn't exactly an engagement yet.
+You mustn't see her too often. You're both so young. Indeed, as Francis
+said, children really."
+
+Then the trio began, and Guy in the tall Caroline chair lived every note
+that Pauline played on her violin, demanding of himself what he had done
+to deserve her love. He looked round once at Mrs. Grey in the other
+chair, and marked her beating time while like his own her thoughts were
+all for Pauline. In the heart of that music Guy was able to say anything
+and he could not resist leaning over and whispering to Mrs. Grey:
+
+"I adore her."
+
+"So do I," said the mother, breaking not a bar in her beat and gazing
+with soft eyes at that beloved player.
+
+When the music stopped, Guy felt a little embarrassed by the remembrance
+of his unreserved avowal; yet evidently it had seemed natural to Mrs.
+Grey, for when he was saying good-bye in the hall, she whispered to
+Pauline that she could walk with Guy a short way along the drive. His
+heart leapt to the knowledge that here at last was the final sanction of
+his love for her. Pauline flung round her shoulders that white frieze
+coat in which he had first beheld her under the moon, misty, autumnal, a
+dream within a dream; and now they were actually walking together. He
+touched her arm half-timidly, as if even so light a gesture could
+destroy this moment.
+
+"Pauline, Pauline!"
+
+He saw her clear eyes in the February starshine and folding her close he
+kissed her mouth. When he woke, he was at home; and for hours he sat
+entranced, knowing that never again for as long as he lived would he
+feel upon his lips as now the freshness of Pauline's first kiss.
+
+The rest of that February went by with lengthening eves that died on the
+dusky riot of blackbirds in the rhododendrons. Here and there in mossy
+corners primroses were come too soon, seeming all aghast and wan to
+behold themselves out of the cloistral earth, while the buds of the
+daffodils were still upright and would not hang their heads till driven
+by the wooing of the windy March sun.
+
+The grey-eyed virginal month, that is of no season and must as often
+bear the malice of Winter's retreat as the ruffianly onset of Spring,
+had now that very seriousness which suited Guy's troth.
+
+Rules had been made with which neither he nor Pauline were discontented,
+and so through all that February Guy went twice a week to the Rectory
+and counted himself rich in Mrs. Grey's promise that he and Pauline
+should sometimes be allowed, when the season was full-fledged, to go for
+walks together. At present, however, the Rectory garden must be a
+territory large enough for their love.
+
+These first encounters were endowed with perhaps not much more than the
+excitement of what were in a way superficial observations, since
+neither of them was yet attempting to sound any deeps in the other's
+character. Guy was engaged with driving a wedge into that past of the
+Rectory whose least events he now envied, and he was never tired of the
+talks about Pauline's childhood, so much of a fairy-tale she still
+seemed and fit for endless repetition. And if Guy was never tired of
+being told, her family was never tired of telling. Never, he thought,
+was lover so fortunate in an audience as he in the willingness with
+which he was accorded a confirmation of all his praises. Sometimes,
+indeed, he had to look reproachfully at Monica or Margaret when Pauline
+seemed hurt at being checked for some piece of demonstrativeness. If he
+did so, the sisters would always take an opportunity to draw him aside
+and explain that it was only Pauline's perfection which made them so
+anxious for its security. Indeed they guarded her perpetually and with
+such a high sense of the privilege of wardship that Guy always had to
+forgive them at once. Moreover, he was so conscious of their magnanimity
+in considering him as a lover that he was almost afraid to claim his
+right.
+
+"Margaret," he said one day. "I don't know how you can bear to
+contemplate Pauline married. Why, when I think of myself, I'm simply
+dumb before the--what word is there--audacity is much too pale and, oh,
+what word is there?"
+
+"I don't think I could contemplate her married to anybody but you," said
+Margaret.
+
+"But why me?"
+
+"Why, because you are young enough to make love beautiful and right,"
+Margaret told him. "And yet you seem old enough to realize Pauline's
+exquisite nature. So that one isn't afraid of her being squandered for a
+young man's experience."
+
+"But I'm not rich," said Guy, deliberately leading Margaret on to
+discuss for the hundredth time this topic of himself and Pauline.
+
+"Pauline wouldn't be happy with riches. They would oppress her. She
+isn't luxurious like me."
+
+So round and round, backward and forward, on and on the debate would go,
+until Margaret had arranged for Guy and Pauline a life so idyllic that
+Shelley would scarcely have found a flaw in her conception.
+
+Pauline, however demonstrative in the presence of her family, was still
+shy when she was alone with her lover. Her mirth was turned to a
+whisper, and her greatest eloquence was a speech of drooping silences
+and of blushes rising and falling. Guy never tired of watching these
+flowery motions that were the response of her cheeks to his love. Each
+word he murmured was a wind to stir her countenance or ruffle her eyes,
+so that they too responded with cloudy deeps and shadows and sudden
+veilings.
+
+Nothing more was mentioned of the practical side of the engagement, for
+Mrs. Grey, Monica and Margaret were all too delightfully enthralled with
+the progress of an idyll that was to each of them her own secret poem of
+Pauline in love; while as for the Rector he remained outwardly oblivious
+of the whole matter.
+
+March came crashing into this peace without disturbing the simple
+pattern into which the existence of Guy and Pauline had now resolved
+itself--a pattern, moreover, that belonged to Pauline's mother and
+sisters for their own pleasure in embroidery, so that the lovers were,
+as it might be, carried about from room to room. Sometimes indeed, when
+Guy came to the Rectory, there was a pretence of leaving him and Pauline
+alone; but mostly they were in the company of the others, and Guy was
+now as deep in the family life as if he were a son of the house. Since
+he and Pauline never went for walks together, perhaps Wychford
+speculation had died down--at any rate there was no gossip to disturb
+Mrs. Grey; although, as she had by now given up the theory of a sort of
+engagement, yet without consenting to anything in the shape of a final
+announcement, it might not have mattered much.
+
+Meanwhile, it began to dawn on Guy that the time was coming when he
+would have to make up his mind to do something definite, and on these
+bleak mornings of early March, as he watched the scanty snowflakes
+withering against the panes, he asked himself if there was any
+justification for staying on at Plashers Mead in the new circumstances
+of his life there. At night, however, when the wind piped and whistled
+round the house, he used to dream upon the firelight and shrink from the
+idea of abandoning all that Plashers Mead had stood for and all that now
+still more it must stand for in the future. If only a plan could be
+devised by which the house were secured against sacrilege; and
+half-fantastically he began to imagine a monastic academy for poets, of
+which he would be Warden. Perhaps Michael Fane would like this idea, and
+since he had money he might come forward with an offer of endowment.
+Then he and Pauline could be married; for L150 a year would be an ample
+income, if there were no rent to pay and no wages. He of course would
+earn his living as superintendent of the academic discipline; and
+really, as he dreamed over his plan, such an establishment would be an
+admirable corollary to Oxford. It might gain even a sort of official
+recognition from the University. Plainly some sort of institution was
+wanted where in these commercial days young writers could retreat to
+learn their craft less suicidally than by journalism. What should he
+call his academy? With marriage as the reason for inventing this economy
+he could hardly give it too monastic a complexion. The louder the wind
+beat against the house, the more feasibly in the lamplit quiet within
+did the scheme present itself; and Michael Fane, who was always
+searching for an object in life, would be the very person to involve in
+the materialization. He would say nothing to anybody else; not even
+would he mention the idea to Pauline herself. These sanguine dreams
+occupied his evenings prosperously enough, while March swept past with
+searing winds from Muscovy that skimmed the rich earth of the
+ploughlands with a dusty pallor, tarnished the daffodils and seemed to
+crack the very bird-song. Guy, however, with every day either a day
+nearer to seeing Pauline again or the day itself, did not care about the
+wind that blew, and he was as happy walking on the uplands as the
+spindleshanked hares that sported among the turfy mounds.
+
+Later, the shrilling wind from the East surrendered to the booming of
+the equinox. Louder than before the weather beat against Guy's house
+from the opposite quarter. Chimneys groaned like broken horns, and after
+a desperate gale even deaf Miss Peasey complained that she had heard the
+wind once or twice in the night and that her bedroom had seemed a bit
+draughty. Guy discovered that several tiles had been blown from the
+roof, so that through the lath and plaster above her head there was a
+sound of demoniac fife-playing. Then the wind dropped: the rain poured
+down: but at last on Lady Day morning Guy woke up to see a rich sky
+between white magnificent clouds, a gentle breeze, and a letter from his
+father.
+
+     Fox Hall,
+
+     Galton,
+
+     Hants.
+
+     _March 24._
+
+     _Dear Guy_,
+
+     _I send you this with the third instalment of the L150. Please let
+     me have a prompter acknowledgement than last time when, I remember,
+     you kept me waiting nearly three weeks. I am glad to have news of
+     successful experiments in verse-making, but I should be much more
+     glad to hear that you had made up your mind to make them as an
+     accessory to a regular profession. You will notice that I do not
+     attempt to influence your choice in this matter, and so I hope you
+     will not retort with invidious comparisons between literature and
+     the teaching of small boys._
+
+     _No, I do not remember a man called Grey in my time at Oxford, but I
+     do remember a man of the same name as ours at Trinity. He came to
+     grief, I believe, later on. You must assure your friend that this
+     was not myself. I am glad you find the Rector and his wife such
+     pleasant people. Have they any children? I wish I could say as much
+     for the new Vicar of Galton, who is a pompous nincompoop and has
+     introduced a lot of this High Church frippery which so annoys some
+     of the parents. Your friend is lucky to be able to afford so much
+     leisure for gardening. I am of course far too busy to think about
+     anything like that except in the summer holidays, when flowers
+     would scarcely give me the change of air I want. This year I hope
+     to come and see you for a week or two, and we shall be able to
+     discuss the future. Don't work too hard and please oblige me by
+     acknowledging the enclosed cheque._
+
+     _Your affectionate father
+
+     John Hazlewood._
+
+Guy went out in the orchard to meditate upon the advisableness of
+telling his father at once about Pauline. If he were coming to stay here
+next August, he ought to know beforehand, for it would be horrid to have
+the atmosphere of Plashers Mead ruined by acrimonious argument. August,
+however, was still a long way off, and now there was going to be fine
+weather for a while, which must not be spoilt. Besides, perhaps in the
+end his father would not come, and anyway himself would be having to
+decide presently upon a more definite step. He would tell Pauline, when
+he saw her to-morrow, that he ought to go up to London and get some
+journalistic work so as to bring the time of their marriage nearer. Or
+should he wait until he had sounded Michael about that academy? Plashers
+Mead enlarged itself for Guy's vision until the orchard was a quadrangle
+framed with grey cloisters, along which Parnassian aspirants walked in
+meditation. Would any of them be married except himself and Pauline? On
+the whole he decided that they would not, though of course, if Michael
+were to find the capital he must be allowed to marry. How the Balliol
+people would laugh at these fantastic plans, thought Guy, and he stopped
+for a moment from the architectonics of his academy to laugh at himself.
+Certainly it would be better not to publish his plans even to Pauline
+until they showed a hint of conceivable maturity. Guy fell back into the
+comfort of spacious dreams, wandering up and down the orchard; and round
+about him the starlings pranked in metallic plumage of green and bronze
+quarrelled over the holes in the apple-trees they coveted for their
+nests.
+
+Suddenly Guy heard his name called and looking up he saw across the
+mill-stream Margaret and Pauline standing in the churchyard.
+
+"We've been to church," said Pauline. "And a dead bat fell down nearly
+on to Father's head when he was giving the Blessing. So he and the
+sacristan have gone up in the tower to see what can be done about it."
+
+"Shall I come and help?" Guy suggested.
+
+"You won't be able to do any more than they will," said Margaret
+laughing. "But if you want to come and help, you'd better. Hasn't your
+canoe arrived yet?"
+
+Guy shook his head.
+
+"It's such a glorious morning that I could almost swim the river," he
+declared.
+
+"Oh, Margaret, don't let him," Pauline exclaimed.
+
+Guy said he would be in the churchyard before they were back in Rectory
+Lane to meet him, and with Bob barking at his heels he ran at full speed
+through the orchard, through the garden, over the bridge and down
+Rectory Lane just as the two girls reached the lych-gate. They all went
+into the big church, even Bob, though he slunk at their heels as
+modestly as might the Devil. High up over the chancel they could see the
+Rector and the shiny-pated sacristan leaning from the windows of the
+bell-ringers' chamber and scratching with wands at some blind arches
+where bats might most improbably lurk.
+
+"Let's go to the top of the tower," Guy proposed.
+
+"Father isn't on the top of the tower," said Margaret. "But you go up
+with Pauline. I'll wait for you."
+
+So Guy and Pauline went through a low door beaked by Normans centuries
+ago, and climbed the stone stairs until they reached the bell-ringers'
+chamber where they paused to greet the Rector, who waved a vague arm in
+greeting. The stairs grew more narrow and musty as they went higher; but
+all the way at intervals there were deep slits in the walls, framing
+thin pictures of the outspread country below the tower. Still up they
+went past the bell-ropes, past the great bells themselves that hung like
+a cluster of mighty fruit, until finally they came out through a small
+turret to meet the March sky. The spire, that rose as high again as they
+had already come, occupied nearly all the space and left only a yard of
+leaded roof on which to walk; but even so, up here where the breeze blew
+strongly, they seemed to stand in the very course of the clouds with the
+world at their feet. Northward they looked across the brown mill-stream;
+across Guy's green orchard; across the flashing tributary beyond; across
+the meadows, to where the Shipcot road climbed the side of the wold.
+Westward they looked to Plashers Mead and Miss Peasey flapping a
+table-cloth; to Guy's mazy garden and the grey wall under the limes;
+and farther to the tree-tops of Wychford Abbey; to the twining waters of
+the valley and the rounded hills. Southward they looked to Wychford town
+in tier on tier of shining roofs; and above the translucent smoke to
+where the telegraph-poles of the long highway went rocketing into
+Gloucestershire. And lastly Eastward they looked through a flight of
+snowy pigeons to the Rectory asleep in gardens that already were painted
+with the simple flowers of Spring.
+
+Guy took Pauline's hand where it rested on the parapet.
+
+"Dearest, Spring is here," he said. "And this is our world that you and
+I are looking at to-day."
+
+
+
+
+_April_
+
+
+Pauline in the happiness which had come to her lately had forgotten Miss
+Verney; and when one morning she met that solitary spinster, whose pale
+and watery eyes were uttering such reproach, she promised impulsively to
+come to tea that very afternoon and bring with her a friend.
+
+"You've certainly quite deserted me lately," said Miss Verney in that
+wavering falsetto of hers through which the echoes maybe of a once
+admired soprano could still be distinctly heard.
+
+"Oh, but I've been so busy, Miss Verney."
+
+"Yes, I daresay. Well, I used to be busy once myself. Here's lovely
+weather for the first of April. Quite a treat to be out of doors. Now,
+don't make an April fool of your poor old Miss Verney by forgetting to
+come this afternoon. Who's the friend you are anxious to bring?"
+
+"Mr. Hazlewood. He's living at Plashers Mead, you know."
+
+"Dear me, a gentleman? Then he won't enjoy coming to see me."
+
+"But he will, Miss Verney, because he writes poetry, and you know you
+told me once that you used to write poetry."
+
+"Ah, well, dear me, that's a secret I should never have let out. Well,
+good-bye, my dear, and pray don't forget to come, for I shall be having
+cakes, you know."
+
+Miss Verney, whose unhappy love-affair in a dim past had been Pauline's
+cherished secret since the afternoon of her seventeenth birthday, bowed
+with much dignity; and Pauline, lest she should offend her again, had to
+turn round several times to smile and wave farewells before Miss Verney
+disappeared into the confectioner's shop.
+
+When she got home, Pauline asked her mother if she thought it mattered
+taking Guy to tea with Miss Verney.
+
+"Because, of course, she's sure to guess that we're engaged."
+
+"But, my dear child, you're not really engaged, at least not publicly.
+You must remember that."
+
+"But I could tell Miss Verney as a great secret. And I know she won't
+tell anyone because once she told me a great secret about herself.
+Besides, she's gone to buy cakes for tea, and if I don't take Guy she'll
+be so dreadfully disappointed."
+
+"Why can't you take Guy without saying anything about being engaged?"
+asked Mrs. Grey.
+
+"Oh, because Miss Verney is so frightfully sharp, especially in matters
+of love. I think you don't like her much, Mother darling, but really,
+you know, she _is_ sympathetic."
+
+Mrs. Grey looked hopelessly round for advice, but as neither Margaret
+nor Monica were in the room, she had to give way to Pauline's entreaty,
+and the leave was granted.
+
+When Guy arrived at the Rectory about three o'clock, he seemed delighted
+at the notion of going out to tea with Pauline, though he looked a
+little doubtfully at the others, as if he wondered at the permission's
+being accorded. However, they set out in an atmosphere of good-will, and
+Pauline was happy to have him beside her walking up Wychford High
+Street. Miss Verney's house was at the very top of the hill, which meant
+that the eyes of the whole population had to be encountered before they
+reached it. They could see Miss Verney watching for them, as they walked
+across the slip of grass that with white posts and a festoon of white
+chains warded off general traffic. The moment they reached the gate, her
+head vanished from the window; and they had scarcely rung the bell,
+when the maid had opened the door. And they were scarcely inside the
+hall, when Miss Verney came grandly out of the drawing-room (which was
+not the front room) to greet them.
+
+"How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Miss Grey will have told you that I rarely
+have visitors. And therefore this is a great pleasure."
+
+Pauline threw sparkling blue glances at Guy for the Miss Grey, while
+they followed her into the drawing-room full of cats and ornaments. The
+cats all marched round Guy in a sort of solemn quadrille, so that what
+with the embarrassment they caused to his legs and the difficulty that
+the rest of him found with the ornaments, Pauline really had to lead him
+safely to a chair.
+
+"Have you been long in Wychford, Mr. Hazlewood?" enquired Miss Verney.
+"I fear you'll find the valley very damp. We who live at the top of the
+hill consider the air up here so much more bracing. But then, you see,
+my father was a sailor."
+
+So the conversation progressed, conversation that was cut as thinly and
+nicely as the lozenges of bread and butter, fragments of which on
+various parts of the rug the cats were eating with that apparent
+difficulty cats always find in mastication.
+
+"I sadly spoil my pets," said Miss Verney. "For really, you see, they
+are my best friends, as I always say to people who look surprized at my
+indulgence of them.... Would you mind telling Bellerophon he's left a
+piece of butter just by your foot, that you might otherwise tread into
+the carpet. You'll forgive my fussiness, but then, you see, my father
+was a sailor."
+
+Pauline was longing to know what Miss Verney thought of Guy, and
+presently when tea was over she suggested that he should be shown the
+garden, the green oblong of which looked so inviting from the low
+windows.
+
+"Dear me, the garden," said Miss Verney. "Rather early in the year,
+don't you think, for the garden? My shoes. For though my father was a
+sailor, I do not, alas, inherit his constitution. I really think,
+Pauline, we must wait for the garden. But perhaps Mr. Hazlewood would
+care...."
+
+"Guy, you must see the garden," Pauline declared.
+
+So Guy rose and, having listened to Miss Verney's instructions about the
+key in the garden-door, went out followed by several cats. A moment
+later they saw him still with two cats in attendance bending with an
+appearance of profound interest over the narrow flower-beds that fringed
+the grass.
+
+"I declare that Pegasus and dear Bellerophon have taken quite a fancy to
+him. Most remarkable and gratifying," said Miss Verney, watching from
+the window through which the western sun flaming upon her thin hair
+kindled a few golden strands from the ashes that seemed before entirely
+to have quenched them.
+
+"Miss Verney, can you keep a secret?" asked Pauline breathlessly.
+
+"My dear, you forget my father was a sailor," replied Miss Verney
+supporting with each arm a martial elbow.
+
+"He and I are engaged," Pauline whispered through a blush.
+
+"Pauline, you amaze me," the old maid exclaimed. "My dear child, I hope
+you'll let me wish you happiness." She came to Pauline and kissed with
+cold lips her cheek. "You have always been so kind and considerate to
+me. Yes, I am sure, without irreverence I can say you have been to me as
+welcome as the sun. I pray that you will always be happy. Ah, the dear
+fellow," exclaimed Miss Verney, looking with the utmost affection to
+where Guy was now completing the circuit of her borders. "The dear
+fellow, how droll he must have thought it when I referred to you as Miss
+Grey. Though to this flinging about of Christian names without regard
+for the sacredness of real intimacy, which is so common nowadays, I
+shall never submit."
+
+Miss Verney tapped upon the window to summon Guy within again. When he
+was back in the drawing-room, she fluttered toward him and took his
+hand.
+
+"My dear Mr. Hazlewood, for my father having been a sailor I must always
+be rather blunter than most people, I have to congratulate you. This
+dear child! My greatest friend in Wychford, and indeed really, so
+scattered now are all the people I have known, I might almost say, my
+greatest friend anywhere! You are a most enviable young man. But the
+secret is safe with me. No one shall know."
+
+"I had to tell Miss Verney," Pauline explained.
+
+"I'm delighted for Miss Verney to know," said Guy. "I only wish the time
+were come when everybody could know."
+
+Miss Verney was in a state of the greatest excitement, and made so many
+references to her nautical paternity that Pauline half expected her to
+hitch up her skirt and dance a triumphant hornpipe in the middle of the
+cats' slow waltzing.
+
+"This dear child," Miss Verney went on, clasping rapturous hands. "I
+have known her since she was twelve. The dearest little thing! I really
+wish you had known her; you would have fallen in love with her then, I
+do declare." And Miss Verney laughed in a high treble at her joke.
+"Lately I have been rather worried because I had an idea I was being
+deserted. But now I understand the reason. Oh, the secret is perfectly
+safe. In me you have a true sympathizer. Pauline will tell you that with
+the people she loves, there is no one so sympathetic as I am." Suddenly
+Miss Verney stopped and looked very suspicious. "You're not making an
+April fool of me?" she asked.
+
+"Miss Verney!" Pauline gasped. "How could you think I would joke about
+love?"
+
+The old maid's forehead cleared.
+
+"Of course you wouldn't, my dear, but really this morning I have been so
+pestered by some of the boys ringing the bell and saying my chimney is
+on fire that ... ah, but, I am ashamed of myself. You must forgive me,
+Pauline. And is it not the thing to drink the health of lovers? There is
+a bottle of sherry, I feel sure. I brought several bottles that were
+left from my father's cellar, when I first came to Wychford eight years
+ago, and they have not all been drunk yet."
+
+She rang the bell, and when the maid came in said:
+
+"Mabel, if you take my keys and open the store-cupboard, you will find
+some bottles of wine on the top shelf. Pray open one, and having
+carefully decanted it, bring it as carefully in with three glasses on
+the silver tray."
+
+Mabel naturally looked very much astonished at this order, and while she
+was gone Miss Verney thought one after another of all the reasons that
+Mabel could possibly ascribe to her request for wine.
+
+"But she will never guess the real one," said Miss Verney.
+
+The wine was brought in and poured out. Miss Verney coughed a great deal
+over her glass, and two small pink spots appeared on her cheeks.
+
+"I am sure," she said, "that when my dear father brought this wine back
+from Portugal, he would have been happy to know that some of it would be
+drunk to the health of two young people in love. For he was, if I may
+say so without impropriety, a great lady's man."
+
+Pauline and Guy drank Miss Verney's health in turn and thanked her for
+the good omens she had wished for their love.
+
+"My dear Pauline," said Miss Verney. "Do you think? I wonder if I dare.
+You know what I mean? Do you think I could show it to Mr. Hazlewood?"
+
+"Do you mean the miniature?" whispered Pauline.
+
+Miss Verney nodded.
+
+"Oh, do, Miss Verney, do! Guy would so appreciate it," Pauline declared.
+
+The old maid went to her bureau and from a small locked drawer took out
+a leather case which she handed to Guy.
+
+"The spring is broken. It opens very easily," she said in a gentle
+voice.
+
+Pauline forgot her shyness of Guy and leant over his shoulder, while he
+looked at the picture of a young man rosy with that too blooming youth
+which miniatures always portray.
+
+"We were engaged to be married," said Miss Verney. "But circumstances
+alter cases; and we were never married."
+
+Pauline looked down at Guy with tears in her eyes and felt miserable to
+be so happy when poor Miss Verney had been so sad.
+
+"Thank you very much for showing me that," said Guy.
+
+Soon it was time to say good-bye to Miss Verney and, having made many
+promises to come quickly again, they left her and went down the steep
+High Street, where in many of the windows of the houses there were
+hyacinths and on the old walls plum-trees in bloom.
+
+"Pauline," said Guy. "Let's go for a walk to-morrow morning and see if
+the gorse is in bloom on Wychford down. There are so many things I want
+to tell you."
+
+"Do you think Mother will let us?"
+
+"If we can go to tea with Miss Verney," said Guy, "we shall be able to
+go for a walk. And I never see you alone in the Rectory."
+
+"I'll ask Mother," said Pauline.
+
+"You want to come?"
+
+"Of course. Of course."
+
+"You see," said Guy. "It's one of the places where I nearly told you I
+loved you. And it wouldn't be fair not to tell you there, as soon as I
+can."
+
+In the Rectory everybody was anxious to know how Guy liked Pauline's
+Miss Verney.
+
+"Margaret, you are really unkind to laugh at her," protested Pauline.
+"Guy understands, if you don't, how frightfully sympathetic she is. She
+is one of the people who really understands about being in love."
+
+Margaret laughed.
+
+"Don't I?" she said.
+
+"No, indeed, Margaret, sometimes I don't think you do," said Pauline.
+
+"Nor I?" asked Monica.
+
+"You don't at all!" Pauline declared.
+
+"Well, if it means being like Miss Verney, I hope I never shall," said
+Monica.
+
+"Now, children, children," interrupted Mrs. Grey. "You must not be cross
+with one another."
+
+"Well, Mother, Margaret and Monica are not to laugh at Miss Verney,"
+Pauline insisted. "And to-morrow Guy and I want as a great exception to
+go for a walk to Wychford down. May we?"
+
+"Well, as a great exception, yes," said Mrs. Grey; and Guy with
+apparently an access of grateful industry said he must go home and work.
+
+Pauline wondered what Guy would have to tell her to-morrow, and she fell
+asleep that night, hoping she would not be shy to-morrow; for, since Guy
+was still no more to Pauline than the personification of a vague and
+happy love just as Miss Verney's miniature was the personification of
+one that was not happy, she always was a little alarmed when the
+personification became real.
+
+Wychford down seemed to rest on billowy clouds next morning, so light
+was Pauline's heart, so light was the earth on which she walked; and
+when Guy kissed her the larks in their blue world were not far away, so
+near did she soar upon his kiss to the rays of their glittering plumes.
+
+"Every time I see you," said Guy, "the world seems to offer itself to us
+more completely. I never kissed you before under the sky like this."
+
+She wished he would not say the actual word, for it made her realize
+herself in his arms, and brought back in a flood all her shyness.
+
+"I think it's dry enough to sit on this stone," said Guy.
+
+So they sat on one of the outcrops of Wychford freestone that all around
+were thrusting themselves up from the grass like old grey animals.
+
+"Now tell me more about Miss Verney," he went on. "Why was her
+love-affair unhappy?"
+
+"Oh, she never told me much," said Pauline.
+
+"You and I haven't very long," said Guy. "Love travels by so fast. You
+and I mustn't have secrets."
+
+"I haven't any secrets," said Pauline. "I had one about Richard, but you
+know about him. And that was Margaret's secret really. Why do you say
+that, Guy?"
+
+"I was thinking of myself," he answered. "I was thinking how little you
+know about me--really not much more than you know of Miss Verney's
+miniature."
+
+"Guy, how strange," she said. "Last night I thought that."
+
+Then he began to talk in halting sentences, turned away from her all the
+time and digging his stick deep down in the turf, while Bob looked on
+with anxious curiosity for what these excavations would produce.
+
+"Pauline, I so adore you that it clouds everything to realize that
+before I loved you, I should have had love-affairs with other girls. Of
+course they meant nothing, but now they make me miserable. Shall I tell
+you about them or shall I ... can I blot them for ever out of my mind?"
+
+"Oh, don't tell me about them, don't tell me about them," Pauline
+murmured in a low hurried voice. She felt that if Guy said another word
+she would run from him in a wild terror that would never let her rest,
+that would urge her out over the down's edge in desperate descent.
+
+"I don't want to tell you about them," said Guy. "But, they've stood so
+at the back of my thoughts whenever I have been with you; and yesterday
+at Miss Verney's, I had a sense of guilt as if I were responsible in
+some way for her unhappiness. I had to tell you, Pauline."
+
+She sat silent under the song of the larks that in streams of melodious
+light poured through their wings.
+
+"Why do you say nothing?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, don't let's talk about it any more. Promise me never to talk about
+it. Oh, Guy, why 'of course'? Why 'of course'?"
+
+"Of course?" he repeated.
+
+"'Of course they meant nothing.' That seems so dreadful to me. Perhaps
+you won't understand."
+
+"Dear Pauline, isn't that 'of course' the reason they torment me?" he
+said. "It isn't kind of you to assume anything else."
+
+She forgave him in that instant; and before she knew what she had done
+had put her hand impulsively on his. To the Pauline who made that
+gesture he was no more the unapproachable lover but someone whom she had
+wounded involuntarily.
+
+"My heart of hearts, my adored Pauline."
+
+With a sigh she faded to him: with a sigh the dog sat down by his
+master's neglected stick: with a sigh the April wind stole through the
+thickets of gorse and out over the down. And always more and more
+dauntlessly the larks flung before them their fountainous notes to
+pierce those blue spaces that burned between the clouds. No more was
+said of the past that morning, and with April come they were happy
+sitting up there, although, as Guy said, such weather could hardly be
+expected to last. And since this walk was a great exception to the rule
+of their life, they were back at the Rectory very punctually, so that by
+propitiating everybody with good behaviour they might soon demand
+another exception.
+
+That night there recurred to Pauline when she was in her room a sudden
+memory of what Guy had said to her about girls with whom he had had
+love-affairs; and with the stark forms of shadows they made a procession
+across her walls in the candlelight. She wished now she had let Guy tell
+her more, so that she could give distinguishing lineaments of humanity
+to each of these maddening figures. What were they like and why, taken
+unaware, was she set on fire with rage to know them? For a long while
+Pauline tossed sleeplessly on that bed to which usually morning came so
+soon; and even when the candle was put out, she seemed to feel these
+forms of Guy's confession all about her. To-morrow she must see him
+again; she could no longer bear to think of him alone. These shapes that
+from his past vaguely jeered at her were to him endowed, each, with what
+memories. Oh, she could cry out with exasperation even in this silent
+house where she had lived so long unvexed.
+
+"What is happening to me? What is happening to me?" asked Pauline, as
+the darkness drew nearer to her. "Why doesn't Margaret come?"
+
+She jumped out of bed and ran trembling to her sister's room.
+
+"Pauline, what is it?" asked Margaret starting up.
+
+"I'm frightened, Margaret. I'm frightened. My room seemed full of
+people."
+
+"You goose. What people?"
+
+"Oh, Margaret, I do love you."
+
+She kissed her sister passionately; and Margaret, who was usually so
+lazy, got out of bed and came back with her to her room; where she read
+aloud Alice in Wonderland, sitting by the bed with her dark hair fallen
+about her slim shoulders.
+
+In the morning the impression of the night's alarm remained sharply
+enough with Pauline to make her anxious to see Guy, without waiting for
+the ordained interval to which they should submit; and all that day,
+when he did not come, for the first time she felt definitely the
+clamorous and persistent desire for his company, the absence of which
+the old perfection of her home was no longer able to counteract. For the
+first time in her life the Rectory had a sort of emptiness; and there
+was not a room on this tediously beautiful day, nor any nook in the
+garden, which could calm her with the familiar assurance of home. When
+the time for music came round, that night, it seemed to Pauline not at
+all worth while to play quartets in celebration of a day that had been
+so barren of events.
+
+"Don't you want to play?" they asked her in surprize.
+
+"Why should we play?" she countered. "But I'll listen to you, if you
+like."
+
+Of course she was persuaded into taking her part, and never had she been
+so often out of tune and never had her strings snapped so continuously.
+Always until to-night the performance of music had brought to her the
+peaceful irresponsibleness of being herself in a pattern: now this sense
+of design was irritating her with an arduous repression, until at last
+she put down her violin and refused to play any more. Pauline felt that
+the others knew the cause of her ill-temper, but none of them said
+anything about Guy and, with her for audience in one of the Caroline
+chairs, they played trios instead.
+
+Next day when Guy did come, it was wet; and Pauline wished Margaret
+would leave them together, so that they could talk: but Margaret stayed
+all the afternoon in the nursery, and Pauline made up her mind that
+somehow she must go for another walk with Guy.
+
+She found her mother alone in the drawing-room before dinner.
+
+"Mother, don't you think, Guy and I might go for a walk to-morrow?"
+
+"Oh, Pauline, you only went for a walk together the day before
+yesterday. And you really must remember you're not engaged. The Wychford
+people will gossip so, and that will make your father angry."
+
+"Well, why can't we be engaged openly?"
+
+"No, not yet. Now, please don't ask me. Pauline, I beg you will say no
+more about it."
+
+"Then I can go to-morrow," said Pauline. "Oh, Mother, you are so sweet
+to me."
+
+Mrs. Grey looked rather perplexed and as if she were vainly trying to
+determine what she had said to make Pauline suppose that leave for walks
+had been given. However, she evidently supposed it had; and when next
+Guy came to the Rectory, Pauline whispered to him they could go for a
+walk if they did not have to go through Wychford. She could not
+understand herself when she found it so difficult to tell Guy this
+delightful news, for it was she who had managed it; and yet here she was
+blushing in the revelation.
+
+The fact that Wychford was out of bounds really made their walk more
+magical, for Pauline and Guy went past the lily-pond and the lawn in
+front of the house and slipped through the little wicket in the high
+grey wall, as it were, in the very eye of the nursery-window. They
+dallied for a while in the paddock, peering for fritillary buds; then
+they crossed the rickety bridge to the water-meadows, a territory not
+spied upon, silver-rosed with lady-smocks. To-day they would visit the
+peninsula where under the moon they first had met.
+
+Pauline, as they walked over the meads, no longer had the desire to ask
+Guy more about his tale of old loves. His presence beside her had
+rested her fears; and she made up her mind that the disquiet of the
+other evening had been mere fatigue after the excitement of the day.
+This secluded world from which they were now approaching the even
+greater seclusion of their peninsula gave itself all to her and Guy.
+
+"How often have I been here without you," said Guy. "How often have I
+wished you were beside me, and now you are beside me."
+
+They were standing in a wreath of snowy blackthorn, that almost veiled
+even the narrow entrance to this demesne they held in fief of April.
+
+"What did you think about me that night we met?" Guy asked.
+
+And for perhaps the hundredth time she whispered how she had liked him
+very much.
+
+"Why don't you ask me what I thought about you?"
+
+"What did you?" she whispered again.
+
+"I went to sleep thinking of you," he said. "I did not know your name. I
+loved you then, I think. Pauline, when next September comes, we'll pick
+mushrooms together, shall we? And I shall never gather any mushrooms,
+because I shall always be gathering your hands. And the September
+afterward. Pauline! Shall we be married? Pauline Hazlewood! Say that."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Whisper it."
+
+But she could not, and yet in her heart the foolish names were singing
+together.
+
+"How can I leave you?" Guy demanded.
+
+"Leave me?" she echoed.
+
+"I ought. I ought. You see, if I don't, I shall never persuade my father
+that we must be married next year. I must go to London and show that I'm
+in earnest."
+
+"But when will you go?" said Pauline in deep dismay.
+
+"Is your voice sad?" he asked. "Pauline, don't you want me to go?"
+
+"Of course I don't," she replied, turning up to his a face so miserable
+that he held her to him and vowed he would not go.
+
+"My dearest, I only thought it was my duty, but if you will believe in
+me, then let me stay in Wychford. After all, you are young. I am young.
+Why, you won't be twenty till May morning. And I shan't be twenty-three
+till next August. Even if we wait three years to be married, we shall be
+always together, and it won't seem so long."
+
+So with her arm in his Pauline walked on through the lady-smocks,
+thinking that never had anyone a lover so wonderful as this long-legged
+lover beside her.
+
+Holy Week was at hand, and in the variety of functions that Monica
+insisted her father should hold and her family attend Pauline saw little
+of Guy, although he came very often to church, sitting as stiff and
+awkward, she thought, as a brass knight on a tomb. However, it pleased
+her greatly Guy should come to church, since it pleased her family. Yet
+that was least of all the true reason, and Pauline used to send the
+angels that came to visit her down through the church to visit Guy; her
+simple faith glowed with richer illumination when she thought of him in
+church, and while her mother and Monica tried to pull the Wychford choir
+through the notation of Solesmes, and while Margaret knelt apart in
+carved abstraction, Pauline prayed that Guy would all his life wish to
+keep Holy Week with her like this.
+
+Pauline hurried through a shower to church on Easter Morning, and shook
+mingled tears and raindrops from herself when she saw that Guy was come
+to Communion. So then that angel had travelled from her bedside last
+night to hover over Guy and bid him wake early next morning, because it
+was Easter Day. With never so holy a calm had she knelt in the jewelled
+shadows of that chancel or retired from the altar to find her pew
+imparadised. When the people came out of church the sun was shining, and
+on the trees and on the tombstones a multitude of birds were singing.
+Never had Pauline felt the spirit of Eastertide uplift her with such a
+joy, joy for her lover beside her, joy for Summer close at hand, joy for
+all the joy that Easter could bring to the soul.
+
+There were Easter eggs at breakfast dyed yellow, blue and purple. There
+were new white trumpet daffodils for the Rector to gaze at. There was
+satisfaction for Monica in having defeated for ever Anglican chants, and
+for Margaret a letter from Richard, though, to be sure, she did not seem
+so glad of this as Pauline would have wished. There was all that happy
+scene and a new quartet for her mother; and for Guy and herself there
+was a long walk this afternoon to wherever they wanted to go.
+
+At the beginning of the week Monica and Margaret went away on a visit,
+to which they set out with the usual lamentations now redoubled because
+they suddenly realized it was universal holiday time. With her two
+eldest daughters away from the Rectory, Mrs. Grey was no match for
+Pauline; so she and Guy had a week of freedom, wandering over the
+country where they willed.
+
+Wychford down saw them, and the water-meadows of the western valley. The
+road to Fairfield knew their footsteps, and they even went to tea with
+Mr. and Mrs. Ford, who talked of Richard out in India and bemoaned the
+inferiority of their garden to the Rector's. They wandered by treeless
+roads that led to the hills, and to the grassy solitudes that seemed
+made to be walked over hand in hand. Once they went as far as the forest
+of Wych, a wild woodland that lay remote from any village and where
+along the glades myriads of primroses stared at them. Yet, though that
+day had seemed to Pauline almost more delicately fair than any of their
+days, it ended dismally with April in black misfeature, and before they
+reached home they were wet through.
+
+By ill luck her mother met her just as she was hurrying up to her room.
+
+"Pauline," she said with a good deal of agitation. "I must forbid these
+walks with Guy every day. Wet to the skin! Oh dear, how careless of him
+to take you so far. You must be reasonable and unselfish. It's so
+difficult for me. Father asked where you were this afternoon, and I had
+to pretend to be deaf. He notices more than you think. Now really Guy
+must not come for a week, and there must be no more walks."
+
+Guy however came the next afternoon, and not only was he reproved by
+Mrs. Grey for yesterday's disaster, but actually he and Pauline were
+only allowed a quarter of an hour together in the garden.
+
+"I'll go into Oxford for a week," said Guy with inspiration. "And then
+we shan't be tempted to see each other this week, and if we don't see
+each other this week, perhaps next week we shall be able to go out
+again. Besides, I want to make arrangements about bringing the canoe
+down. My friend Fane has wired to me to go and stay with him. He's up
+for the Easter vac, working. Shall I go?"
+
+Pauline wanted to say no, but she was even after all these walks still
+too shy to bid him stay.
+
+"Perhaps you'd better go," she agreed. "But Guy, come back for my
+birthday."
+
+"As if I should stay away for that! Pauline, will you write to me? At
+least in letters you won't be shy to say you love me."
+
+"Oh, no, Guy, no. My writing is so horrid."
+
+"But you must write. Pauline, if you want to know why I'm really going
+away, it's simply to have a letter from you."
+
+"You must write to me first then," she whispered.
+
+In truth Pauline felt terrified to think how she would even begin a
+letter to Guy. He would cease to love her any more after she had written
+to him. He would hate her stupid letters.
+
+"I shall be glad to see Michael again," said Guy. "But I suppose I must
+not say anything about you. No, I won't talk about you. Oxford will be
+wonderfully quiet without undergraduates, and I shall have letters from
+you."
+
+Mrs. Grey came out into the garden.
+
+"Now, Guy, I think you ought to go. Because really the Rector is getting
+worried about you and Pauline."
+
+"I'm going into Oxford, Mrs. Grey."
+
+"Well, that is a charming idea--charming, yes."
+
+"But I'll be back for Pauline's birthday."
+
+"Charming--charming," Mrs. Grey still declared. "The Rector will have
+forgotten all about it by then."
+
+So Guy left Pauline for a week, and perhaps for more than a week.
+Margaret and Monica came home next day, and really, she thought, it was
+upsetting all the old ways of her life, when she found herself not very
+much interested in what they had been doing. Miss Verney with her
+ecstatic praise of Guy was better company; but next morning her first
+love-letter arrived, and she could not resist peeping into it at
+breakfast.
+
+     99 ST. GILES
+
+     OXFORD
+
+     _April 18_.
+
+     _My adored Pauline,_
+
+     _It's really all I can do to stay in Oxford. Even Fane seems dull
+     and though his rooms are jolly, I long for you._
+
+     _Have I told you what you are to me? Have I once been able to tell
+     you...._
+
+Ah, there were pages crammed full and full of words that she must read
+alone. She could not read them here with her mother and sisters looking
+at her over the table. She must read them high in her white fastness at
+the top of the house. There all the morning she sat, and when she had
+read of his love once, she read of it again and then again, and once
+again. How foolish her answering letter would be: how disappointed Guy
+would be; but since she had promised, she must write to him: and,
+sitting at her desk that was full of childish things, she curled herself
+over the note paper.
+
+
+
+
+_May_
+
+
+A pleasant company of thoughts travelled with Guy and his bicycle on the
+road to Oxford. In this easy progress the material hindrances to
+marriage were not seeming very important, and as he thought of his love
+for Pauline it spread before him, untroublous like the road down which
+he was spinning before a light breeze. With so much to compensate for
+their brief parting it was impossible to feel depressed; and as Guy drew
+near the city he felt he was an undergraduate again; and when he greeted
+Michael Fane in St. Giles he could positively hear his own Oxford drawl
+again. It was really delightful to be sitting here in view of his old
+college; and when after lunch he and Michael started for Wytham woods,
+more and more Guy was in an Oxford dream and carrying off the fantastic
+notion of the Parnassian academy with all the debonair confidence of his
+second year. Yet Guy knew that the scheme was absurd and when Michael
+argued against it in his solemn way he found himself taking the other
+side from a mere undergraduate pleasure in argument. Indeed, Michael
+declared he had become a freshman since he went down, which made Guy
+stop dead, ankle-deep in kingcups, and laugh aloud for his youth, with
+hidden thoughts of Pauline to make him rejoice that he was young. He
+laughed again at Michael's seriousness and flung his scheme to the broad
+clouds, for on this generous day he and Pauline were enough, and neither
+anybody else's opinion nor anybody else's help was worth a second
+thought. The heartening warmth, however, did not last; and when toward
+evening the sun faded in a blanche of watery clouds with a cold wind
+for aftermath, Guy felt Michael might have been more sympathetic. Rather
+silently they walked back from Godstow, with Pauline between them; so
+that after all, Guy thought, Michael was still an undergraduate, whereas
+he had embarked upon life.
+
+That night, however, when the curtains were drawn across Michael's
+bay-window that overhung the whispering and ancient thoroughfare; when
+the fire burned high and the tobacco-smoke clouded the glimmer of the
+books on the walls; when his chair creaked with that old Oxford
+creaking, Guy forgave Michael for any lack in his reception of the great
+plan. After all, he was writing to Pauline, while his host was reading
+the Constitutional History of England at a table littered with heavy
+volumes, on which he brooded like a melancholy spectator of ruins. He
+must not be hard on Michael, who had not yet touched life, when for
+himself the vision of Pauline was wreathing this old room with starry
+blooms of wild rose. The letter was finished, and Guy went out to drop
+it in the pillar-box. His old college brooded at him across the road;
+to-morrow he must go and look up some of the dons; to-morrow Pauline
+would get his letter; to-night there would be rain; to-morrow Pauline
+would get his letter! The envelope, as it shuffled down into the
+letter-box, seemed to say 'yes'.
+
+When Guy was back in the fumy St. Giles room, he decided there was
+something rather finely ascetic about Michael seated there and reading
+imperturbably in the lamp-light. His courteously fatigued manner was
+merely that of the idealist who had overreached himself; there was
+nothing bilious about him, not even so much cynicism as had slightly
+chilled Guy's own career at Oxford; rather did there emanate from
+Michael a kind of mediaeval steadfastness comparable only to those stone
+faces that look calmly down upon the transitory congregations of their
+church. Michael had this solemn presence that demanded an upward look,
+and once again an upward look, until without conversation the solemnity
+became a little disquieting. Guy felt bound to interrupt with
+light-hearted talk of his own that slow still gaze across the lampshine.
+
+"Dash it, Michael, don't brood there like a Memento Mori. Put away Magna
+Charta and talk to me. You used to talk."
+
+"You talk, Guy. You've been living alone all this time. You must have a
+great deal to say."
+
+So Guy flung theories of rhyme and metre to overwhelm Magna Charta; and,
+next day, he and Michael walked all over Oxford in the rain, he himself
+still talking. The day after, there came with the sun a letter from
+Pauline which he took away with him to read in the garden of St. John's,
+leaving Michael to Magna Charta.
+
+There was nobody on the lawn, and Guy sat down on a wooden seat in air
+that was faintly perfumed by the precocious blooms of a lilac breaking
+to this unusual warmth of April. Unopened the letter rested in his hand:
+for his name written in this girlish charactery took on the romantic
+look of a name in an old tale. A breathlessness was in the air, such as
+had brooded upon Pauline's first kiss; and Guy sat marmoreal and rapt in
+an ecstasy of anticipation that he would never have from any other
+letter; so still he was, that an alighting blackbird slipt over the
+grass almost to his feet before it realized the mistake and shrilled
+away on startled wings into the bushes behind. The trance of expectation
+was spoilt, and Guy with a sigh broke the envelope.
+
+     WYCHFORD RECTORY
+
+     OXON.
+
+     _Wednesday._
+
+     _I am writing to you at my desk. I began this morning but it was
+     time to go out when I began. Now it's after tea. Margaret came in
+     just now and said I looked all crinkled up like a shell: it's
+     because I simply don't know how to write to you. I have read your
+     letter over and over and over again. I never thought there could be
+     such a wonderful letter in the world. But I feel very sorry for
+     poor Richard who can't write letters as exquisite as yours. I
+     really feel miserable about him. And this letter to you makes me
+     feel miserable because I can't write letters even as well as
+     Richard. Mother was glad you thought of going to Oxford because she
+     says we are a great responsibility to her. Isn't she sweet? She
+     really is you know. So I talked to Father myself very seriously. I
+     explained to him that I was quite old enough to know my own mind,
+     and he listened to all the things I told him about you. He said he
+     supposed it was innevvitable, which looks very funny somehow. Are
+     you laughing at my spelling? And then he said it was nothing to do
+     with him. So of course I rushed off to Mother and told her and when
+     you come back we are to be allowed to go out twice a week and in
+     three more months we can be engaged properly. Are you happy? Only,
+     dear Guy, Mother doesn't want you to come back till my birthday.
+     She thinks the idea of you and me will be better when Father has
+     got an Iris Lorti or some name like that. He has never had a flower
+     of it before and he's so excited about it's coming out just when my
+     birthday is. Every day he goes down and pinches the stalk of it. He
+     says it's the loveliest flower in the world and grows on Mount
+     Lebanon. So if it comes out on my birthday, you and I can certainly
+     be engaged in August. Guy, I do hate my handwriting._
+
+     _Your loving
+
+     Pauline._
+
+It was a letter of gloriously good news, thought Guy, though he was a
+little disappointed not to have had the thrill of Pauline's endearment.
+Then, on the blank outside page, he saw scrawled in writing that went
+tumbling head over heels down the paper: _My darling Guy, I love you
+and underneath I have kissed the letter for you._
+
+The sentence died out in faint ink that seemed to show forth the whisper
+in which it had been written. For Guy the tumbledown letters were
+written in fire; and with the treasure in his heart of that small
+sentence, read a hundred times, he did not know how he should endure ten
+long days without Pauline, and in this old college garden, on this
+sedate and academic lawn, he cried out that he adored her as if indeed
+she were beside him in this laylocked air. At the sound of his voice the
+birds close at hand were all silent: they might have stopped to listen.
+Then a green-finch called 'sweet! sweet!', whose gentle and persistent
+proclamation was presently echoed by all the other birds twittering
+together again in the confused raptures of their Spring.
+
+The days with Michael at St. Giles went by slowly enough, and their
+fairness was a wasted boon. Guy wrote many long letters to Pauline and
+received from her another letter in which she began with '_My dearest_'
+as he had begged her. Yet when he read the herald vocative, he wished he
+had not tried to alter that old abrupt opening, for never again would
+she write in the faint ink of shyness such a sentence as had tumbled
+down the back of her first letter.
+
+Michael seemed to divine that he was in love, and Guy wondered why he
+could not tell him about it. Once or twice he nearly brought himself to
+the point, but the thought of describing Pauline kept him mute: Michael
+must see her first. The canoe would be ready at the end of the week, and
+Guy announced he should paddle it up to Wychford, travelling from the
+Isis to the upper Thames and from the upper Thames turning aside at
+Oldbridge to follow the romantic course of the Greenrush even to his own
+windows.
+
+"Rather fun," said Michael. "If the weather stays all right."
+
+"By Jove," Guy exclaimed, "I believe it was at Oldbridge Inn that I
+first met you."
+
+"On May Day three years ago," Michael agreed.
+
+And, thought Guy with a compassionate feeling for mere friendship, what
+a much more wonderful May Day should be this when Pauline was twenty.
+There was now her birthday present to buy, and Guy set out on the quest
+of it with as much exaltation as Percival may have sought the Holy
+Grail. He wished it were a ring he could buy for her; and indeed
+ultimately he could not resist a crystal set on a thin gold circlet that
+she, his rose of girls, would wear like a dewdrop. This ring, however,
+could not be his formal gift, but it would have to be offered when they
+were alone, and it must be worn nowhere but in the secret country they
+haunted with their love. The ring, uncostly as it was, took nearly all
+Guy's spare money, and he decided to buy a book for her, because in
+Oxford bookshops he still had accounts running. The April afternoon wore
+away while in his own particular bookshop kept by Mr. Brough, an ancient
+man with a white beard, he took down from the shelves volume after
+volume. At last he found a small copy of Blake's Lyrics bound in faded
+apple-green calf and tooled in a golden design of birds, berries and
+daisies. This must be for Pauline, he decided, since someone must have
+known the pattern of that nursery wall-paper and, loving it, have wished
+it to be recorded more endurably. What more exquisite coincidence could
+assure him that this book was meant for Pauline? Yet he was half-jealous
+of the unknown designer who had thought of something of which himself
+might have thought. Oh, yes, this must be for Pauline; and, as Guy
+rescued it from the dust and darkness of the old shop, he ascribed to
+the green volume an emotion of relief and was half-aware of promising to
+it a new and dearer owner who with cherishing would atone for whatever
+misfortune had brought it to these gloomy shelves.
+
+Next morning, when Guy was ready to start, Michael presented him with a
+glazier's diamond pencil.
+
+"When you fall in love, Guy, this will serve to scribble sonnets to your
+lady on the lattices of Plashers Mead. I shall probably come there
+myself when term's over."
+
+"I wish you'd come and live there with me," said Guy in a last effort to
+persuade Michael. "You see, if you shared the house, it wouldn't cost so
+much."
+
+"Perhaps I will," said Michael. "Who knows? I wonder what your Rectory
+people would think of me."
+
+"Oh, Pauline would like you. Pauline's the youngest, you know," added
+Guy. "And I'm pretty certain you'd like Monica."
+
+Michael laughed.
+
+"Really, Guy, I must tell them in Balliol that, since you went down,
+you've become an idle matchmaker. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye. You're sure you won't mind the fag of forwarding my bicycle?
+I'll send you a postcard from Oldbridge."
+
+Guy, although there was still more than a week before he would see
+Pauline, felt, as he hurried towards the boat-builder's moorings, that
+he would see her within an hour, such airy freedom did the realization
+of being on his way give to his limbs.
+
+The journey to Wychford seemed effortless, for whatever the arduousness
+of a course steadily upstream, it was nullified by the knowledge that
+every time the paddle was dipped into the water it brought him by his
+own action nearer to Pauline. A railway journey would have given him
+none of this endless anticipation, travelling through what at this time
+of the year before the season of boating was a delicious solitude. Guy
+could sing all the way if he wished, for there was nothing but
+buttercups and daisies, lambs and meadows and greening willows to
+overlook his progress. He glided beneath ancient bridges and rested at
+ancient inns, nearer every night to Pauline. Scarcely had such days a
+perceptible flight, and were not May Morning marked in flame on his
+mind's calendar, he could have forgotten time in this slow undated
+diminution.
+
+    O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
+    O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
+      That can sing both high and low:
+    Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
+    Journeys end in lovers meeting,
+      Every wise man's son doth know.
+
+This was the song Guy flung before his prow to the vision of Pauline
+leading him.
+
+    What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
+    Present mirth hath present laughter;
+      What's to come is still unsure:
+    In delay there lies no plenty;
+    Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
+      Youth's a stuff will not endure.
+
+This was the song that Guy felt Shakespeare might have written to suit
+his journey now, as he paddled higher and higher up the stream that
+flowed toward Shakespeare's own country.
+
+The banks of the Greenrush were narrower than the banks of the Thames:
+and all the way they were becoming narrower, and all the way the stream
+was running more swiftly against him. It was Sunday evening when he
+reached Plashers Mead; and so massively welded was the sago on his
+Sheraton table that Guy wondered if Miss Peasey to be ready for his
+arrival had not cooked it a week ago. But what did sago matter, when in
+his place there was laid a note from Pauline?
+
+     _My dearest,_
+
+     _I've had all your letters and I've been very frightened you'd be
+     drowned. To-morrow you've got to come to breakfast because I always
+     have breakfast in the garden on my birthday unless it pours. I'm
+     going to church at eight. I love you a thousand times more and I
+     will tell you so to-morrow and give you twenty kisses._
+
+     _Your own
+
+     Pauline._
+
+     _Do you like 'your own' better than 'your loving'?_
+
+Guy went to bed very early and resolved to wake at dawn that he might
+have the hours of the morning for thoughts of Pauline on her birthday.
+
+It was after dawn when Guy woke, for he had fallen asleep very tired
+after his week on the river; still it was scarcely six when he came down
+into the orchard, and the birds were singing as Guy thought he had never
+heard them sing before. The apple trees were already frilled with a foam
+of blossom; and on quivering boughs linnets with breasts rose-burnt by
+the winds of March throbbed out their carol. Chaffinches with flashing
+prelude of silver wings flourished a burst of song that broke as with
+too intolerable a triumph: then sought another tree and poured forth the
+triumphant song again. Thrushes, blackbirds and warblers quired
+deep-throated melodies against the multitudinous trebles of those
+undistinguished myriads that with choric paean saluted May; and on
+sudden diminuendoes could be heard the rustling canzonets of the
+goldfinches, rising and falling with reedy cadences.
+
+Guy launched his canoe, which crushed the dewy young grass in its track
+and laded the morning with one more fragrance. He paddled down the
+mill-stream and, landing presently in the Rectory paddock now in full
+blow with white and purple irises, he went through the wicket into the
+garden. When he reached the lily-pond the birds on the lawn flew away
+and left it green and empty. He stood entranced, for the hush of the
+morning lay on the house, and in the wistaria Pauline's window dreamed,
+wide open. Deep in the shrubberies the birds still twittered
+incessantly. Why was he not one of these birds, that he might light upon
+her sill? Upon Guy's senses stole the imagination of a new fragrance,
+that was being shed upon the day by that wide-open window; a fragrance
+that might be of flowers growing by the walks of her dreams. And surely
+in those flowery dreams he was beside her, since he had lost all sense
+of being still on earth. A bee flew out from Pauline's room, an enviable
+bee which had been booming with indefinite motion for how long round and
+round the white tulips on her sill. Presently another bee flew in; and
+Guy's fancy, catching hold of its wings hovered above Pauline where she
+lay sleeping. So sharp was the emotion he had of entering with the bee,
+that he was aware of brushing back her light brown hair to lean down and
+kiss her forehead; and when the belfry-clock clanged he was startled to
+find himself back upon this green and empty lawn. He must not stay here
+in front of her window, because if she woke and came in her white
+nightgown to greet the day, she would be shy to see him standing here.
+Reluctantly Guy turned away and would have gone out again by the wicket
+in the wall, if he had not come face to face with Birdwood.
+
+"I think I'm a bit early," he said in some embarrassment.
+
+"Yes, I think you are a bit early, sir," the gardener agreed.
+
+"Breakfast won't be till about half past eight?" Guy suggested.
+
+"And it's just gone the half of six," said Birdwood.
+
+"Would you like to see my canoe?" Guy asked.
+
+Birdwood looked round the lawn, seeming to imply that, such was Guy's
+liberty of behaviour, he half expected to see it floating on the
+lily-pond.
+
+"Where is it then?" he asked.
+
+Guy took him through the paddock to where the canoe lay on the
+mill-stream.
+
+"Handy little weapon," Birdwood commented.
+
+"Well, I'll see you later, I expect," said Guy embarking again. "I'm
+coming to breakfast at the Rectory."
+
+"Yes, sir," the gardener answered cheerfully. "In about another hour and
+a half I shall be looking for the eggs."
+
+Guy waved his hand and shot out into midstream where he drifted idly.
+Should he go to church this morning? Pauline must have wanted him to
+come, or she would not have told him in her note that she was going.
+They had never discussed the question of religion. Tacitly he had let it
+be supposed he believed in her simple creed, and he knew his appearance
+of faith had given pleasure to the family as well as to Pauline herself.
+Was he being very honest with her or with them? Certainly when he knelt
+at the back of the church and saw Pauline as he had seen her on Easter
+Day, it was not hard to believe in divinity. But he did not carry away
+Pauline's faith to cheer his own secret hours. The thought of herself
+was always with him, but her faith remained as a kind of vision upon
+which he was privileged to gaze on those occasions when, as it were, she
+made of it a public confession. Had he really any right to intrude upon
+such sanctities as hers would be to-day? No doubt every birthday morning
+she went to church, and the strangeness of his presence seemed almost an
+unhallowing of such rites. Even to attend her birthday breakfast began
+to appear unjustifiable, as he thought of all the birthday breakfasts
+that for so many years had passed by without him and without any idea
+of there ever being any necessity for him. No doubt this morning he,
+miserable and unworthy sceptic, would be dowered with the half of her
+prayers, and in that consciousness could he bear to accept them,
+kneeling at the back of the church, unless he believed utterly they were
+sanctified by something more than her own maidenhood? Yet if he did not
+go to church, Pauline would be disappointed, because she would surely
+expect him. She would be like the blessed damozel leaning out from the
+gold bar of Heaven and weeping because he did not come. There was no
+gain from honesty, if she were made miserable by it. It were better a
+thousand times he should kneel humbly at the back of the church and pray
+for the faith that was hers. And why could he not believe as she
+believed? If her faith were true, he suffered from injustice by having
+no grace accorded to him. Or did there indeed lie between him and her
+the impassable golden bar of Heaven? A cloud swept across the morning
+sun, and Guy shivered. Then the church-bell began to clang and, urging
+his canoe towards the churchyard, he jumped ashore and knelt at the back
+of the church.
+
+Guy had been aware during the service of the saintly pageant along the
+windows of the clerestory slowly dimming, and he was not surprized, when
+he came out, to see that clouds were dusking the first brilliance of the
+day. Mrs. Grey, Monica and Margaret had prayed each in a different part
+of the church; but now in the porch they fluttered about Pauline with an
+intimate and happy awareness of her birthday, almost seeming to wrap her
+in it, so that she in flushed responsiveness wore all her twenty years
+like a bunch of roses. Guy was sensitive to the faint reluctance with
+which her mother and sisters resigned her to him on this birthday
+morning; but yet to follow them back from church with Pauline beside him
+in a trepidation of blushes and sparkles was too dear a joy for him in
+turn to resign. Half-way to the house Pauline remembered that her
+father had been left alone. This was too wide a breach in her birthday's
+accustomed ceremony, and much dismayed she begged Guy to go back with
+her. At that moment the rest of the family had disappeared round a curve
+in the walk, and Guy caught Pauline to him, complaining she had not
+kissed him since he was home.
+
+"Oh, but Father!" she said breathlessly tugging. "He'll be so hurt if
+we've gone on without him."
+
+Guy felt a stab of jealousy that even a father should intrude upon his
+birthday kiss for her.
+
+"Oh, very well," he said half coldly. "If to see me again after a
+fortnight means so little...."
+
+"Guy," said Pauline, "you're not cross with me? And Father was so sweet
+about you. He said, 'Is Guy coming to breakfast?' Guy, you mustn't mind
+if I think a lot about everybody to-day. You see, this is my first
+birthday when there has been you."
+
+"Oh, don't remind me of the years before we met," said Guy. "I hate them
+all. No, I don't," he exclaimed in swift penitence. "I love them all.
+Hurry, darling girl, or we shall miss him."
+
+Pauline's eyes were troubled by a question, behind which lurked a
+fleeting alarm.
+
+"Kiss me," she murmured. "I was horrid."
+
+A kind of austerity informed their kiss of reconciliation, an austerity
+that suited the sky of impending rain under which they were standing in
+the light of the last wan sunbeam. Then they hurried to the churchyard
+where in the porch the Rector was looking vaguely round for the company
+he expected.
+
+"Lucky my friend Lorteti came out yesterday. This rain will ruin him.
+You must take Guy to see that iris, my dear. Fancy, twenty-one to-day,
+dear me! dear me! most remarkable!"
+
+Pauline danced with delight behind the Rector's back.
+
+"He thinks I'm twenty-one," she whispered. "Oh, Guy, isn't he sweet? And
+he called you Guy. Oh, Francis," she cried. "Do let me kiss you."
+
+There was a short debate on the probability of the rain's coming before
+breakfast was done, but it was decided, thanks to Birdwood's optimism,
+to accept the risk of interruption by sitting down outside. The table
+was on the lawn, Pauline's presents lying in a heap at the head. As one
+by one she opened the packets, everybody stood round her, not merely her
+mother and father and sisters and Guy, but also Birdwood and elderly
+Janet and Mrs. Unger the cook and Polly who helped Mrs. Unger.
+
+"Oh, I'm so excited," said Pauline. "Oh, I do hope it won't rain. Oh,
+thank you, Mrs. Unger. What a beautiful frame!"
+
+"I hope yaw'll find someone to put in it, miss," said Mrs. Unger with a
+glance of stately admiration toward her present and a triumphant side
+look at Janet, who after many years' superintendence of Pauline's white
+fastness had brought her bunches of lavender and woodruff tied up with
+ribbons. All the presents were now undone, among them Guy's green
+volume, a paste buckle from Margaret, a piece of old embroidery from
+Monica and from Richard in India a pair of carved bellows, at the
+prodigal ingenuity of whose pattern Margaret looked a little peevish.
+When all the other presents had been examined, Birdwood stepped forward
+and with the air of a conjuror produced from under his coat a pot of
+rose-coloured sweet-peas that exactly matched the frail hue of Pauline's
+cheeks.
+
+Breakfast was eaten, with everybody's eyes watching the now completely
+grey sky. How many such birthday breakfasts had been eaten on this cool
+lawn by these people who in their simplicity were akin to the birds in
+their shrubberies and the flowers in their borders; and Guy thought of
+an old photograph taken by an uncle of Pauline's tenth birthday
+breakfast, when the table was heaped high with dolls and toys and
+Pauline in the middle of them, while Monica and Margaret with legs as
+thin as thrushes' stood shy and graceful in the background. He sighed to
+himself with amazement at the fortune which like a genie had whisked him
+into this dear assemblage.
+
+Breakfast was over just as the rain began to fall with the tinkling
+whisper that forebodes determination. There was not a leaf in the garden
+that was not ringing like an elfin bell to these silver drops; but,
+alas, the unrelenting windless rain gave no hope to Guy and Pauline of
+that long walk together they had expected all a fortnight. There was
+nothing to do but sit in the nursery and wonder if it would ever stop.
+
+"I used to love rain when it kept me here," said Guy. "Now it has become
+our enemy."
+
+Worse was to come, for it rained every day faster and faster, and there
+were no journeys for Guy's new canoe. He and Pauline scarcely had ten
+minutes to themselves, since when they were kept in the house all the
+family treated them with that old proprietary manner. The unending rain
+began to fret them more sharply because Spring's greenery was in such
+weather of the vividest hue and was reproaching them perpetually for the
+waste of this lovely month of May.
+
+The river was rising. Already Guy's garden was sheened with standing
+moisture, and the apple-blossom lay ruined. People vowed there had never
+been such rain in May, and still it rained. The river was running
+swiftly, level with the top of its banks, and many of the meadows were
+become glassy firmaments. Very beautiful was this green and silver
+landscape, but oh, the rain was endless. Guy grew much depressed and
+Miss Peasey got rheumatism in her ankles. Then in the middle of the
+month, when Guy was feeling desperate and when even Pauline seemed sad
+for the hours that were being robbed from them, it cleared up.
+
+Guy had been to tea, and after tea he and Pauline had sat watching the
+weather. Margaret had stayed with them all the afternoon, but had left
+them alone now, when it was half-past six and nearly time for Guy to go.
+The clouds, which all day had spread their pearly despair over the
+world, suddenly melted in a wild transplendency of gold.
+
+"Oh, do let's go for a walk before dinner," said Guy. "Don't let's tell
+anybody, but let's escape."
+
+"Where shall we go?"
+
+"Anywhere. Anywhere. Out in the meadows by the edge of the water. Let's
+get sopping wet. Dearest, do come. We're never free. We're never alone."
+
+So Pauline got ready; and they slipped away from the house, hoping that
+nobody would call them back and hurrying through the wicket into the
+paddock where the irises hung all sodden. They walked along the banks of
+a river twice as wide as it should be, and found they could not cross
+the bridge. But it did not matter, for the field where they were walking
+was not flooded, and they went on toward the mill. Here they crossed the
+river and, hurrying always as if they were pursued, such was their sense
+of a sudden freedom that could not last, they made a circuit of the
+wettest meadows and came to the hill on the other side. Everywhere above
+them the clouds were breaking, and all the West was a fiery mist of rose
+and gold.
+
+The meadow they had found was crimsoned over with ragged robins that in
+this strange light glowered angrily like rubies. Pauline bent down and
+gathered bunches of them until her arms were full. Her skirt was wet,
+but still she plucked the crimson flowers; and Guy was gathering them
+too, knee-deep in soaking grass. What fever was in the sunset to-night?
+
+"Pauline," he cried flinging high his bunch of ragged robins to scatter
+upon the incarnadined air. "I have never loved you, as I love you now."
+
+Guy caught her to him; and into that kiss the fiery sky entered, so that
+Pauline let fall her ragged robins and they lay limp in the grass and
+were trodden under foot.
+
+"Pauline, I have a ring for you," he whispered. "Will you wear it when
+we are alone?"
+
+She took the thin circlet set with a crystal, and put it on her finger.
+Then with passionate arms she held him to her heart: the caress burned
+his lips like a flaming torch: the crystal flashed with hectic gleams, a
+basilisk, a perilous orient gem.
+
+"We must go home," she whispered. "Oh, Guy, I feel frightened of this
+evening."
+
+"Pauline, my burning rose," he whispered.
+
+And all the way back into the crimson sunset they talked still in
+whispers, and of those rain-drenched ragged robins there was not one
+they carried home.
+
+_'La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!'_
+
+_'La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!'_
+
+_'La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!'_
+
+The words did not cool Guy's pillow that night, but they led him by
+strange ways into a fevered sleep.
+
+
+
+
+SUMMER
+
+
+
+
+_June_
+
+
+When Pauline reached the Rectory dinner had already begun in the mixture
+of candlelight and rosy dusk that seemed there more than anything to
+mark Summer's instant approach, and as with flushed cheeks she took her
+place at table, she was conscious of an atmosphere that was half
+disapproval, half anxiety; or was it that she disapproving of herself
+expected criticism? Positively there was an emotion of being on her
+defence; she felt propitiatory and apologetic; and for the first time
+she was sharply aware of herself and her family as two distinct facts.
+It was to dispel this uneasy sense of potential division that she took
+up her violin with a faintly exaggerated willingness and that, instead
+of dreaming of Guy in a corner of the room, she played all the evening
+in the same spirit of wanting to please.
+
+Her mother asked if she had enjoyed her walk, and Pauline had positively
+to fight with herself before she could answer lightly enough that the
+walk had been perfect. Why was her heart beating like this, and why did
+her sisters regard her so gravely? It must be her fancy, and almost
+defiantly she continued:
+
+"There was no harm in my going out with Guy, was there? We've not been
+together at all lately."
+
+"Why should there be any particular harm this evening?" Monica enquired.
+
+"Of course not, Monica," and again her heart was beating furiously. "I
+only asked because I thought you all seemed angry with me for being a
+little late for dinner."
+
+"I don't know why we should suddenly be sensitive about punctuality in
+this house," said Margaret.
+
+Pauline had never thought her own white fastness offered such relief and
+shelter as to-night; and yet, she assured herself, nobody had really
+been criticizing her. It must have been entirely her fancy, that air of
+reproach, those insinuations of cold surprize. People in this house did
+not understand what it meant to be as much in love as she. It was all
+very well for Margaret and Monica to lay down laws for behaviour,
+Margaret who did not know whether she loved or not, Monica who
+disapproved of anything more directly emotional than a Gregorian chant.
+Yet they had not theorized to-night, nor had they propounded one rule of
+behaviour; it was she who was rushing to meet their postulates and
+observations, arming herself with weapons of offence before the attack
+had begun. Yet why had neither Monica nor Margaret, nor even her mother,
+come to say good-night to her? They did not understand about love, not
+one of them, not one of them.
+
+"Pauline?"
+
+It was her mother's voice outside her door, who coming in seemed
+perfectly herself.
+
+"Not undressed yet? What's the matter, darling Pauline? You look quite
+worried, sitting there in your chair."
+
+"I'm not worried, Mother. Really, darling, I'm not worried. I thought
+you were cross with me."
+
+Now she was crying and being petted.
+
+"I don't know why I'm crying. Oh, I'm so foolish. Why am I crying? Are
+you cross with me?"
+
+"Pauline, what is the matter? Have you had a quarrel with Guy?"
+
+"Good gracious, no! What makes you ask that? We had an exquisite walk,
+and the sunset was wonderful, oh, so wonderful! And we picked ragged
+robins--great bunches of them. Only I forgot to bring them home. How
+stupid of me. Monica and Margaret aren't angry with me, are they? They
+were so cold at dinner. Why were they? Mother, I do love you so. You do
+understand me, don't you? You do sympathize with love? Mother, I do love
+you so."
+
+When Pauline was in bed her mother fetched Margaret and Monica, who both
+came and kissed her good-night and asked what could have given her the
+idea that they were angry with her.
+
+"You foolish little thing, go to sleep," said Monica.
+
+"You mustn't let your being in love with Guy spoil the Rectory," said
+Margaret. "Because, you know, the Rectory is so much, much better than
+anything else in the world."
+
+Her mother and sisters left her, going gently from the room as if she
+were already asleep.
+
+Pauline read for awhile from Guy's green volume of Blake; then taking
+from under her pillow the crystal ring, she put it on her third finger
+and blew out the light.
+
+Was he thinking of her at this moment? He must be, and how near they
+brought him to her, these nights of thoughts, for then she seemed to be
+floating out of her window to meet him half-way upon the May air. How
+she loved him; and he had given her this ring of which no one knew
+except themselves. It was strange to have been suddenly frightened in
+that sunset, for now, as she lay here looking back upon it, this evening
+was surely the most wonderful of her life. He had called her his burning
+rose. His burning rose ... his burning rose? Why had she not brought
+back a few of those ragged robins to sit like confidantes beside her
+bed? Flowers were such companions; the beautiful and silent flowers. How
+far away sleep was still standing from her: and Pauline got out of bed
+and leaned from the window with a sensation of resting upon the buoyant
+darkness. The young May moon had already set, and not a sound could be
+heard; so still indeed was the night that it seemed as if the stars
+ought to be audible upon their twinkling. If now a nightingale would but
+sing to say what she was wanting to say to the darkness! Nightingales,
+however, were rare in the trees round Wychford, and the garden stayed
+silent. Perhaps Guy was leaning from his window like this, and it was a
+pity their lights could not shine across, each candle fluttering to the
+other. If only Plashers Mead were within view, they would be able to sit
+at their windows in the dark hours and sometimes signal to one another.
+Or would that be what Margaret called 'cheapening' herself? Had she
+cheapened herself this evening, when she had kissed him for the gift of
+this ring? Yet could she cheapen herself to Guy? He loved her as much as
+she loved him; and always she and he must be equal in their love. She
+could never be very much reserved with Guy: she did not want to be. She
+loved him, and this evening for the first time she had kissed him in the
+way that often in solitude she had longed to kiss him.
+
+"I only want to live for love," she whispered.
+
+Naturally Margaret did not know what love like hers meant; and perhaps
+it was as well, for it was sad enough to be parted from Guy for two
+days, when there was always the chance of seeing him in the hours
+between; but to be separated from him by oceans for two years, as
+Richard and Margaret were separated, that would be unbearable.
+
+"I suppose Margaret would call it 'cheapening' myself to be standing at
+my window like this. Good-night, dearest Guy, good-night. Your Pauline
+is thinking of you to the very last moment of being the smallest bit
+awake."
+
+Her voice set out to Plashers Mead, no louder than a moth's wing; and,
+turning away from the warm May night, Pauline went back to bed and fell
+asleep on the happy contemplation of a love that between them was
+exactly equal.
+
+The floods went down rapidly during the week; green Summer flung her
+wreaths before her: the cuckoo sang out of tune and other birds more
+rarely: chestnut-blossom powdered the grass: and the pinks were breaking
+all along the Rectory borders. These were days when not to idle down the
+river would have been a slight upon the season. So Pauline and Guy, with
+their two afternoons a week, which were not long in becoming four, spent
+all their time in the canoe. The Rectory punt could only be used on the
+mill-stream; and Pauline rejoiced, if somewhat guiltily, that they could
+not invite either of her sisters to accompany them. She and Guy had now
+so much to say to each other, every day more it seemed, that it was
+impossible any longer not to wish to be alone.
+
+"Margaret says we are becoming selfish, are we?" she asked, dragging her
+fingers through the water and perceiving the world through ranks of
+fleurs-de-lys.
+
+Guy from where in the stern he sat hunched over his paddle asked in what
+way they were supposed to be selfish.
+
+"Well, it is true that I'm dreadfully absent-minded all the time. You
+know, I can't think about anything but you. Then, you see, we used
+always to invite Margaret to be with us, and now we hurry away in the
+canoe from everybody."
+
+"One would think we spent all our time together," said Guy. "Instead of
+barely four hours a week."
+
+"Oh, Guy darling, it's more than that. This is the fourth afternoon
+running that we've been together; and we weren't back yesterday till
+dinner-time."
+
+Guy put a finger to his mouth.
+
+"Hush! We're coming to the bend in the river that flows round the place
+we first met," he whispered. "Hush! if we talk about other people, it
+will be disenchanted."
+
+He swung the canoe under the bushes, tied it to a hawthorn bough and
+declared triumphantly, as they climbed ashore up the steep bank, that
+here was practically a desert island. Then they went to the narrow
+entrance and gazed over the meadows which in this sacred time of growing
+grass really were impassable as the sea.
+
+"Not even a cow in sight," Guy commented in well satisfied tones. "I
+shall be sorry when the hay is cut, and people and cattle can come here
+again."
+
+"People and cattle! How naughty you are, Guy. As if they were just the
+same!"
+
+"Well, practically you know, as far as we're concerned, there isn't very
+much difference."
+
+For a long while they sat by the edge of the stream in their fragrant
+seclusion.
+
+"Dearest," Pauline sighed. "Why can I listen to you all day, and yet
+whenever anybody else talks to me, why do I feel as if I were only half
+awake?"
+
+"Because even when you're not with me," said Guy, "you're still really
+with me. That's why. You see you're still listening to me."
+
+This was a pleasant explanation; but Pauline was anxious to be reassured
+about what Margaret had hinted was a deterioration in her character
+lately.
+
+"Perhaps we are a little selfish. But we won't be, when we're married."
+
+Guy had been scribbling on an envelope which he now handed to her; and
+she read:
+
+     _Mrs. Guy Hazlewood
+      Plashers Mead
+      Wychford
+      Oxon._
+
+"Oh, Guy, you know I love to see it written: but isn't it unlucky to
+write it?"
+
+"I don't think you ought to be so superstitious," he scoffed.
+
+She wished he were not obviously despising the weakness of her beliefs.
+This was the mood in which she seemed farthest away from him; when she
+felt afraid of his cleverness; and when what had been simple became
+maddeningly twisted up like an object in a nightmare.
+
+Yet worries that were so faint as scarcely to have a definite shape
+could still be bought off with kisses; and always when she kissed Guy
+they receded out of sight again, temporarily appeased.
+
+June, which had come upon them unawares, drifted on toward Midsummer,
+and the indolent and lovely month mirrored herself in the stream with
+lush growth of sedges and grasses, with yellow water-lilies budding,
+with starry crowfoot and with spongy reeds and weeds that kept the canoe
+to a slow progress in accord with the season. At this time, mostly, they
+launched their craft in the mill-stream, whence they glided under
+Wychford bridge to the pool of an abandoned mill on the farther side.
+Here they would float immotionable on the black water, surrounded by
+tumbledown buildings that rose from the vivid and exuberant growth of
+the thick-leaved vegetation flourishing against these cold and decayed
+foundations. Pauline was always relieved when Guy with soundless paddle
+steered the canoe away from these deeps. The mill-pool affected her with
+the merely physical fear of being overturned and plunged into those
+glooms haunted by shadowy fish, there far down to be strangled by weeds
+the upper tentacles of which could be seen undulating finely to the
+least quiver upon the face of the water. Yet more subtly than by
+physical terrors did these deeps affect her, for the fathomless
+mill-pool always seemed, as they hung upon it, to ask a question. With
+such an air of horrible invitation it asked her where she was going with
+Guy, that no amount of self-reproach for a morbid fancy could drive
+away the fact of the question's being always asked, however firmly she
+might fortify herself against paying attention. The moment they passed
+out of reach of that smooth and cruel countenance, Pauline was always
+ashamed of the terror and never confided in Guy what a mixture of
+emotions the mill-pool could conjure for her. Their journey across it
+was in this sunny weather the prelude to a cool time on the stream that
+flowed along the foot of the Abbey grounds. During May they had been
+wont to paddle directly up the smaller main stream, exploring far along
+the Western valley; but on these June afternoons such a course involved
+too much energy. So they used to disembark from the canoe, pulling it
+over a narrow strip of grass to be launched again on the Abbey stream,
+which had been dammed up to flow with the greater width and solemnity
+that suited the grand house shimmering in eternal ghostliness at the top
+of the dark plantation. Pauline had no dread of Wychford Abbey at this
+distance, and she was fond of gliding down this stream into which the
+great beeches dipped their tresses, shading it from the heat of the sun.
+
+Every hour they spent on the river made them long to spend more hours
+together, and Pauline began to tell herself she was more deeply in love
+than anyone she had ever known. Everything except love was floating away
+from her like the landscape astern of the canoe. She began to neglect
+various people in Wychford over whom she had hitherto watched with
+maternal solicitude: even Miss Verney was not often visited, because she
+and Guy could not go together, the one original rule to which Mrs. Grey
+still clung being a prohibition of walking together through the town.
+And with the people went her music. She did not entirely give up playing
+but she always played so badly that Monica declared once she would
+rather such playing were given up. In years gone by Pauline had kept
+white fantail pigeons: but now they no longer interested her and she
+gave them away in pairs. Birdwood declared that the small bee-garden
+which from earliest childhood had belonged to her guardianship was a
+'proper disgrace.' Her tambour-frame showed nothing but half-fledged
+birds from which since Winter had hung unkempt shreds of blue and red
+wool. And even her mother's vague talks about the poor people in
+Wychford had no longer an audience, because Margaret and Monica never
+had listened, and now Pauline was as inattentive as her sisters. Nothing
+was worth while except to be with Guy. Not one moment of this June must
+be wasted, and Pauline managed to set up a precedent for going out on
+the river with him after tea, when in the cool afternoon they would
+float down behind Guy's house under willows, under hawthorns, past the
+golden fleurs-de-lys, past the scented flags, past the early meadowsweet
+and the flowering rush, past comfrey and watermint, figwort,
+forget-me-not and blue cranesbill that shimmered in the sun like steely
+mail.
+
+On Midsummer Day about five o'clock Pauline and Guy set out on one of
+these expeditions that they had stolen from regularity, and found all
+their favourite fields occupied by haymakers whose labour they resented
+as an intrusion upon the country they had come to regard as their own.
+
+"Oh, I wish I had money," Guy exclaimed. "I'd like to buy all this land
+and keep it for you and me. Why must all these wretched people come and
+disturb the peace of it?"
+
+"I used to love haymaking," said Pauline, feeling a little wistful for
+some of those simple joys that now seemed uncapturable again.
+
+"Yes. I should like haymaking," Guy assented, "if we were married. It's
+the fact that haymakers are at this moment preventing us being alone
+which makes me cry out against them. How can I kiss you here?"
+
+A wain loaded high with hay and laughing children was actually standing
+close against the ingress to their own peninsula. The mellow sun of
+afternoon was lending a richer quality of colour to nutbrown cheeks and
+arms; was throwing long shadows across the shorn grass; was gilding the
+pitchforks and sparkling the gnats that danced above the patient horses.
+It was a scene that should have made Pauline dream with joy of her
+England: yet, with Guy's discontent brooding over it, she did not care
+for these jocund haymakers who were working through the lustred
+afternoon.
+
+"Hopeless," Guy protested. "It's like Piccadilly Circus."
+
+"Oh, Guy dear, you are absurd. It's not a bit like Piccadilly Circus."
+
+"I don't see the use of living in the country if it's always going to be
+alive with people," Guy went on. "We may as well turn round. The
+afternoon is ruined."
+
+When they reached the confines of Plashers Mead, he exclaimed in deeper
+despair:
+
+"Pauline! I must kiss you; and, look, actually the churchyard now is
+crammed with people, all hovering about over the graves like ghouls. Why
+does everybody want to come out this afternoon?"
+
+They landed in the orchard behind the house, and Pauline was getting
+ready to help Guy push the canoe across to the mill-stream, when he
+vowed she must come and kiss him good-night indoors.
+
+"Of course I will; though I mustn't stay more than a minute, because I
+promised Mother to be back by seven."
+
+"I don't deserve you," said Guy, standing still and looking down at her.
+"I've done nothing but grumble all the afternoon, and you've been an
+angel. Ah, but it's only because I long to kiss you."
+
+"I long to kiss you," she murmured.
+
+"Do you? Do you?" he whispered. "Oh, with those ghouls in the churchyard
+I can't even take your hand."
+
+They crossed the bridge from the orchard and came round to the front of
+the house into full sunlight, and thence out of the dazzle into Guy's
+hall that was filled with watery melodies and the green light of their
+own pastoral world. Close they kissed, close and closer in the coolness
+and stillness.
+
+"Pauline! I shall go mad for love of you."
+
+"I love you. I love you," she sighed, nestling to his arms' enclosure.
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+"Guy!"
+
+Each called to the other as if over an abyss of years and time.
+
+Then Pauline said she must go back, but Guy reminded her of a book she
+had promised to read, and begged her just to come with him to the
+library.
+
+"I do want to talk to you once alone in my own room," he said. "The
+evenings won't seem so empty when I can think of you there."
+
+She could not disappoint him, and they went upstairs and into his green
+room that smelt of tobacco-smoke and meadowsweet. They stood by the
+window looking out over their territory, and Guy told for the hundredth
+time how, as it were, straight from this window he had plunged to meet
+her that September night.
+
+"Hullo," he exclaimed suddenly, reading on the pane that was scrabbled
+with mottoes cut by himself in idle moments with the glazier's pencil:
+
+     _The fresh green lap of fair King Richard's land.
+
+     Michael Fane. June 24._
+
+"That's to-day! Then Michael must be here. What an extraordinary
+thing!"
+
+Guy looked round the room for any sign of his friend; but there was
+nothing except the Shakesperean record of his presence. Pauline felt
+hurt that he should be so much interested in a friend, when but a moment
+ago he had brought her here as if her presence were the only thing that
+counted for his evening's pleasure.
+
+"I must find out where he is," exclaimed Guy.
+
+Now he wanted to be rid of her, thought Pauline, and for the first time,
+when he had kissed her, she kissed him coldly in response. More bitter
+still was the thought that he did not remonstrate: he had not noticed.
+Pauline said she must hurry away, and Guy did not persuade her to stop.
+Oh, how she hated this friend of his; she had no one in whom she would
+be even mildly interested when she was with Guy. He took her home in the
+canoe, speculating all the way about Michael Fane's whereabouts; and as
+Pauline went across the Rectory paddock there were tears of
+mortification in her eyes that sometimes burnt as hotly even as with
+jealousy's rage.
+
+Her mother was on the lawn, when she got back, and Pauline blinked her
+eyes a good deal to throw the blame of tears upon the sun.
+
+"Ah, you're back. Let's take a little walk round the garden," said Mrs.
+Grey in the nervous manner that told of something on her mind.
+
+They went into the larger wall-garden and walked along the wide
+herbaceous borders through a blaze of snapdragons that here all day had
+been swallowing the sunshine.
+
+"Where did you go with Guy?" her mother asked.
+
+"We went down the river, and they're cutting the grass in the big meadow
+and then afterwards...."
+
+"Oh, Pauline, afterwards you went into Guy's house with him?"
+
+Pauline nodded.
+
+"I know. I was just going to tell you."
+
+"Pauline, how could you do such a thing?"
+
+"I only went to say good-night. I wasn't there five minutes."
+
+Why should an action so simple be vexing her mother?
+
+"Are you angry with me for going?"
+
+"You must never do such a thing again," said Mrs. Grey more crossly than
+Pauline had ever heard her. "Monica saw you go in as she was walking
+down Shipcot hill, and she has just this moment come and told me."
+
+"But why shouldn't I go in and say good-night?" Pauline asked. "There
+were people in the churchyard. I thought it was better to say good-night
+in the house."
+
+Her mother was tremulously pink with vexation, and Pauline looked at her
+in surprize. It was really unaccountable that such a trifling incident
+as going into Guy's house could have made her as angry as this. She must
+have offended her in some other way.
+
+"Mother, what have I done to annoy you?"
+
+"I can't think what made you do anything so stupid as that. I can't
+think. I can't think. So many people may have seen you go in."
+
+"Well, Mother darling, surely by this time," said Pauline, "everybody
+must know we are really engaged."
+
+Her mother stood in an access of irritation.
+
+"And don't you understand how that makes it all the worse? Please never
+do such an inconsiderate thing again. You can imagine how much it upset
+Monica, when she ran back to tell me."
+
+"Why didn't she come in and fetch me?" asked Pauline. "That would have
+been much easier. I think she thoroughly enjoyed making a great fuss
+about nothing. Everybody has been criticizing me lately. I know you all
+disapprove of anybody's being in love."
+
+"Pauline, when you are to blame, you shouldn't say such unkind things
+about Monica."
+
+"I have to say what I think sometimes," Pauline replied rebelliously.
+
+"And as for Guy," Mrs. Grey went on, "I am astonished at his
+thoughtlessness. I can't understand how he could dream of letting you
+come into his house. I can't understand it."
+
+"Yes, but why shouldn't I go in?" Pauline persisted. "Darling Mother,
+you go on being angry with me, but you don't tell me why I shouldn't go
+in."
+
+"Can't you understand what the Wychford people might think?"
+
+Pauline shook her head.
+
+"Well, I shan't say any more about it," Mrs. Grey decided. "But you must
+promise me never never to do such a foolish thing again."
+
+"I'll promise you never to go to Guy's house," said Pauline. "But I
+can't promise never to do foolish things, when such perfectly ordinary
+things are called foolish."
+
+Mrs. Grey looked helplessly round her, but as neither of her two elder
+daughters was present she had nothing to say; and Pauline, who thought
+that all the fuss was due to nothing but Monica's unwarranted
+interference, had nothing to say either; so they walked along the
+herbaceous borders each with a demeanour of reproach for the other's
+failure to understand. The snapdragons lolled upon the sun with
+gold-bloomed anthers, and drank more and still more colour until they
+were drenched beyond the deepest dyes of crimson, extinguishing the
+paler hues of rose and chrome which yet at moth-time would show like
+lamps when the others had dulled in the discouragement of twilight.
+
+"You mustn't think anything more about it," said her mother after a long
+silence. "I'm sure it was only heedlessness. I don't think you can say
+I'm too strict with you and Guy. Really, you know, you ought to have had
+a very happy June. You've been together nearly all the time."
+
+"Darling," said Pauline utterly penitent for the least look that could
+have wounded her mother's feelings. "You're sweet to us. And Guy loves
+you nearly as much as I do."
+
+The gong sounded upon the luteous air of the evening; and Pauline with
+her arm closely tucked into her mother's arm walked with her across the
+lawn toward the house.
+
+"It's no good looking crossly at me," she said when like a beautiful
+ghost Monica came into the dining-room. "I've explained everything to
+Mother."
+
+"I'm very glad you have," Monica answered austerely; and because she
+would not fall in with her own forgiving mood, Pauline took the gentle
+revenge of not expostulating with her that evening when there was an
+opportunity. Nor would she let Margaret refer to the subject. Her
+sisters were very adorable, but they knew nothing about love and it
+would only make them more anxious to lay down laws if she showed that
+she was aware of their disapproval. She would be particularly charming
+to them both this evening, but her revenge must be never to mention the
+incident to either.
+
+The principal result of her mother's rebuke had been to drive away
+Pauline's anger with Guy and the jealousy of his friend. All she thought
+now was of the time when next they would meet and when she would be able
+to laugh with him over the absurdity of other people pretending to know
+anything about the ways of love or of lovers like themselves. She
+decided also that, as a penance for having been angry with Guy, she
+would take care to enquire the very first thing about the mystery of the
+inscription on the window. Oh, but how she hoped his friend had not come
+to stay at Plashers Mead, for that would surely spoil this Summer of
+theirs.
+
+The next afternoon, when Pauline went into the paddock, Guy was waiting
+for her on the mill-stream, her place in the canoe all ready as usual.
+
+"Have you found your friend?" she asked, faithful to her resolution.
+
+"Not a sign of him," said Guy. "What on earth he came for, I can't
+think. Miss Peasey never saw him and of course she never heard him. He
+must have been bicycling. However, don't let's waste time in talking
+about Michael Fane."
+
+Pauline smiled at him with all her heart. How wonderful Guy was to
+reward her so richly for the little effort it had cost to enquire about
+his friend.
+
+"I've been prospecting this morning," he announced as they shot along in
+the direction of the bridge. "They haven't started to make hay on the
+other side, so I'm going to paddle you furiously upstream until we find
+some secret and magical meadow where we can hide and forget about
+yesterday's fiasco."
+
+They glided underneath the bridge and left it quivering in the empty
+sunlight behind them; they swept silently over the mill-pool while
+Pauline held her breath. Then the banks closed in upon their canoe and
+Guy fought his way against the swifter running of the river, on and on,
+on and on between the long grasses of the uncut meadows, on and on, on
+and on past the waterfall where the Abbey stream joined the main stream
+and gave it a wider and easier course.
+
+"Phew, it's hot," Guy exclaimed. "Sprinkle me with water."
+
+She splashed him laughing; and he seized her hand to kiss her dabbled
+fingers.
+
+"Laugh, my sweet sweet heart," he said. "It was your laugh I heard
+before I ever heard your voice, that night when I stood and looked at
+you and Margaret as if you were two silver people who had fallen down
+from the moon."
+
+Again she sprinkled him laughing, and again he seized her hand and
+kissed her dabbled fingers.
+
+"They're as cool as coral," he said. "Why are you wrinkling your nose at
+me? Pauline, your eyes have vanished away!"
+
+He plucked speedwell flowers and threw them into her lap.
+
+"When I haven't got you with me," he said, "I have to pretend that the
+speedwells are your eyes, and that the dog-roses are your cheeks."
+
+"And what is my nose?" she asked, clapping her hands because she was
+sure he would not be able to think of any likeness.
+
+"Your nose is incomparable," he told her: and then he bent to his paddle
+and made the canoe fly along so that the water fluted to right and left
+of the bows. Ultimately they came to an island where all the afternoon
+they sat under a willow that was pluming with scanty shade a thousand
+forget-me-nots.
+
+Problems faded out upon the languid air, for Pauline was too well
+content with Guy's company to spoil the June peace. At last, however,
+she disengaged herself from his caressing arm and turned to him a
+serious and puzzled face. And when she was asking her question she knew
+how all the afternoon it had been fretting the back of her mind.
+
+"Why was Mother angry with me yesterday because I came into Plashers
+Mead to say good-night to you?"
+
+"Was she angry?" asked Guy.
+
+"Well, Monica saw us and got home before me and told her, and she was
+worried at what people would think. What would they think?"
+
+Guy looked at her: then he shook his fist at the sky.
+
+"Oh, God, why must people try...."
+
+She touched his arm.
+
+"Guy, don't swear. At least not ... you'll call me superstitious and
+foolish," she murmured dismayfully, "but really it hurts me to hear you
+say that."
+
+"I don't think you anything but the most lovely and perfect thing on
+earth," he vowed passionately. "And it drives me mad that people should
+try to spoil your naturalness ... but still ... it was thoughtless of
+me."
+
+"But why, why?" she asked. "That's the word Mother used about you. Only,
+why, why? Why shouldn't I go and say good-night?"
+
+"Dear, there was no harm in that. But you see, village people might say
+horrid things.... I was dreadfully to blame. Yes, of course I was."
+
+She flushed like a carnation at dawn; and when Guy put his arms round
+her, she drew away.
+
+"Oh, Guy," she said brokenly. "I can't bear to think of being alone
+to-night. I shall be asking questions all the night long, I know I
+shall. It's like that horrid mill-pool."
+
+"Mill-pool?" he echoed, looking at her in perplexity.
+
+She sighed and stared sadly down at the forget-me-nots.
+
+"You wouldn't understand: you'd think I was hysterical and stupid."
+
+Silently they left the island, and silently for some time they floated
+down the stream: then Pauline tossed her head bravely.
+
+"Love's rather cruel in a way."
+
+Guy looked aghast.
+
+"Pauline, you don't regret falling in love with me?"
+
+"No, of course not, of course not. Oh, I love you more than I can say."
+
+When Guy's arms were round her again, Pauline thought that love could be
+as cruel as he chose; she did not care for his cruelty.
+
+
+
+
+_July_
+
+Guy had been conscious ever since that rose-gold evening of the ragged
+robins of new elements having entered into his and Pauline's love for
+each other. All this month, however, June creeping upon them with
+verdurous and muffled steps had plotted to foil the least attempt on
+Guy's part to face the situation. Now the casual indiscretion of
+yesterday brought him sharply against it, and, as in the melancholy of
+the long Summer evening he contemplated the prospect, it appeared
+disquieting enough. In nine months he had done nothing: no quibbling
+could circumvent that deadly fact. For nine months he had lived in a
+house of his own, had accepted paternal help, had betrothed himself; and
+with every passing month he had done less to justify any single one of
+the steps. What were the remedies? The house might be sub-let: at any
+rate his father's bounty came to an end this quarter: engaging himself
+formally to Pauline, he could throttle the Muse and become a
+schoolmaster, and in two years perhaps they could be married. It would
+be a wrench to abandon poetry and the hope of fame, indeed it would
+stagger the very foundations of his pride; but rather than lose Pauline
+he would be content to remain the obscurest creature on earth.
+Literature might blazon his name: but her love blazoned his soul. Poetry
+was only the flame of life made visible, and if he were to sacrifice
+Pauline what gasping and ignoble rushlight of his own would he offer to
+the world?
+
+Yet could he bear to leave Pauline herself? The truth was he should have
+gone in March when she was in a way still remote and when like a star
+she would have shone as brightly upon him absent or present. Now that
+star was burning in his heart with passionate fires and fevers and with
+quenchless ardours. It would be like death to leave her now; were she
+absent from him her very name would be as a draught of liquid fire. More
+implacable, too, than his own torment of love might be hers. If he had
+gone in March, she would have been gently sad, but in those first months
+she still had other interests; now if he parted from her she would
+merely all the time be growing older and they would have between them
+and their separation the intolerable wastage of their youth. Pauline had
+surrendered to love all the simple joys which had hitherto occupied her
+daily life; and if she were divided from him, he feared for the fire
+that might consume her. It was he who had kindled it upon that
+rosaureate evening of mid-May, and it was he who was charged with her
+ultimate happiness. The accident of yesterday had reminded him sharply
+how far this was so, and a sense of the tremendous responsibility
+created by his love for her lay heavily upon Guy. He must never again
+give her family an occasion to remonstrate with her: he had been the one
+to blame, and he wished Mrs. Grey had spoken to him without saying
+anything to Pauline. How sad this long evening was, with reluctant day
+even now at half-past-nine o'clock still luminous in the West.
+
+Next morning there was a letter for Guy from his father.
+
+     FOX HALL,
+
+     GALTON,
+
+     HANTS.
+
+     _June 25._
+
+     _My dear Guy,_
+
+     _I enclose the balance of the sum I gave you, and I hope it will
+     have been enough to pay all the debts at which you hinted in your
+     last letter. I do not think it would be fair to you to hamper you
+     with any more money. In fact, I trust you have already made up your
+     mind not to ask for any._
+
+     _You'll be sorry to hear that Wilkinson has fallen ill and must go
+     abroad at once. This makes it imperative for me to know at once if
+     you are coming to help me next September. If you are, I'm afraid I
+     must ask you to come here immediately and take Wilkinson's place
+     this term. I'm sorry to drag you away from your country estate, but
+     I cannot go to the bother of getting a temporary master and then
+     begin again with you in September. It unsettles the boys too much.
+     So if you want to come in September, you must come now. You will
+     only miss a month of your house and I hope that during the seven
+     weeks of the summer holidays you will be able to transfer yourself
+     comfortably and abandon it for ever._
+
+     _Take a day to think over my proposal and telegraph your answer
+     to-morrow._
+
+     _Your affectionate father,
+
+     John Hazlewood._
+
+It seemed fateful, the arrival of this letter on top of the doubts of
+last night. A day was not long in which to make up his mind. And yet,
+after all, a moment was enough. He ought to go: he ought to telegraph
+immediately before he could vacillate: he must not see Pauline first: he
+ought to accept this offer: farewell, fame!
+
+Guy opened the front-door and walked into Birdwood come with a note from
+the Rectory.
+
+"Miss Pauline took me away from my work to give you this most particular
+and important and wait for the answer," said the gardener.
+
+Guy asked him to step inside and see Miss Peasey, while he went upstairs
+to write the reply.
+
+"Miss Peasey doesn't think much of your variety, Birdwood. She says the
+garden is entirely blue."
+
+"What, all those dellyphiniums the Rector raised with his own hand and
+she don't like blue!"
+
+Birdwood shook his head to express another defeat at the hands of
+incomprehensible woman. A moment later, as Guy went up to his room with
+Pauline's note, he heard him bellow in the kitchen:
+
+"What's this I hear, mum, about the garden being too blue?"
+
+Then Guy closed the door of the library and shut out everything but the
+sound of the stream.
+
+     _My darling,_
+
+     _I've got such exciting news. Mr. Delamere who's a friend of ours
+     has asked us to stay in his barge--I mean he's lent us the barge
+     for us to stay in. It's called the Naiad and it's on the Thames at
+     Ladingford and when we've finished with it we're going to have it
+     towed down to Oxford and come back from there by train. Mother
+     asked if you would like to come and stay with us for a fortnight.
+     Think of it, a fortnight! Margaret is coming and Monica is going to
+     stay with Father, who can't leave the garden. Oh, Guy, I'm wild
+     with happiness. We're to start on the first of July about. Do send
+     me a little note by Birdwood. Of course I know there's no need. But
+     I would love to have a little note especially as we shan't see each
+     other till after lunch._
+
+     _Your own adoring
+
+     Pauline._
+
+Guy wrote the little note to Pauline and to his father he wrote a long
+letter explaining that it was impossible to give up what he was doing to
+be a schoolmaster.
+
+It was peerless weather when they set out in Godbold's wagonette on the
+nine miles to Ladingford. Guy was thrilled to be travelling like this
+with Mrs. Grey, Margaret and Pauline. The girls were in flowered muslin
+dresses, seeming more airy than he had ever thought them: and the
+luggage piled up beside Godbold had the same exquisite lightness, so
+that it appeared less like luggage than a store of birds' feathers. The
+thought of nearly having missed this summery pilgrimage made Guy catch
+his breath.
+
+They arrived at Ladingford toward tea-time and found the barge lying by
+an old stone bridge about a mile away from the village. Apart from the
+spire of Ladingford church nothing conspicuously broke the horizon of
+that flat green country stretching for miles to a shadowy range of
+hills. Whichever way they looked, these meads extended with here and
+there willows and elms; close at hand was the quiet by-road that crossed
+the bridge and meandered over the low lands, as still and traffickless
+as the young Thames itself.
+
+The Naiad was painted peacock blue; owing to the turreted poops the
+owner had superimposed and the balustrade with rail of gilt gadroons, it
+almost had the look of a dismasted Elizabethan ship.
+
+"Anything more you'll want?" Godbold enquired.
+
+"Nothing more, thank you, Mr. Godbold," said Mrs. Grey. "Charming ...
+charming ... such a pleasant drive. Good afternoon, Mr. Godbold."
+
+The carrier turned his horse; and when the sound of the wagonette had
+died away, there was silence except where the stream lapped against the
+barge and where very far off some rooks were cawing.
+
+Guy and Pauline had resolved that they would give Margaret no chance of
+calling them selfish during this fortnight; and since they were together
+all the time, it was much easier now not to wish to escape from
+everybody. The first week went by in such a perfection of delight as Guy
+had scarcely thought was possible. Indeed it remained ultimately
+unimaginable, this dream life on the Naiad. A pleasant woman in a
+sunbonnet came to cook breakfast and dinner; and Pauline and Margaret
+went to Ladingford and bought sunbonnets, a pink one for Pauline and for
+Margaret one of watchet blue. In the fresh mornings Guy and the sisters
+wandered idly over the meads; but in the afternoon Margaret generally
+read a book in the shade while Guy and Pauline went for walks, walks
+that ended always in sitting by the river's edge and telling each other
+the tale of their love. The nights with a clear moon waxing to the full
+were entrancing. There was a small piano on the barge, the notes of
+which had been brought by damp almost to the timbre of an exhausted
+spinet. It served however for Mrs. Grey to accompany Pauline while she
+played on a violin simple tunes. Guy used to lie back on deck and count
+the stars above Pauline's pavans and galliards: then from the silence
+that followed he would see her coming, shadowy, light as the dewfall, to
+sit close beside him, to sit, her hand in his, for an hour while the
+moon climbed the sky and the fern-owls croaked in their hunting. And as
+the romantic climax of the day, it was wonderful to fall asleep with the
+knowledge that Pauline slept nearer to him than she had ever slept
+before.
+
+"Guy ought to go and see the Lamberts at the Manor," Mrs. Grey announced
+at the end of the second week. "I've written to Mrs. Lambert. It will be
+interesting for him."
+
+Guy was thrilled by the notion of visiting Ladingford Manor, which had
+been one of the great fortresses of romance held against the devastating
+commercial morality of the Victorian prime with its science and
+sciolism, and which possessed already some of the fabulous appeal of the
+mediaeval songs and tapestries John Lambert had created there. An
+invitation came presently to walk over any afternoon. Margaret said at
+first she would not go; but Guy who was in a condition of excited
+reverence declared she must come; and so the three of them set out
+across a path in the meads that Guy populated with romantic figures of
+the mid-Victorian days. On this stile Swinburne may have sat; here
+Burne-Jones may have looked back at the sky; and surely it were
+reasonable to suppose that Rossetti might have tied up his shoe on this
+big stone by this brook, even as Guy was tying up his shoe now. Soon
+they saw a group of elms and the smoke of clustered chimneys; there
+golden-grey in front of them stood Ladingford Manor.
+
+"There's the sort of stillness of fame about it," Guy whispered.
+
+He wondered if Mrs. Lambert would now resemble at all the famous
+pictures of her he had seen. And would she talk familiarly of the famous
+people she had known? They came to the gate, entering the garden along a
+flagged path on either side of which runnels flowed between borders of
+trim box. Mrs. Lambert was sitting in a yew parlour under a blue silk
+umbrella that was almost a pavilion, and she received them with many
+comments upon the energy of walking so far on this hot afternoon.
+
+"You would like some beer, I'm sure. There is a bell in that mulberry
+tree. If you toll the bell, Charlotte will bring you beer."
+
+Guy tolled the bell, and Charlotte arrived with a pewter tray and pewter
+mugs of beer. Margaret would not be thirsty, but Pauline was afraid of
+hurting Mrs. Lambert's feelings, and she pretended to drink, lancing
+blue eyes at Guy over the rim of her mug.
+
+"It's home-brewed beer," said Mrs. Lambert placidly, and then she leaned
+back and sighed at the dome of her blue silk umbrella. She was still
+very beautiful, and Guy had a sensation that he was sitting at the feet
+of Helen or Lady Flora the lovely Roman. She was old now, but she wore
+about her like an aureole the dignity of all those inspirations of
+famous dead painters.
+
+"Home-brewed beer," Mrs. Lambert repeated dreamily, and seemed to fall
+asleep in the past; while in the bee-drowsed yew parlour Pauline,
+Margaret and Guy sat watching her. The throat of Sidonia the sorceress
+was hers; the heavy lids of Hipparchia were hers; the wrist of
+Ermengarde or Queen Blanche was hers; and the pewter tray on the grass
+at her feet held Circe's wine.
+
+Then Mrs. Lambert woke up and asked if they would like to see the house.
+
+"Toll the bell in the mulberry-tree, and Charlotte will come. You must
+excuse my getting up."
+
+They followed Charlotte round the rooms of Ladingford Manor. There on
+the walls were the tapestries that had inspired John Lambert, and there
+were the tapestries even more beautiful that he himself had woven. On
+the tables were the books John Lambert had printed, which gave
+positively the aspect of being treasures by the discretion of their
+external appearance. In other rooms hung the original pictures of
+hackneyed mezzotints; and how rare they looked now with their velvety
+pigments of emerald and purple, of orange, cinnabar and scarlet glowing
+in the tempered sunlight. Margaret, as she moved from room to room,
+seemed with her weight of dusky hair and fastidious remoteness to belong
+to the company of lovely women whose romances filled these splendid
+scenes; but Pauline was life, irradiating with her joy each picture and
+giving to it the complement of its own still beauty.
+
+"Mrs. Lambert keeps very well, miss," said Charlotte as they came out
+again from the house. "But of course she doesn't get about much now. Yet
+we can't really complain, especially with this fine weather."
+
+"Would you like some more beer?" Mrs. Lambert asked, when they joined
+her again in the yew parlour.
+
+They said they were no longer thirsty; and, having thanked her for the
+pleasures of the visit, they left her in the past, returning by the
+pale green path across the meadows to where the Naiad lay by the old
+bridge.
+
+"Oh, I did want some tea," sighed Margaret.
+
+"I love Mrs. Lambert," cried Pauline, dancing through the meads. "Wasn't
+it touching of her to offer Margaret beer? Oh, Guy, when we're married
+and when you die and I receive young poets at Plashers Mead, shall I
+offer their future sisters-in-law home-brewed beer? Oh, but I'm sure I
+shall forget to offer them anything."
+
+Was there any reason, thought Guy, why Plashers Mead should not become a
+second Ladingford Manor? Friends long ago took that house together:
+perhaps Michael Fane would after all see the necessity of a second
+Ladingford Manor and share Plashers Mead with himself and Pauline. After
+this visit it was impossible to contemplate the prospect of being a
+schoolmaster: it was impossible to imagine Pauline as a schoolmaster's
+wife. At all costs their love must be sustained on the pinnacle of
+romance where now it stood. Margaret would sympathize with his desire to
+set Pauline in beauty; she, dreading the idea of marrying an Indian
+engineer, would understand how impossible it was to make Pauline the
+wife of a schoolmaster. Such a declension must somehow be avoided. It
+were better they should wait three years for marriage, five years,
+fourteen years as Tennyson had waited, rather than that he should make
+the monstrous surrender he had been so near to making. At least he would
+put himself and his work to the test and in a year he would be able to
+publish his first volume of poems. Perhaps his father would realize then
+that he deserved to marry Pauline. After all they were together: there
+were maddening restrictions of course, but they were together. This
+visit to Ladingford Manor must be accepted as an omen to persevere in
+his original intention; for he had been granted the vision of a
+perfected beauty, which he knew, by reading the lives of the men who
+made it, had only been achieved after desperate struggles and
+disappointments. This enchanted time on the Naiad must be the
+anticipated reward of a tremendous industry when he got back to
+Wychford. He would no more break the rules and fret at the restrictions
+made for him and Pauline. Every hour when they were together should
+henceforth be doubled in the intensity of its capacity for being
+enjoyed. One thing only he would demand, that in August they should be
+formally and openly engaged. Otherwise when Autumn came and made it
+impossible to go on the river, they would be kept to the Rectory; and
+the few hours of her company he would have must at least be free. He
+would talk to Margaret about it, so that she might use her influence to
+procure this favour. Then he would write and tell his father. All would
+be easy; Ladingford had inspired him. He beheld the visit in retrospect
+more and more clearly as an exhortation to endure against whatever the
+world should offer him to betray his ambition. Yet was Pauline the
+world? No, certainly Pauline had no kinship with the world, and
+therefore he was the more straightly bound to disregard the voice of
+material prosperity. She had joked about herself as a Mrs. Lambert of
+the future; but behind the lightness of her jest had stood confidence in
+himself and in his fame. Should he imprison that spirit of mirth and
+fire in the husk of a schoolmaster's wife?
+
+The second week passed: the time at Ladingford was over, and early in
+the morning they must start for the journey of thirty miles down to
+Oxford. The dapple-grey horse that would tow the barge was already
+arrived and now stood munching the long grass in the shade of the
+bridge: the swallows were high in the golden air of the afternoon: the
+long-purples on the banks of the young river seemed to await
+reproachfully the disturbance of their tranquillity. To-morrow came: the
+dapple-grey horse was harnessed to the rope: and then slowly, slowly
+the Naiad glided forward, leaving astern the grey bridge, the
+long-purples on the bank and the swallows high in the silver air of the
+morning. There was not yet any poignancy of parting; for the spire of
+Ladingford church remained so long in sight that scarcely did they
+notice the slow recession; and often, when they thought it was gone, the
+winding river would show it to them again; and in the end, when really
+it seemed to have vanished, by standing on the poop they could still
+make out where now it pierced thinly the huge sky. Moreover the
+contentment of that imperceptible evanescence and of their dreaming
+progress down the young Thames was plenary, lulling all regrets for a
+peace that seemed not yet truly to be lost. The hay in the meadows along
+the banks was mostly carried, and the cattle were magically fused with
+the July sunlight, curiously dematerialized like the creatures of a
+mirage. If a human voice was audible, it was audible deep in the green
+distance and belonged to the landscape as gently as the murmurous water
+scalloping the bows. Sometimes indeed they would pass late mowers who
+leaned upon their scythes and waved good fortune to the journey, but
+mostly it was all an emptiness of air and grass.
+
+"If only this young Thames flowed on for ever," said Guy.
+
+He and Pauline were leaning over the rail of the barge, and Guy felt a
+sudden impulse to snatch at the bank rich in that moment with yellow
+loosestrife, and by his action arrest for ever the progress of the
+barge, so that for ever they would stay like the lovers on a Grecian
+urn.
+
+"And really," Guy went on, as already the banks of yellow loosestrife
+were become banks of long-purples, "there is no reason why for us in a
+way this river should not flow on for ever. Dear, everything had seemed
+so perishable before I found you. Pauline, you don't think I ought to
+surrender my intention, do you? I mean, you don't think I ought to go
+away from Plashers Mead?"
+
+Guy went on to tell her about the decision he had taken on the day the
+visit to Ladingford was arranged.
+
+"But it would have been dreadful to miss this time," Pauline declared.
+
+"Oh, I felt it would be impossible," he agreed. "But even if our
+marriage is postponed for another year, you do think I ought to stick it
+out here, don't you? And really, you know, few lovers can have such
+wonderful hours as the hours we do have."
+
+Easily she reassured him with her confidence in the rightness of his
+decision: easily she assuaged the ache of any lingering doubt with the
+proclamation of that inevitable triumph in the end.
+
+"But we must be engaged openly," said Guy. "You know, I shall be
+twenty-three next month. Do you think we can be engaged properly in
+August?"
+
+"Mother promised in Spring," said Pauline. "Why don't you talk to her
+about it? Why don't you talk to her about it now? She loves you to talk
+to her."
+
+He looked round to where Mrs. Grey was sitting in a deck-chair;
+evidently by the rhythmic motion of her fingers she was restating to
+herself a tune which had formerly pleased her, as the barge glided on
+past a scene that changed perceptibly only in details of flowers and
+trees, while the great sky and the green hollow land and the blue
+distances rested immutable. Guy came and sat beside her.
+
+"I've never enjoyed a fortnight so much in my life," he said.
+
+She smiled at him, but did not speak, for whatever quartet she was
+restating had to be finished first. Soon the last noiseless bars played
+themselves and she turned round to his conversation.
+
+"Mrs. Grey, do you think that Pauline and I can be engaged openly next
+month? It won't mean, if we are, that I shall be worrying to see her
+more often. In fact I'm sure I shall worry less. But I want to tell my
+father, so that when he comes here he'll be able to see Pauline. He's a
+conventional sort of man, and I don't think he'd grasp an engagement
+such as ours is at present. Besides, I want to talk to the Rector,
+because I feel that now he regards the whole thing as a childish game.
+So can it be formal next month?"
+
+Mrs. Grey sat back, so silent that Guy wondered if she had listened to a
+word he had been saying. He paused for a moment, and then as she did not
+reply, he went on:
+
+"I also want to say how sorry I am that I asked Pauline to come into
+Plashers Mead to say good-night to me last month. I didn't realize,
+until she told me you were angry about it, what a foolish thing I'd
+done. I don't want you to think that, if we are formally engaged, I
+shall be doing stupid things like that all the time. Really, Mrs. Grey,
+I would always be very thoughtful."
+
+"Oh, yes," she answered in her nervous way. "Oh, yes. I understood it to
+have been a kind of carelessness. But I had to speak to Pauline about
+it, because she is so very impulsive. It's the sort of thing I might
+have done myself when I was a girl. At least of course I shouldn't
+because the Rector ... yes ... charming ... charming ... yes.... I
+really think you might be engaged next month. It's your birthday next
+month, isn't it?"
+
+"Thank you more than I can thank you," said Guy.
+
+Mrs. Grey waved to Pauline, who drew close.
+
+"Pauline darling, I've thought of such a nice birthday present for Guy
+... yes ... charming, charming birthday present ... yes ... for you two
+to be engaged."
+
+Pauline threw her arms round her mother's neck; and Guy in his happiness
+noticed at that moment how Margaret was sitting by herself on the poop
+in the stern. He was wrenched by a sudden compunction, and asked Pauline
+if he should not go and tell Margaret.
+
+"Charming of Guy ... yes ... charming," Mrs. Grey enthusiastically
+exclaimed. "Now I call that really charming, and Pauline stays with me."
+
+Guy went up the companion and asked Margaret if she were particularly
+anxious to be alone. She seemed to pull herself from a day-dream, as she
+turned to assure him she did not at all particularly want to be alone.
+Guy announced his good news, and Margaret offered him her slim hand with
+a kind of pathetic grace that moved him very much.
+
+"I think you deserve it," she said. "For you've both been so sweet to me
+all this fortnight. I expect you think I don't notice, but I do ...
+always."
+
+"Margaret," said Guy. "If this summer Pauline and I have seemed to run
+away from people...."
+
+"Oh, but you have," Margaret interrupted. "I don't think I should find
+excuses, if I were you, for perhaps it's natural."
+
+"I've fancied very often," he said, "that you've thought we were
+behaving selfishly."
+
+"I think all lovers are selfish," she answered. "Only in your case you
+began in such an idyllic way that I thought you were going to be a
+wonderful exception. Guy, I do most dreadfully want you not to spoil in
+any way the perfectly beautiful thing that Pauline and you in love is.
+You won't, will you?"
+
+"Have I yet?" asked Guy in rather a dismayed voice.
+
+"Do you want me to be frank? Yes, of course you do, and anyway I must be
+frank," said Margaret. "Well, sometimes you have--I don't mean in
+wanting always to be alone or in asking her in to Plashers Mead to say
+good-night. No, I don't mean in those ways so much. Of course they make
+me feel a little sad, but smaller things than that make me more uneasy."
+
+"You mean," said Guy as she paused, "my staying on here and apparently
+doing nothing? But, Margaret, really I can't leave Pauline to be a
+schoolmaster, and surely you of all people can understand that?"
+
+"Oh, no, I wasn't thinking of that," said Margaret. "I think in fact
+you're right to stay here and keep at what you're trying to do. If it
+was ever worth doing, it must be doubly worth doing now. Oh, no, the
+only criticism I shall make is of something so small that you'll wonder
+how I can think it even worth mentioning. Guy, you know the photograph
+of Pauline which Mother used to have and which she gave you?"
+
+Guy nodded.
+
+"Well, I happened to see it on the table by your bunk, and I wonder why
+you've taken it out of its simple little wooden frame and put it in a
+silver one?"
+
+Guy was taken aback, and when he asked himself why he had done this, he
+could not find a reason. Now that Margaret had spoken of it, the
+consciousness of the exchange flooded him with shame as for an
+unforgivable piece of vandalism. Why indeed had he bought that silver
+frame and put the old wooden frame away, and where was the old wooden
+frame? In one of the drawers in his desk, he thought; resolving this
+very night to restore it to the photograph and fling the usurper into
+the river.
+
+"I can't think why I did," he stammered to Margaret.
+
+"You've no idea how much this has worried me," she said. "I never had
+any doubts about your appreciation of Pauline."
+
+"And now you have," said Guy, biting his lip with mortification.
+
+The landscape fading from the stern of the barge oppressed him with the
+sadness of irreparable acts that are committed heedlessly, but after
+which nothing is ever quite the same. He wished he could tear to pieces
+that silver frame.
+
+"No, I won't have any doubts," said Margaret, offering him her hand
+again and smiling. "You've taken my criticism so sweetly that the change
+can't symbolize so much as I feared."
+
+It was very well to be forgiven like this, Guy thought, but the memory
+of his blunder was still hot upon his cheek and he felt a deep
+humiliation at the treachery of his taste. He had meant, when he came
+here to talk to Margaret, to ask her about herself and Richard, to
+display a captivating sympathy and restore to their pristine affection
+her relations with him, which latterly had seemed to diverge somewhat
+from one another. Now haunted by that silver frame, which with every
+moment of thought appeared more and more insistently the vile
+stationer's gewgaw that it was, Guy did not dare to approach Margaret in
+the security of an old intimacy.
+
+It was she, however, with her grace who healed the wound.
+
+"You're not hurt with me for speaking about that little thing?" she
+asked. "You see, you are in a way my brother."
+
+"Margaret, you are a dear!"
+
+And then recurred to him as if from Ladingford Manor the lines of
+Christina Rossetti, which he half whispered to her:
+
+    _For there is no friend like a sister_
+    _In calm or stormy weather;_
+    _To cheer one if one goes astray,_
+    _To lift one if one totters down,_
+    _To strengthen whilst one stands._
+
+They had the sharper emotion for Guy because he had neither brothers nor
+sisters of his own; and that this lovely girl beside him on this
+dreaming barge should be his sister gave to the landscape one more
+incommunicable beauty.
+
+And so all day they glided down the young Thames; and when Guy had sat
+long enough with Margaret in the stern, he sat with Pauline at the prow;
+and about twilight they reached Oxford, whence they came to Shipcot by
+train and drove through five miles of moonlight back to Wychford.
+
+
+
+
+_August_
+
+
+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 shan'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 me."
+
+Yet, though she resented them at the time, Margaret 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 L507,106 14s. 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 surprize 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--L280 a year."
+
+"And Guy has some money--L150 or L115 or it may be only L50."
+
+"Let us call it a hundred pounds," said Miss Verney. "For it would be
+more prudent not to exaggerate. L380 a year. And I've no doubt the
+Rector on his side would be able to manage twenty pounds. L400 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 spelt 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 spelt with an E, I daresay 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 cornfields, 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 cornfields 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 grey. 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 learnt 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 anyone, 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 surprized 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 colour 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 toward 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 armchair 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 surprize 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 mouldering
+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 candlelight 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.
+
+
+
+
+ANOTHER AUTUMN
+
+
+
+
+_September_
+
+
+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
+spilt 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 humoured 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 pretences: 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 favourable 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 behaviour 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 favour 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 savour 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? L4 16s. and
+there was a blank counter-foil which Guy vaguely thought represented a
+cheque for L2. 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. L2 16s. 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 wobbled 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 revelling, 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 handshake 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 toward 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 shan'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 prevision 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 humour 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.
+Surprizingly, 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 defence 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 spoilt by that wet May, but there's not such a
+bad crop considering. I like this salmon-coloured 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? Hulloa, 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
+thoughts 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 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 owe 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 formulae 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 favourable or unfavourable did not matter, his suspense was
+sharp and the inexpression of his father's demeanour, 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 mother's 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 toward 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 learnt 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 enquiry.
+
+"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 liked 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 commonsense 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-bye 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 favourite."
+
+"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
+behaviour, 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 deadlock.
+
+"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 toward 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.
+
+
+
+
+_October_
+
+
+"MY dears, he frightened me to death," Pauline declared to her family
+when Mr. Hazlewood had left the Rectory. "Only I expect, you know, that
+really he's rather sweet."
+
+"I don't think he approved of us very much," said Margaret.
+
+"I didn't approve of him very much," said Monica.
+
+"And where was Francis?" asked Mrs. Grey.
+
+"Francis was a naughty boy," said Pauline.
+
+Since they were sitting in the nursery, her mother allowed the Christian
+name to pass without reproof.
+
+"He was so exactly like Guy," said Margaret.
+
+"Like Guy?" Pauline echoed incredulously.
+
+"Yes, of course, didn't you notice that?" Margaret laughed.
+
+"You're quite right, Margaret," said Mrs. Grey. "How clever of you to
+see. Now of course I realize how much alike they were ... how clever you
+are!"
+
+"Without Pauline," Margaret went on, "Guy might easily become his father
+all over again."
+
+"But, my dears," said Pauline, "that would be terrible. I remember how
+frightened I was of Guy the first day he came to the Rectory, and if he
+grows more like his father, I don't think I shall ever be anything else
+but frightened of him, even if we live for ever. For, though I'm sure
+he's really very sweet, I don't believe one would ever get quite used to
+Mr. Hazlewood."
+
+Yet when Pauline was alone and had an opportunity to look back upon the
+visit, its effect was rather encouraging than otherwise. For one thing
+it curiously made Guy more actual, because until the personality of his
+father projected itself upon the scene of their love he had always
+possessed for Pauline a kind of romantic unreality. In the Spring days
+and Summer days which had seemed to dedicate themselves to the service
+of intimacy, Guy had talked a great deal of his life before they met,
+but the more he had told her, the more was she in the state of being
+unable to realize that the central figure of these old tales was not a
+dream. When he was with her, she was often in a daze of wonder at the
+credibility of being loved like this; and there was never an occasion of
+seeing him even after the briefest absence that did not hold in the
+heart of its pleasure a surprize at his return. The appearance of Mr.
+Hazlewood was a phenomenon that gave the pledge of prosaic authority to
+her love, like a statement in print that however absurd or uncomfortable
+has a value so far beyond mere talk. She had often been made rather
+miserable by Guy's tales of the ladies he had loved with airy
+heedlessness, but these heroines had all faded out in the unreality of
+his life apart from her, and they took their place with days of
+adventure described in Macedonia or with the old diversions of Oxford.
+The visit of Mr. Hazlewood with the chilly disapproval it had shed was
+more authentic than, for instance, the idea of Guy's dark-eyed mother,
+who had seemed in his narrations almost to threaten Pauline with her
+son's fairy ancestry, as if from the grave she might at any moment
+summon him away. Mr. Hazlewood had carried with him a wonderful
+assurance of ordinariness. The merely external resemblance between him
+and his son proved that Guy could grow old; and the sense of his
+opposition was a trifling discomfort in comparison with the assurance he
+offered of an imaginable future. She remembered that her first idea of
+Guy had been that of someone dry and cynical; and no doubt this first
+impression of his father was equally wrong. She who had been so shy and
+speechless was no doubt much to blame, and the family had done nothing
+to help out the situation. It had been unkind of her father to hide
+himself, since to Mr. Hazlewood, who could not have understood that it
+was the sort of thing her father would be sure to do, such behaviour
+must have presented itself very oddly.
+
+The Rector on Pauline's remonstrating with him was not at all penitent.
+
+"When your marriage, my dear, comes on the horizon--I don't mind how
+faint a horizon--of the probable, then it will be time to discuss
+matters in the practical way I suppose Mr. Hazlewood would like them to
+be discussed. Moreover in any case I forgot that the worthy gentleman
+was coming."
+
+Pauline was anxious to make excuses for the Rector to Guy, but Guy when
+he came round next day was only apologetic for his own father's
+behaviour; and he and she came to a conclusion in the end that parents
+must be forgiven on account of their age.
+
+"At the same time," Guy added, "I blame my father for his conventional
+outlook. He doesn't seem able to realize the extraordinary help that you
+are to my work. In fact he doesn't realize that my work _is_ work. He's
+been teaching for so many years that now he can no longer learn
+anything. Your father's behaviour is reasonable. He doesn't take us
+quite seriously, but he leaves the situation to our disentanglement.
+Well, we shall convince him that nothing in the world is so simple as a
+love like ours; but the worst of my father is that even if he were
+convinced he would be more annoying than ever."
+
+"You must make allowances, Guy. For one thing how few people, even when
+they're young, understand about love. Besides, he's anxious about your
+career."
+
+"What right has he to be anxious?" Guy burst out. "If I fail, I pay the
+penalty, not he."
+
+"But he would be so hurt if you failed," she urged.
+
+"Pauline, if you can say that, you can imagine that I will fail. Even
+you are beginning to have doubts."
+
+"I haven't any doubts," she whispered. "I know you will be famous. And
+yet I have doubts of another sort. I sometimes wonder if I shall be
+enough when you are famous."
+
+The question she had raised launched Guy upon a sea of eloquence. He
+worried no more about his father, but only protested his dependence upon
+Pauline's love for everything that he would ever have accomplished.
+
+"Yes, but I think I shall seem dull one day," she persisted with a shake
+of the head.
+
+"No, no. How could you seem dull to me?"
+
+"But I'm not clever...."
+
+"Avoid that wretched word," he cried. "It can only be applied to
+thieves, politicians and lawyers. I have told you a thousand times what
+you are to me, and I will not tell you again because I don't want to be
+an egotist. I don't want to represent you to myself as a creature that
+exists _for_ me. You are a being to whom I aspire. If we live for ever I
+shall have still to aspire to you and never be nearer than the hope of
+deserving you."
+
+"But your poetry, Guy, are you sure I appreciate it? Are you sure I'm
+not just a silly little thing lost in admiration of whatever you do?"
+
+Guy brushed her doubts aside.
+
+"Poetry is life trembling on the edge of human expression," he declared.
+"You are my life, and my poor verse faints in its powerlessness to say
+so. I always must be alone to blame if the treasure that you are is not
+proved to the world."
+
+How was she to convince him of her unworthiness, how was she to persuade
+this lover of hers that she was too simple a creature for his splendid
+enthronement? Suddenly one day he would see her in all her dulness and
+ordinariness, and turning from her in disillusion, he would hold her
+culpable for anything in his work that might seem to have betrayed his
+ambition.
+
+"Guy," she called into the future. "You will always love me?"
+
+"Will there ever be another Pauline?"
+
+"Oh, there might be so easily."
+
+"Never! Never! Every hour, every moment cries 'never!'"
+
+In her heart she told herself that at least none but she could ever love
+him so well; and in the strange confidence his father's visit had given
+to her she told him in her turn how every hour and every moment made her
+more dependent upon his love.
+
+"I want nothing but you, nothing, nothing. I've given up everything for
+you."
+
+"What have you given up?" he demanded at once, jealously and
+triumphantly regarding her.
+
+"Oh, nothing really; but all the foolish little interests. Nothing, my
+dearest; only pigeons and music and working woollen birds and visiting
+poor people. Such foolish little things ... and yet things that were
+once upon a time frightfully important."
+
+"You mustn't give up your music and your pigeons."
+
+They both laughed at the absurd conjunction.
+
+"How can I play when I'm thinking of you always, every second? Why, when
+I do anything but think of you, every object and every word floats away
+as it does when I'm tired and trying to keep awake in a big room."
+
+"You can play to me," he argued, "even when I'm not there."
+
+"Guy darling, I do, I do; but you've no idea how hopelessly playing to
+an absent lover destroys the time."
+
+The memory of Mr. Hazlewood's visit was soon lost in the celebration of
+their anniversary month. As they had promised themselves in Summer, they
+went on moonlit expeditions to gather mushrooms; and at the waning of
+the moon they rose early on many milkwhite dawns instead, when the
+mushrooms at such an hour were veritably the spoil of dew, gleaming in
+their baskets under veils of gossamer. On these serene mornings the
+sound of autumnal birdsong came to them out of misted trees, so that
+they used to talk of the woods in the next Springtime, themselves moving
+about the wan vapours with that very air of people who scarcely live in
+the present. There was in this plaintive music of robins and thrushes a
+regret for the days of Summer spent together that were now passed away,
+and yet a more robust melody might have affronted the wistful air of
+these milkwhite dawns. The frail notes of the birds hinted at silence
+beyond, and through the opalescent and transuming landscape Guy and
+Pauline floated in fancy once more down the young Thames from
+Ladingford. The sad stillness of the year's surrender to decline
+admonished them to garner these hours, making a ghost even of the sun as
+if to warn them of the fleeting world, the covetous and furtive world.
+They wonderfully enjoyed these hours, but Pauline when at breakfast the
+mushrooms came fizzling to the table could never believe that she had
+been with Guy, and she used often to be discontented on being reminded
+by her mother of how much of the day she had already spent in his
+company. Looking back at these immaterial mornings of autumnal mist, she
+saw them upon the confines of sleep: silvery spaces they seemed that
+were not robbed from any familiar time.
+
+There was during all this month a certain amount of congratulation which
+had to be endured, and Margaret was angry one day because Mr. and Mrs.
+Ford came over from Little Fairfield and alluded at tea to their hope of
+Richard and her soon being engaged. Pauline was naturally subject to
+the inquisitiveness of everybody, but as she could not without being
+absent-minded talk about anything except Guy, she found the general
+curiosity not very troublesome. Guy, however, resented this atmosphere
+of enquiry and was always more and more anxious to carry her out of
+reach of Wychford gossip.
+
+One day in mid-October they had set out together with the intention of
+taking a long walk to the open upland country on the other side of the
+town, when, as they were going up High Street, they saw two of the local
+chatterboxes.
+
+"I will not stop and talk to Mrs. Brydone and Mrs. Willsher," Guy
+grumbled. "Let's cut up Abbey Lane."
+
+They turned aside and were making their way to the path that led under
+the Abbey wall to the high road, when they saw Dr. Brydone and his son
+coming from that direction.
+
+"Really, there's a conspiracy of Brydones to waylay us this afternoon,"
+Guy exclaimed petulantly. "We shall have to go through the Abbey
+grounds."
+
+Pauline had passed the wicket, which he had impulsively flung open,
+before she realized the violation of one of her agelong rules.
+
+"It's really rather jolly in here to-day," said Guy. "I think we're
+duffers not to come more often, you know."
+
+The autumn wind was booming round the plantation, and sweeping up the
+broad path down the hillside with a skelter of leaves that gave a wild
+gaiety to the usually tristful scene.
+
+"Why shouldn't we explore inside?" suggested Guy. "There's something so
+exhilarating about this great West wind. Almost one could fancy it might
+blow away that ghost of a house."
+
+Pauline hesitated: since earliest childhood the Abbey had oppressed her
+with ill omen, and she could not overcome her prejudice in a moment.
+
+"You're not really afraid when you're with me?" he persisted.
+
+Pauline surrendered, and they went across the etiolated lawn toward the
+entrance. The wind was roaring through every crevice, and the ivy was
+scratching restlessly at the panes or shivering where through the gaps
+it had crept in with furry tendrils.
+
+"It's rather fun to be walking up this staircase as if this were our own
+house," said Guy.
+
+Pauline had an impulse to go back, and she made a quick step to descend.
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"Guy, I think I feel afraid."
+
+"Afraid of what?"
+
+"Oh, not of anything. Just afraid."
+
+"Come, foolish one," he whispered gently.
+
+And she, though it was against her will, followed him up the echoing
+empty stairs.
+
+They went into every room, and Guy declared how they with their love
+were restoring to each of them the life it had known in the past. Here
+was a pleasant fancy, and Pauline hoped it might be true. In the thought
+that their presence was in a way the bestowal of charity on these
+maltreated halls she lost much of her alarm and began to enjoy the
+solitude spent with Guy. Whether they looked out at the wilderness that
+once was a garden or at the rank lawn in front, the thunderous wind
+surging round the house brought them closer together in the
+consciousness of their own shelter and their own peace in this deserted
+habitation.
+
+"Now, confess," said Guy. "Haven't we been rather stupid to neglect such
+a refuge?"
+
+"But, Guy, we haven't needed a refuge very often," objected Pauline, who
+for all that she was losing some of her dread of the Abbey was by no
+means inclined to set up a precedent for going there too often.
+
+"Not yet," he admitted. "But with winter coming on and the wet days that
+will either keep us indoors or else prevent us from doing anything but
+walk perpetually along splashy roads, we shan't be sorry to have a place
+like this to which we can retreat in comparative comfort."
+
+"Oh, Guy," Pauline asked anxiously. "I suppose we ought to come here?"
+
+"Why on earth not?"
+
+"Don't be angry. But the idea just flashed through my mind that perhaps
+Mother wouldn't like us to come here very often."
+
+He sighed deeply.
+
+"Really, sometimes I wonder what is the good of being engaged. Are we
+for ever to be hemmed in by the conventions of a place like Wychford?"
+
+"Oh, but I expect Mother wouldn't mind really," said Pauline, reassuring
+herself and him. "I'm always liable to these fits of doubt. Sometimes I
+feel quite weighed down by the responsibility of being grown up."
+
+She laughed at herself, and the laughter ringing through the hollow
+house seemed to return and mock her with a mirthless echo.
+
+"Oh, Guy," she exclaimed. "Oh, Guy, I wish I hadn't laughed then. Did
+you hear how strangely it seemed as if the house laughed back at me?"
+
+She had gripped his arm, and Guy startled by her gesture exclaimed
+rather irritably that she ought to control her nerves.
+
+"Well, don't let's stay in this room. I don't like the green light that
+the ivy is giving your face."
+
+"What next?" he grumbled. "Well, let's go out on the balcony."
+
+They went half way downstairs to the door that opened on a large
+balustraded terrace with steps leading from either end into the ruined
+garden. The wind beat against them with such force here that very soon
+they went back into the house, and Guy found a small room looking out on
+the terrace, in which he persuaded Pauline to come and sit for a while.
+All the other rooms in the house had been so dreadfully decayed, so much
+battered by every humiliation time could inflict upon them that this
+small parlour was in contrast positively habitable. It gave the
+impression of being perhaps the last place to which the long vanished
+owners had desperately held. There was a rusty hob-grate and in the
+window a deep wooden seat; while the walls were still painted with
+courtly scenes, and the inlaid wooden floor gave a decency which
+everywhere else had been destroyed by the mouldering boards.
+
+"I say, it would be fun to light a fire some time," said Guy. "This is
+just the room for us."
+
+"It's rather a frightening room," said Pauline doubtfully.
+
+"Dearest, you insist on being frightened by everything this afternoon,"
+he answered.
+
+"No, but this room is frightening, Guy," she persisted. "This seems so
+near to being lived in by dead people."
+
+"And what can dead people do to you and me?" he asked with that sidelong
+mocking smile which she half disliked, half loved.
+
+Pauline looked back over her shoulder once: then she came across to
+where he invited her to sit in the window-bay.
+
+"I ought to have brought my diamond pencil," he said. "This is such a
+window for mottoes. Why, I declare! Somebody has scrawled one. Look,
+Pauline. Pauline, look! _1770. R.G. P.F._ inside a heart. Oh, what a
+pity it wasn't _P.G._ for Pauline Grey. Still the _G_ can stand for Guy.
+Oh, really, I think it's an extraordinary coincidence! _P.F.?_ We can
+find out which of the Fentons that was. We'll look up in the history of
+the family. Darling, I am so glad we came to this little room. Think of
+those lovers who sat here once like us. Pauline, it makes me cherish,
+you so."
+
+She sat upon his knee, because the window seat was dusty and because in
+this place of fled lovers she wanted to be held closely to his heart.
+
+The wind boomed and moaned, and the sun breaking through the clouds lit
+up the walls with a wild yellow light.
+
+Suddenly Pauline drew away from his arms.
+
+"Shadows went by the window," she cried. "Guy, I feel afraid. I feel
+afraid. There's a footstep."
+
+She was lily-white, whose cheeks had but now been burning so fiercely.
+
+"Nonsense," he replied half-roughly. "It was that burst of sunshine."
+
+"Guy, there were shadows. Hark!"
+
+She nearly screamed, because footsteps were going down the stairs of the
+empty house.
+
+"It must have been the caretaker," said Guy.
+
+"I saw a white person. Guy, never never let us come here again."
+
+"You don't seriously think you saw a ghost?" he asked.
+
+"Guy, how do I know? Come away, into the air. We should never have come
+here. Oh, this room! I feel as if I should faint."
+
+"I'll see who it was," said Guy springing up.
+
+"No, don't leave me. Wait for me. I'll come with you."
+
+They hurried down the stairs and when they reached the pallid lawn they
+saw Margaret and Monica in their white coats disappearing among the yew
+trees by the entrance.
+
+"There are your ghosts," said Guy laughing.
+
+Yet, though Guy scoffed at her fears, Pauline was not sure that she
+would not have preferred a ghost to that disquieting passage of her
+sisters without hail or comment. Yet perhaps after all they had not
+seen her and Guy in that sinister small parlour.
+
+"Shall we catch them up?" he asked.
+
+And Pauline with a breath of dismay was conscious of an inclination to
+pretend that they had not been here this afternoon. She discovered
+herself, as it were, proposing to Guy that they should not overtake
+Monica and Margaret. A secretiveness she had never known before had
+seized her soul, and she hoped that their presence in the Abbey was
+unknown. Guy divined at once that she did not want to overtake her
+sisters, and he kept her under the trees, where they watched each
+assault of the wind tearing at the little foliage that still remained.
+He guided her tenderly away from the sight of the house; and they walked
+along the broad path down through the shrubbery, meeting a rout of brown
+and red and yellow leaves that swept by them. She clung to Guy's arm as
+if this urgent and tumultuous wind had the power to sweep her too into
+the confusion: such an affraying journey was life beginning to seem.
+This ghastly elation of the October weather would not allow her breath
+to examine the perplexity in which she had involved herself. She felt
+that if the wind blew any louder, she would have to scream out in
+defiance of its violence or else surrender miserably and be whirled into
+oblivion. A brown oakleaf had escaped from the perishable host and was
+palpitating in a fold of her sleeve like a hunted creature; but when
+Pauline would have rescued it at the same moment a gust came roaring up
+the walk under the hissing trees, and the driven leaf was torn from its
+refuge and flung high into the air to join the myriads in their giddy
+riot of death.
+
+"Come away from here," she cried to Guy. "Come away or I shall go mad in
+this wind."
+
+He looked at her with a sort of judicial demeanour, as if he were in
+doubt whether he ought not to reprove such excitement.
+
+"It was really beginning to blow quite fiercely," he said when they had
+reached the comparative stillness of Abbey Lane.
+
+Behind them Pauline still heard with terror and hatred the moaning of
+the trees, and she hurried away from the sound.
+
+"Never, never will I go there again. Why did you ask me to go there? I
+would sooner have met a thousand Brydones than have been in that house."
+
+"Pauline," he protested. "You really do sometimes encourage yourself to
+be overwrought."
+
+"Guy, don't lecture me," she said, turning upon him fiercely.
+
+"Well, don't let the whole of Wychford see that you're in a temper," he
+retorted. "People haven't yet got over the idea of us two as a natural
+curiosity of the neighbourhood. I don't want ... and I don't suppose
+you're very anxious for these yokels to discuss our quarrels in the
+post-office to-night."
+
+"I don't mind what anybody does," said Pauline desperately. "I only want
+to be out of this wind--this wind."
+
+She was rather glad that Guy, perhaps to punish her for the loss of
+control, said he must go and work instead of coming back to tea at the
+Rectory. It strangely gave her the ability to smile at him and be in
+their parting herself again, whereas had he come back with her she knew
+that she would still have felt irritated. Her smile may have abashed his
+ill-humour, for he seemed inclined to change his mind about the need for
+work; but she would not let him and hurried towards home at the back of
+the west wind. Should she ask her sisters if they had seen her in the
+Abbey? It would be better to wait until they said something first. It
+would really be best to say nothing about this afternoon. Tea was in the
+nursery that day, for the Rector was holding some sort of colloquy in
+the drawing-room which he always used for parochial business, because
+he dreaded having his seeds scattered by the awkward fingers of the
+flock.
+
+Tea had not come in yet, and Pauline took her familiar seat in the
+window, glad to be out of the wind but pondering a little mournfully the
+lawn mottled with leaves, and the lily-pond that was being seamed and
+crinkled by every gust that skated across the surface. When the others
+arrived, Pauline knew that she turned round to greet them defiantly,
+although she would have given much not to feel excuseful like this.
+
+"You didn't see Monica and me?" Margaret asked.
+
+"Only after you'd gone too far for us to call to you," Pauline answered,
+nervously assuring herself that Margaret had not tried to 'catch her
+out,' as Janet would have said.
+
+"We had taken the short cut through the Abbey," Monica explained.
+
+Pauline felt that what Monica meant to say had been: 'we did not spy
+upon you deliberately.' And that she should have had this instinct of
+putting her sisters in the wrong prepared her for something unpleasant,
+that and the fuss her mother was making over the tea-tray. Pauline was
+more than ever grateful to the impulse which had not allowed Guy to
+change his mind and come back with her. As soon as tea was over,
+Margaret and Monica went away to practise a duet; and in the manner of
+their going from the room Pauline felt the louring of the atmosphere.
+
+Her mother began at once:
+
+"Pauline, I'm surprized at your going into the Abbey with Guy."
+
+"Well, it was really an accident. I mean it was because we wanted not to
+meet any of the Brydones, who were rushing at us from every side."
+
+Pauline tried to laugh, but her mother looked down at the milk jug and
+flushed nearly to crimson in the embarrassment of something she was
+forcing herself to say.
+
+"It's not merely going into the Abbey ... no ... not merely that ... no,
+not merely going into the Abbey ... but to let Guy make love to you like
+that is so vulgar. Pauline, it's the sort of way that servants behave
+when they're in love."
+
+She sprang from the window-seat.
+
+"Mother, what do you mean?"
+
+"Margaret and Monica saw you sitting on Guy's knee. In any case I would
+rather you never did that. In any case ... yes ... but in a place where
+people passing might have seen ... yes, would have seen ... oh, it was
+inexcusable.... I shall have to make much stricter rules...."
+
+"Are you going to speak to Guy about this?" Pauline asked. The house
+seemed to be whirling away like a leaf, such a shattering of her love
+were these words of her mother.
+
+"How can I speak to Guy about it?" Mrs. Grey demanded irritably. "How
+can I, Pauline? It has nearly choked me to speak to you."
+
+"I think Monica and Margaret are almost wicked," Pauline cried in
+flames. "They are trying to destroy everything. They are, they are. No,
+Mother, you shan't defend them. I knew they felt guilty when they went
+out of the room like that. How dare they put horrible thoughts in your
+mind? How dare they? They're cruel to me. And you're cruel to me. I
+don't understand what's happening to everybody. You'll make me hate you
+all, if you speak like that."
+
+She rushed from the nursery and went first to the music-room where
+Margaret was sounding deep notes, hanging over her violoncello, and
+where Monica was playing one of those contained, somewhat frigid
+accompaniments.
+
+"Margaret and Monica," said Pauline standing in the doorway. "You're
+never to dare to speak about me to Mother as you must have spoken this
+afternoon. Because neither of you have any emotion but conceit and
+selfishness, you shall not be jealous of Guy and me. Margaret, you can
+have no heart. I shall write to Richard and tell him you're heartless.
+Don't smile down at your violoncello. You shall not rule me into being
+like yourself. Oh, I'll never play music with either of you again."
+
+Then she left them and in her white room for an hour she listened
+hopelessly to the trolling wind.
+
+
+
+
+_November_
+
+
+Guy was very indignant when he heard from Pauline the sequel of her
+sisters' vigilance. That they should afterward have tried to atone with
+gentleness for what they had made her suffer did not avail with him.
+Monica and Margaret now impressed him with their unworldly beauty in a
+strange way, for they became sinister figures like the Lady Geraldine in
+Christabel, sly malignant sylphs set in ambush to haunt the romantic
+path of his love. He was intensely aware that he ought not to resent
+their interference, but that he ought in fact to acknowledge the justice
+of it and by a stoical endeavour prove himself entitled to the cares of
+this long engagement. Actually Guy was enduring a violent jealousy, and
+illogically he began to declare how the others were jealous of him and
+Pauline. The consciousness that he could not carry her off into
+immediate marriage galled him and he suffered all the pangs of an
+unmerited servitude. He and Pauline became the prisoners of tyrants who
+were urging them to accept the yoke of convention; the more he suffered,
+the more he knew in his heart that he was culpable, and the more
+culpable he recognized himself, the more he chafed against the burden of
+waiting. All the resolutions that with the announcement of their
+betrothal had seemed to sail before a prospering breeze now turned and
+beat up against adverse influences and were every moment in danger of
+being irreparably wrecked.
+
+Naturally coincident with all the stress of a situation, that owing to
+the temperament of the Greys was never relieved by discussion, was a
+complete failure to advance on the private road of his poetical
+ambition. All that he had written was seeming vain and bad: all that he
+was now trying to write deteriorated with every word painfully inscribed
+upon the cheerless empty page. He had conceived a set of eclogues that
+were to mark his contempt for the feverish incompetence of the modern
+school, whose ears had been corrupted by Wagner's filthy din; and all he
+could manage to achieve were seeming the banal inspirations of
+Mendelssohn. Guy was like an alchemist perpetually on the verge of
+discovering the stone that will transmute base metals to gold as he
+tried to find the secret by which such an one as Beethoven could purify
+with art the most violent emotions of humanity, yet always preserve
+their intrinsic value. He craved the secret which even the most obscure
+Elizabethans seemed to have possessed, that unearthly power of harmony
+which could fuse all baseness in a glittering song. Passion had never
+lost itself in arid decoration when they sang; nor yet had it ever
+betrayed itself with that impudently direct appeal these modern lyrists
+made, these shameless Rousseaus of verse. Yet he was as bad as any of
+them, for he was either like them when he tried to write his heart, or
+he expired in the mere sound of words like the degenerate ruck of the
+Caroline heirs to a great tradition. He was almost on the point of
+proclaiming his final failure, and if at that moment he could have
+received from his father the offer to come and teach small boys at Fox
+Hall, he would have gone.
+
+And yet would he have gone? Could he abandon the delight of being with
+Pauline? The nearer he came to confessing his failure, the more he
+longed for her company. He was surely now in the midway of the thorny
+path of love, and whether he progressed or retreated he could not escape
+the spines. Well had he said to himself that night in May: '_La belle
+Dame sans mercy bath thee in thrall_.'
+
+All the fire and fever of his present life on the outskirts of a
+haunted country was for his imagination alone. However timidly his pen
+approached those dreams, they vanished; and whenever his pen betrayed
+him, Guy turned despairingly again to Pauline herself. These days
+without her were every day more unendurable. Once he had been content to
+talk about her to Mrs. Grey and her sisters, to listen to their praise
+of her: now every word they spoke wounded his pride. This madness of
+love could only feed itself in the very dungeons of his mind; and unless
+she were with him it did so horribly gorge itself that, if he had not
+swiftly seen her again, the madness would have broken the bars of its
+prison and ridden him like a hag.
+
+It was when Guy had worked himself to this pitch of desire for the
+remedy of her sweet presence that Pauline was denied to him. He knew he
+must blame himself because, even after the warning of that afternoon in
+the Abbey, whenever they were together he would carry her away into the
+country, whence they would not return sometimes until night had fallen.
+Worse than that, by his now continuous withdrawal from the life of the
+Rectory he must have disquieted her family. He saw that they were
+becoming anxious about Pauline, but for that very reason he could not
+bring himself to mitigate a solitary doubt of theirs. Even to talk about
+her in the lightest way was now become an outrage upon the seclusion of
+their joint life. Such a conversation as that with Margaret about the
+silver photograph frame was now unimaginable. What right had anyone to
+know even what picture of Pauline burned upon his wall in the
+night-time? At first Pauline herself when the memory of the shock her
+mother's words had been to her died out, tried to justify the attitude
+of guardianship. She would explain to Guy how, ever since she could
+remember, her mother and sisters had treated her with this vigilance.
+They had, as she said, always so much adored her that it was natural for
+them to be unable at once to relinquish entirely to someone else the
+complete possession of her. Yet Guy must not be jealous, because she
+told them none of her secrets now: indeed she was distressed at the
+thought of how far outside her confidence they reproachfully esteemed
+themselves. Her love for him had severely shaken the perfect unity of
+their immemorial life together, and he must be generous and understand
+how gradual would have to be their renunciation of her to him. Guy,
+however, would not allow Pauline to have regrets like this. The most
+trivial consideration of her family aroused his jealousy; and when Mrs.
+Grey said she thought it would be better if the old rule of only seeing
+Pauline twice a week came into force again, Guy was determined that
+Pauline should resent the step as bitterly as he resented it. All the
+time he was with her he would be lamenting the briefness of their
+permitted intercourse, and since the weather was now so wet that even
+they could not reasonably claim beneath such streaming skies the right
+to abscond into deserted country, November shed a gloom upon their love.
+
+On the days when Guy did come to the Rectory, no one attempted to rob
+them of their privacy; they were always granted the nursery to
+themselves, and even sometimes they had tea there together, if visitors
+came, so that the privilege of their few hours should not be infringed.
+Nevertheless, the old sense of time and the world at their service was
+lost. The dull November dusk came swiftly on; and out in the passage the
+cuckoo with maddening reiteration proclaimed each fleeting fifteen
+minutes. Often Guy was asked to dinner, but the old pleasure was mostly
+gone, for in the evening he and Pauline were not expected to retire by
+themselves; and there was always an implied reproach for his influence
+when she refused to play her violin. Then there came a dreadful day,
+because some cousins had arrived to stay at the Rectory; for these two
+girls like everyone else had been accustomed to adore Pauline, and so
+were determined to take an extreme interest in her engagement.
+
+"We seem to have a ghastly lure for them," Guy groaned in exasperation,
+when Pauline had managed at last to secure the nursery for themselves.
+
+"Guy, they're only staying a week."
+
+"Well," he protested, "and for me to stay with you a week takes months
+of these miserable little hours we have. Oh, Pauline, I must see more of
+you."
+
+Then back came the adoring cousins, and Guy felt that no torture he
+could imagine was bad enough for them. Their cordiality to him was so
+great that he had to be superficially pleasant; and, as smile after
+smile was wrung from him, by the end of the afternoon he felt sick with
+the agony his politeness had cost.
+
+"Hurry and dress! hurry! hurry!" he begged Pauline, in a whisper when
+the gong sounded. "Let us at least have five minutes alone before dinner
+comes and I must go."
+
+Pauline was scarcely five minutes in coming down again, but Guy counted
+each tick of the clock with desperate heartsickness.
+
+"Oh, my darling, my darling," he said when she was held in the so dearly
+longed for, the so terribly brief embrace. "I cannot bear the torment of
+to-day."
+
+She tried to soothe him; but Guy had reached the depths and this relief
+after such effort was almost too late.
+
+"Pauline, listen," he said quickly. "You must come and say good-night to
+me in the garden. Do you hear? You must. You must. I shan't sleep unless
+you do. You must."
+
+"Guy," she murmured, "I couldn't."
+
+"You must. Promise ... you must. Come down and say good-night to me on
+the lawn. I shall wait there all night. I shall wait...."
+
+The cuckoo burst out to cry seven o'clock.
+
+"You must come. You must come. Promise."
+
+"Perhaps," she whispered faintly. Then she said she could not.
+
+Guy went to the door.
+
+"Remember, I have not kissed you good-night," he proclaimed solemnly.
+"And now I'm going. I shall wait from eleven o'clock, and stay all night
+until you have kissed me."
+
+"Oh, but Guy...."
+
+"To-night," he said. "You promise?"
+
+"Guy, if I dare, if I dare."
+
+There were footsteps in the passage. He fled across the room, kissed her
+momentarily and hurried out, saying good-bye to the cousins, as he
+passed them, with a kind of exultant affection.
+
+Outside, the November night hung humid and oppressive; Guy looking up
+felt rain falling softly yet with gathering intensity, and he lingered a
+few moments in the drive held by the whispering blackness. Behind him,
+the lamplight of the Rectory windows seemed for the moment sad and
+unattainable and gave him the fancy he was drifting away from a friendly
+shore. Then suddenly he marched away along the drive, content; for the
+thought of 'to-night,' which latterly had often brought such a
+presentiment of loneliness, now sounded upon his imagination like the
+rapture of a nightingale.
+
+Plashers Mead had never appeared so desirable as now when it was the
+prelude to such an enterprise as this of consecrating with a last
+embrace the rain and gloom of November. If he had any hesitation about
+the rightness or even, setting probity aside, about the prudence of such
+an action, he justified himself with romantic reasons; and if he was
+driven by conscience to an ultimate defence, he justified himself with
+the exceptional circumstances that gave him a sanction to accept from
+Pauline this sacrifice of her traditions. Impulses to consider what he
+was doing were easily dismissed: indeed before he reached his house
+there was not one left. Inside, the warmth and comfort of Plashers Mead
+were additional incentives to prosecute his resolve; every gleaming
+book, the breathing of the dog upon the mat before the fire, the gentle
+purr of the lamp, all seemed to demand that voluptuous renunciation
+which would later urge him forth again into the night. That it would
+probably be raining was not to prove an obstacle: Pauline would be more
+sure to come if she thought he were standing outside in the rain. It was
+a second Eve of St. Agnes; and Guy went across to his shelf and took
+down Keats. He had come to the knights and ladies praying in their dumb
+oratories, when there was a knock at the front-door, and his mind leapt
+to the thought that Pauline might have sent a note by Birdwood to
+prevent his coming to-night. The knock sounded again, and as Miss Peasey
+was evidently too deeply immersed in The Pilgrim's Progress, her
+vespertine lectionary, to pay heed to visitors at this hour of nine
+o'clock, he must go down and open the door himself.
+
+"Are we disturbing you?"
+
+It was the voice of Brydone, and with Willsher in his wake he came into
+the hall.
+
+"Charlie and I have made several shots to find you in, but of course we
+know you're a busy man nowadays."
+
+"Go on upstairs, will you?" said Guy making a tremendous effort to
+appear hospitable. "I'll dig out the whisky."
+
+He went along and shouted in Miss Peasey's ear what was wanted. She
+looked up as if it were Apollyon himself come to affront her holy
+abstraction.
+
+"I think there's some left from that bottle we got in August.... I shall
+lay it on the mat," she told him.
+
+Guy nodded encouragingly and went upstairs to join his guests.
+
+"Well, I suppose you'll be soon having a missus in charge here," said
+Brydone heartily.
+
+Willsher hummed Bachelor Boys as a contributory echo of the question.
+
+"Oh, no, we're not getting married at once, you know," Guy explained.
+
+"Well, you're quite right," Brydone declared heartily. "After all, being
+close at hand like this, you're not much likely to draw a blank in the
+lottery."
+
+"Marriage is a lottery, isn't it?" said Guy with polite sarcasm.
+
+"Rather," sighed Willsher. "Terrific!"
+
+"I suppose I shall have to be looking round preparatory to getting
+married in two or three years' time," Brydone added. "Well, you see,
+after Christmas I shall be thinking about my finals, and then I'm going
+to come in as the old man's partner. Country people like it best, if a
+doctor's married. No doubt about that, is there, Charlie?"
+
+The solicitor's son agreed it was indubitable.
+
+"Of course if I had the cash to hang on in Harley Street for ten years
+as a specialist, it would be another matter. But I can't, so there it
+is."
+
+Even this fellow had his dreams, Guy thought; even he would make
+acquaintance with thwarted ambitions.
+
+"Been doing anything with a rod lately?" asked Willsher, whose pastime,
+when he could not be standing in action on the river's bank, was always
+to steer a conversation in the direction of anglers' gossip.
+
+"No, not lately," said Guy. "Though I knocked down a lot of apples with
+one last month."
+
+"Ha-ha! that's good," Brydone ejaculated. "That's very good, Hazlewood.
+That's good, isn't it, Charlie?"
+
+"Awfully good," agreed the angler.
+
+Their appreciation seemed perfectly genuine, and Guy was touched by the
+readiness of them to be entertained by his lame wit.
+
+"I mustn't forget to tell the old man that," Brydone chuckled. "He's
+always digging at me over the fish. Done anything with a rod lately? I
+knocked down a lot of apples last month. Your governor will like that,
+Charlie!"
+
+Guy heard the clink of a tray deposited cautiously on the floor of the
+passage outside. He allowed Miss Peasey time to retreat before he opened
+the door, because it was one of the clauses in her charter that she was
+never, as a lady-housekeeper, to be asked to bring a tray into a room
+when anyone but Guy was present. He hoped that after they had drunk, his
+visitors would depart; but alas, the unintended charm of his
+conversation seemed likely to prolong their stay.
+
+"Rabelais," Brydone read slowly as he saw the volumes on the shelves.
+"That's a bit thick, isn't it?"
+
+"In quantity or quality, do you mean?" asked Guy.
+
+"I've heard that's the thickest book ever written," said Brydone.
+
+"Do you read old French easily?" asked Guy.
+
+"Oh, it's in old French, is it?" said Brydone in a disappointed voice.
+"That would biff me."
+
+A silence fell upon the room, a silence that seemed to symbolize the
+'biffing' of the doctor's son by old French. Willsher took the
+opportunity to steer the conversation back to fish, and ten o'clock
+struck in the middle of an argument between him and his friend over the
+merits of two artificial flies. Guy must be on the Rectory lawn by
+eleven o'clock, and he began to be anxious, so animated was the
+discussion, about the departure of these well-meaning intruders. He did
+not want to plunge straight from their company into the glorious
+darkness that would hold Pauline; and he eyed the volume of Keats lying
+face downward on the table, hoping he would be allowed to come back to
+the knights and ladies praying in their dumb oratories, while he
+thought with a thrill of the moment when he should be able to read:
+
+    _And they are gone; ay, ages long ago_
+    _These lovers fled away into the storm._
+
+"If you can't get a chub any other way, you can sometimes get him with a
+bit of bacon," Willsher was saying. "And I know a fellow who caught one
+of those woppers under Marston's Mill with a cherry. Fact, I assure
+you."
+
+"I know a man at Oldbridge, who caught a four pounder with a
+bumble-bee."
+
+"I caught a six pounder at Oxford with a mouse's head myself," Guy
+declared.
+
+The friends looked at him in the admiration and envy with which anglers
+welcome a pleasant companionable sort of a lie. It was a bad move, for
+it seemed as if by that lie he had drawn closer the bonds of sympathy
+between himself and his guests. They visibly warmed to his company, for
+Brydone at once invited himself to another 'tot' and was obviously
+settling down to a competitive talk about big fish; while Willsher's
+first shyness turned to familiarity, so completely indeed that he asked
+if Guy would mind his moving the furniture in order to try to explain to
+that fathead Brydone the exact promontory of the Greenrush where he had
+caught thirty trout in an hour when the mayfly was up two years ago.
+
+Half-past-ten struck from the church tower, and Guy became desperate.
+There was nothing he hated so much as asking people to go, which was one
+reason why he always discouraged them at the beginning; but it really
+seemed as if he must bring himself to the point of asking Brydone and
+Willsher to leave him to his work. He decided to allow them until a
+quarter-to-eleven. The minutes dragged along, and when the quarter
+sounded Guy said he was sorry but that he was very much afraid he would
+have to work now.
+
+"Right O," said Brydone. "We'll tootle off." But it took ten minutes to
+get them out of the house, and when at last they disappeared into the
+mazy garden Guy was in a fume of anxiety about his tryst. He could not
+now go round by Rectory Lane, as he had intended at first. No doubt
+Brydone and Willsher would stay talking half-an-hour on the bridge, for
+the rain had stopped and they had given the impression of having the
+night before them. In fact Brydone had once definitely announced that
+the night was still young. Yet in a way the fact of their nearness and
+of his having to avoid them added a zest to the adventure.
+
+How dark it was and how heavily the trees dripped in the orchard. Guy
+pulled the canoe from the shed and dragged it squeaking over the wet
+grass: not even he in the exaltation of the moment was going to swim the
+Hellespont.
+
+When he was in the canoe and driving it with silent strokes along the
+straight black stream; when the lantern was put out and the darkness was
+at first so thick that like the water it seemed to resist the sweep of
+his paddle, Guy could no longer imagine that Pauline would venture out.
+He became oppressed by the impenetrable and humid air, and he began to
+long for rain to fall as if it would reassure him that nature in such an
+annihilation of form was still alive. Now he had swung past the
+overhanging willows of the churchyard; his eyes grown accustomed to the
+darkness discovered against a vague sky the vague bulk of the church,
+and in a minute or two he could be sure that he was come to the Rectory
+paddock. He was wet to the knees and his feet, sagging in the grass,
+seemed to make a most prodigious noise with their gurgling.
+
+Guy was too early when he crept over the lawn, for there were still
+lights in all the upper windows, and he withdrew to the plantation,
+where he waited in rapt patience while the branches dripped and
+pattered, dripped and pattered ceaselessly. One by one the lights had
+faded out, but still he must not signal to Pauline. How should he after
+all make known to her his presence on that dark lawn? Scarcely would she
+perceive from her window his shadowy form. He must not even whisper; he
+must not strike a match. Suddenly a light crossed his vision and he
+started violently before he realized that it was only a glow-worm moving
+with laborious progress along the damp edge of the lawn. Black indeed
+was the hour when a glow-worm belated on this drear night of the year's
+decline could so alarm him. For a while he watched the creeping
+phosphorescence and wondered at it in kindly fellowship, thinking how
+like it was to a human lover, so small and solitary in this gigantic
+gloom. Then he began to pick it up and, as it moved across his hand and
+gave it with the wan fire a ghostly semblance, he resolved to signal
+with this lamp to Pauline.
+
+Midnight crashed its tale from the belfry, and nowhere in the long house
+was there any light. There was nothing now in the world but himself and
+this glow-worm wandering across his hand. He moved nearer to the house
+and stood beneath Pauline's window; surely she was leaning out: surely
+that was her shadow tremulous on the inspissate air. Guy waved, and the
+pale light moving to and fro seemed to exact an answer, for something
+fell at his feet and by the glow-worm's melancholy radiance he read
+'_now_' on a piece of paper. Gratefully he set the insect down to vanish
+upon its own amorous path into the murk. Not a tree quivered, not a
+raindrop slipped from a blade of grass but Guy held out his arms to
+clasp his long awaited Pauline. The '_now_' prolonged its duration into
+hours, it seemed; and then when she did come she was in his arms before
+he knew by her step or by the rustle of her dress that she was coming.
+She was in his arms as though like a moth she had floated upon a
+flower.
+
+Their good-night was kissed in a moment, and she was gone like a moth
+that cannot stay upon the flower it visits.
+
+Guy waited until he thought he saw her leaning from her window once
+more. Then he drew close to the wall of the house and strained his eyes
+to catch the farewell of her hand. As he looked up, the rain began to
+fall again; and in an ecstasy he glided back to Plashers Mead, adoring
+the drench of his clothes and the soft sighing of the rain.
+
+
+
+
+ANOTHER WINTER
+
+
+
+
+_December_
+
+
+In the first elation of having been able to prove to Guy how exclusively
+she loved him, Pauline had no misgivings about the effect upon herself
+of that dark descent into the garden. It was only when Guy, urging the
+success of what almost seemed disturbingly to state itself as an
+experiment, begged her to go farther and take the negligible risk of
+coming out with him on the river at night, that she began to doubt if
+she had acted well in yielding that first small favour. The problem,
+that she must leave herself to determine without a hint of its existence
+to anyone outside, stuck unresolved at the back of her conscience,
+whence in moments of depression it would, as it were, leap forth to
+assail her peace of mind. She was positive, however, that the precedent
+had been unwise from whatever point of view regarded, and for a while
+she resisted earnestly the arguments Guy evoked about the privileges
+conferred on lovers by the customary judgment of the world. Nevertheless
+in the end she did surrender anew to his persistence, and on two nights
+of dim December moonlight she escaped from the house and floated with
+him unhappily upon the dark stream, turning pale at every lean branch
+that stretched out from the bank, at every shadow, and at every sound of
+distant dogs' barking.
+
+Guy would not understand the falseness of this pleasure and, treating
+with scorn her alarm, he used to invent excuses by which she would be
+able to account for the emptiness of the room in the event of her
+absence being discovered. The mere prospect of such deceit distressed
+Pauline, and when she realized that even already by doing what she had
+done deceit had been set on foot, she told him she could not bear the
+self-reproach which followed. It was true, as she admitted, that there
+was really nothing to regret except the unhappiness the discovery of her
+action would bring to her family, but of course the chief effect of this
+was that Guy became even more jealous of her sisters' influence. The
+disaccord between him and them was making visible progress, and much of
+love's joy was being swallowed up in the sadness this brought to her.
+She wished now that she had said nothing about the rebuke she had earned
+for that unfortunate afternoon in the Abbey. Margaret and Monica had
+both tried hard ever since to atone for the part they played, and having
+forgiven them and accepted the justice of their point of view, Pauline
+was distressed that Guy should treat them now practically as avowed
+enemies. She might have known that happiness such as hers could not
+last, and she reproached herself for the many times she had triumphed in
+the thought of the superiority of their love to any other she had
+witnessed. She deserved this anxiety and this doubt as a punishment for
+the way in which she had often scoffed at the dulness of other people
+who were in love. Marriage, which at first had been only a delightful
+dream the remoteness of which did not matter, was now appearing the only
+remedy for the ills that were gathering round Guy and her. As soon as
+she had set her heart upon this panacea she began to watch Guy's work
+from the point of view of its subservience to that end. She was anxious
+that he should work particularly hard and she became very sensitive to
+any implication of laziness in the casual opinion that Margaret or
+Monica would sometimes express. Guy was obviously encouraged by the
+interest she took, and for a while in the new preoccupation of working
+together as it were for a common aim the strain of their restricted
+converse was allayed.
+
+One day early in December Guy announced that really he thought he had
+now enough poems to make a volume, news which roused Pauline to the
+greatest excitement and which on the same evening she triumphantly
+announced to her family at dinner.
+
+"My dears, his book is finished! And, Father, he has translated some
+poems of that man--that Latin creature you gave him on his birthday."
+
+"Propertius is difficult," said the Rector. "Very difficult."
+
+"Oh, but I'm so glad he's difficult, because that will make it all the
+more valuable if Guy ... or won't it? Oh, don't let me talk nonsense:
+but really, darlings, aren't you all glad that his book is finished?"
+
+"We'll drink the poet's health," said the Rector.
+
+"Oh, Father, I must kiss you ... aren't you pleased Guy appreciated your
+present?"
+
+"Now, Pauline, you're sweeping your napkin down on the floor...."
+
+"Oh, but Mother, I must kiss Francis for being so sweet."
+
+"He promised to show me the poems," said Margaret. "But Guy doesn't like
+me any more."
+
+"Oh, yes, Margaret, he does. Oh, Margaret, he really does. And if you
+say that, I shall have to break a secret. He's written two poems about
+you."
+
+Margaret flushed.
+
+"Has he? Well, he must certainly show them to me first or I shall veto
+the publication."
+
+"Oh, darlings," Pauline cried. "I am happy to-night! The famousness of
+Guy presently ... and oh, I forgot to tell you something so touching
+that happened this morning. What do you think? Miss Verney consulted me
+as to whether I thought it was time she began to wear caps."
+
+"Guy ought to write a poem about that," said Monica.
+
+"Oh, no, Monica, you're not to laugh at poor Miss Verney. I must tell
+her to-morrow morning about Guy's book. She so appreciates greatness."
+
+It was a delightful evening, and Pauline in her contentment felt that
+she was back in the heart of that old Rectory life, so far did the
+confidence in Guy's justification of himself enable her to leave behind
+the shadows of the past two months, and most of all those miserable
+escapades in the watery December moonlight.
+
+"A book, dear me, how important," said Miss Verney, when next morning
+Pauline was telling her the news. "Quite an important event for
+Wychford, I'm sure. I must write to the Stores and order a copy at once
+... or perhaps, as a local celebrity ... yes, I think, it would be
+kinder to patronize our Wychford stationer."
+
+"But, Miss Verney, it's not published yet, you know. We expect it won't
+be published before March at the earliest."
+
+"I don't think I ever met an author," said Miss Verney meditatively.
+"You see, my father being a sailor ... really, an author in Wychford,
+... dear me, it's quite an important occasion."
+
+Pauline thought she would devote the afternoon to writing the good news
+to Richard, and Margaret hearing of her intention, announced
+surprizingly that Richard was coming back in April for two or three
+months.
+
+"Oh, Margaret, and you never told me."
+
+"Well, I didn't think you took much interest in Richard nowadays. He
+asked what had happened to you."
+
+"I am glad he's coming back, Margaret. But oh, do tell me if you are
+going to marry him."
+
+Margaret would not answer, but Pauline, all of whose hopes were roseate
+to-day, decided that Margaret had really made up her mind at last, and
+she went upstairs full of penitence for her neglect of Richard, but
+determined to make up for it by the good news she would send both of
+herself and of him.
+
+     WYCHFORD RECTORY
+
+     OXON.
+
+     _December._
+
+     _My dear Richard,_
+
+     _I am sorry that I've not written to you for so long, but I know
+     you'll forgive me, because I have to think about so many things.
+     Margaret has just told me you are coming back in April. Be sure it
+     is April, because my birthday is on the first of May, you know, and
+     you must be in England for my birthday. Margaret looked very happy
+     when she said you were coming home. Richard, I am sure that
+     everything will be perfect. Guy's book is finished, and perhaps it
+     will be published in March. If it's published early in March, I
+     will send you a copy so that you can read it on the steamer coming
+     home. There are two poems about Margaret, who was very sympathetic
+     with Guy over me! That's one of the reasons why I'm sure that
+     everything will be perfect for you. Guy wants to meet you very
+     much. He says he admires action. That's because I told him about
+     your bridge. Your father and mother are always very sweet to us
+     when we go and have tea with them. Miss Verney is going to wear
+     caps. Birdwood asked if you would bring him back a Goorcha's--is
+     that the way to spell it--a Goorcha's knife because Godbold won't
+     believe something he told him. Birdwood said you were a grand young
+     chap and were wasted out in India. Father won a prize at Vincent
+     Square for a yellow gladiolus. It's been christened--now I've
+     forgotten what, but after somebody who had a golden throat. Guy's
+     dog is a lamb. A merry Christmas, and lots of love from_
+
+     _Your loving_
+
+     _Pauline._
+
+Pauline looked forward to Richard's return because she hoped that if
+Margaret married him her own marriage to Guy would begin to appear more
+feasible, it being at present almost too difficult to imagine anything
+like marriage exploding upon the quietude of the Rectory. The return of
+Richard, from the moment she eyed it in relation to her own affairs,
+assumed an importance it had never possessed before when it was only an
+ideal of childish sentiment, and Pauline made of it a foundation on
+which she built towering hopes.
+
+Guy, as soon as he had decided to publish his first volume, instantly
+acquired doubts about the prudence of the step, and he rather hurt
+Pauline's feelings by wanting Michael Fane to come and give him the
+support of his judgment.
+
+"I told you I should never be enough," she said sadly.
+
+He consoled her with various explanations of his reliance upon a
+friend's opinion, but he would not give up his idea of getting him and
+he wrote letter after letter until he was able to announce that for a
+week-end in mid-December Michael was actually pledged.
+
+"And I do want you to like him," said Guy earnestly.
+
+Pauline promised that of course she would like him, but in her heart she
+assured herself she never would. It was corulean winter weather when the
+friend arrived, and Pauline who had latterly taken up the habit of often
+coming into the churchyard to talk for a while with Guy across the
+severing stream, abandoned the churchyard throughout that week-end. Guy
+was vexed by her withdrawal and vowed that in consequence all the
+pleasure of the visit had been spoilt.
+
+"For I've been rushing in and out all the time to see if you were not in
+sight, and I'm often absolutely boorish to Fane, who by the way loves
+your Rectory bedroom so much."
+
+"Has he condescended to let your book appear?" asked Pauline.
+
+"Oh, rather, he says that everything I've included is quite all right.
+In fact he's a much less severe critic than I am myself."
+
+Pauline had made up her mind, if possible, to avoid a meeting with
+Michael, but on Monday she relented, and they were introduced to each
+other. The colloquy on that turquoise morning, when the earth smelt
+fresh and the grass in the orchard was so vernally green, did not help
+Pauline to know much about Michael Fane, save that he was not so tall as
+Guy and that somehow he gave the impression of regarding life more like
+a portrait by Vandyck than a human being. He was cold, she settled, and
+she, as usual shy and blushful, could only have seemed stupid to him.
+
+That afternoon, when the disturbing friend had gone, Pauline and Guy
+went for a walk.
+
+"He admired you tremendously."
+
+"Did he?" she made listless answer.
+
+"He said you were a fairy's child, and he also said you really were a
+wild rose."
+
+"What an exaggerated way of talking about somebody whom he has only seen
+for a moment."
+
+"Pauline," said Guy, affectionately rallying her, "aren't you being
+rather naughty--rather wilful, really? Didn't you like Michael?"
+
+"Guy, you can't expect me to know whether I liked him in a minute. He
+made me feel shyer than even most people do."
+
+"Well, let's talk about the book instead," said Guy. "What colour shall
+the binding be?"
+
+"What colour did he suggest?"
+
+"I see you're determined to be horrid about my poor harmless Michael."
+
+"Well, why must he be brought down like this to approve of your book?"
+
+"Oh, he has good taste, and besides he's interested in you and me."
+
+"What did you tell him about us?" Pauline asked sharply.
+
+"Nothing, my dearest, nothing," said Guy, flinging his stick for Bob to
+chase over the furrows. "At least," he added turning and looking down at
+her with eyebrows arched in pretended despair of her unreasonableness,
+"I expect I bored him to death with singing your praises."
+
+Still Pauline could not feel charitable, and still she could not smile
+at Guy.
+
+"Ah, my rose," he said tenderly. "Why will you droop? Why will you care
+about people who cannot matter to us? My own Pauline, can't you see that
+I called in a third person because I dare not trust myself now. All the
+day long, all the night long you are my care. I'm so dreadfully anxious
+to justify myself: I long for assurance at every step: once I was
+self-confident, but I can't be self-confident any longer. Success is no
+responsibility in itself, but now...."
+
+"It's my responsibility," cried Pauline melting to him. "Oh, forgive me
+for being jealous. Darling boy, it's just my foolish ignorance that
+makes me jealous of some one who can give you more than I."
+
+"But no one can!" he vowed. "I only asked Michael's advice because you
+are too kind a judge. My success is of such desperate importance to us
+two. What would it have mattered before I met you? Now my failure would
+... oh, Pauline, failure is too horrible to think of."
+
+"As if you could fail," she chided gently. "And if you did fail, I would
+almost be glad, because I would love you all the more."
+
+"Pauline, would you?"
+
+"Ah, no I wouldn't," she whispered. "Because I could not love you more
+that I do now."
+
+The dog with a sigh dropped his stick: he was become accustomed to these
+interludes.
+
+"Bob gives us up as hopeless," Guy laughed.
+
+"I'm not a bit sympathetic, you jealous dog," she said. "Because you
+have your master all day long."
+
+The next time Guy came to the Rectory, he brought with him the
+manuscript, so that Pauline could seal it for luck; and they sat in the
+nursery, while Guy for the last enumeration turned over the pages one by
+one.
+
+"It represents so much," he said, "and it looks so little. My father
+will be rather surprized. I told him I should wait another year. I
+wonder if I ought to have waited."
+
+"Oh, no," said Pauline. "Everything else is waiting and waiting. It
+makes me so happy to think of these pages flying away like birds."
+
+"I hope they won't be like homing pigeons," said Guy. "It will be rather
+a blow if William Worrall rejects them."
+
+"Oh, but how could he be so foolish."
+
+"I don't think he will really," said Guy. "After all, a good many people
+have endorsed the first half, and I'm positive that what I've written
+here is better than that. I rather wish I'd finished the Eclogues
+though. Do you think perhaps I'd better wait after all?"
+
+"Oh, no, Guy, don't wait."
+
+So, very solicitously the poems were wrapped up, and when they were tied
+and sealed and the parcel lay addressed upon the table, Mrs. Grey with
+Monica and Margaret came in. They were so sympathetic about the possible
+adventures in sight for that parcel, and Guy was so much his rather
+self-conscious self that the original relation between him and the
+family seemed perfectly restored. Pauline was glad to belong to them,
+and in her pride of Guy's achievement she basked in their simple
+affection, thrilling to every word or look or gesture that confirmed her
+desire of the cherished accord between Guy and the others.
+
+"Now I'm sure you'd both like to go and post Guy's poems," Mrs. Grey
+exclaimed. "Yes ... charming ... to go and post them yourselves."
+
+Pauline waited anxiously for a moment, because of late Guy had often
+seemed impatient of these permissions granted to him by her mother, but
+this afternoon he was himself and full of the shy gratitude that made
+her wonder if indeed nearly a year could have flown by since their love
+had been declared. Dusk was falling when they reached the post-office.
+
+"Will you register it, Mr. Hazlewood?" asked the postmistress.
+
+Guy nodded, and the parcel left their hands: in silence they watched it
+vanish into the company of other parcels that carried so much less: then
+back they came through the twilight to tea at the Rectory, both feeling
+as if the first really important step toward marriage had been taken.
+
+"You see," said Guy, "if only these poems of mine are well received, my
+father must acknowledge my right to be here, and if he once admits that,
+what barrier can there be to our wedding?"
+
+Pauline told him how much during the last month the distant prospect of
+their marriage had begun to weigh upon her, but now since that parcel
+had been left at the post-office, she said she would always talk of
+their wedding because that was such a much less remote word than
+marriage.
+
+"Come out to-night," said Guy suddenly.
+
+She put her hand on his arm.
+
+"Guy, don't ask me again."
+
+He was penitent at once, and full of promises never to ask her again to
+do anything that might cause an instant's remorse. They had reached the
+hall of the Rectory and in the shadows Pauline held him to her heart,
+suddenly caught in the flood of tenderness that a wife might have for a
+husband to whose faults she could be indulgent by the measure of his
+greater virtues kept, as it might be, for her alone.
+
+
+
+
+_January_
+
+
+Guy, as soon as he had sent off the poems to a publisher, was much less
+violently driven by the stress of love, which latterly had urged him
+along so wayward a course. He began to acquire a perspective and to lose
+some of that desperately clinging reliance upon present joys. The need
+of battling against an uncertain future had brought him to the pitch of
+madness at the thought of the hours of Pauline's company that must be
+wasted; but now when to his sanguine hopes marriage presented itself as
+at last within sight, sometimes even seeming as close as the fall of
+this new year, he was anxious to set Pauline upon more tranquil waters,
+lest she too should like himself be the prey of wild imaginations that
+might destroy utterly one untempered by any except the gentler emotions
+of a secluded life. Her mother and sisters, whom he had come to regard
+as hostile interpreters of convention, took on again their old features
+of kindliness and grace; and he was able to see without jealous torments
+how reasonable their attitude had been throughout, nay more than
+reasonable, how unworldly and noble-hearted it had been in confiding
+Pauline to the care of one who had so few pretensions to deserve her. He
+upbraided himself for having by his selfishness involved Pauline in the
+complexities of regrets for having done something against her judgment:
+and in this dreary rain of January, free from the burden of uncompleted
+labour, he now felt a more light-hearted assurance than he had known
+since the beginning of their love.
+
+Bills came in by every post, but their ability to vex him had vanished
+in the promise his manuscript gave of a speedy defeat of all material
+difficulties. The reaction from the strain of decking his poems with the
+final touches that were to precede the trial of public judgment gave
+place to dreams. A dozen times Guy followed the manuscript step by step
+of its journey from the moment the insentient mailcart carried it away
+from Wychford to the moment when Mr. William Worrall threw a first
+casual glance to where it lay waiting for his perusal on the desk in the
+Covent Garden office. Guy saw the office-boy send off the formal
+postcard of acknowledgment that he had already received; and in his
+dream he rather pitied the youth for his unconsciousness of what a
+treasure he was acknowledging merely in the ordinary routine of a
+morning's work. Perhaps the packet would lie unopened for two or three
+days--in fact probably Mr. Worrall might not yet have resumed work, as
+they say, after a short Christmas vacation. Moreover when he came back
+to business, although at Guy's request for sponsors the poems had been
+vouched for by one or two reputed friends of the publisher with whom he
+was acquainted, he would no doubt still be inclined to postpone their
+examination. Then one morning he would almost inadvertently cut the
+string and glance idly at a page, and then....
+
+At this point the author's mental visions varied. Sometimes Worrall
+would be so deeply transfixed by the revelation of a new planet swimming
+into ken that he would sit spellbound at his own good fortune, not
+emerging from a trance of delight until he sent a telegram inviting the
+poet to come post haste to town and discuss terms. In other dreams the
+publisher would distrust his own judgment and take the manuscript under
+his arm to a critic of taste, anxiously watching his face and as an
+expression of admiration gradually diffused itself knowing that his own
+wild surmize had been true. There were many other variations of the
+first reception of the poems, but they all ended in the expenditure of
+sixpence on a telegram. Here the dream would amplify itself; and proofs,
+binding, paper, danced before Guy's vision; while soon afterward the
+first reviews were coming in. At this stage the poet's triumph assumed a
+hundred shapes and diversities, and ultimately he could never decide
+between a leader on his work in The Times headed A NEW GENIUS or an
+eulogy on the principal page of The Daily Mail that galloped neck and
+neck for a column alongside one of The Letters of an Englishman. The
+former would bestow the greater honour: the latter would be more
+profitable: therefore in moments of unbridled optimism he was apt to
+allot both proclamations to his fortune. With such an inauguration of
+fame the rest was easy dreaming. His father would take a train to
+Shipcot on the same morning: if he read The Times at breakfast he would
+catch the eleven o'clock from Galton and, travelling by way of
+Basingstoke, reach Shipcot by half-past-two. Practically one might dream
+that before tea he would have settled L300 a year on his son, so that
+the pleasant news could be announced to the Rectory that very afternoon.
+In that case he and Pauline could be married in April; and actually on
+her twenty-first birthday she would be his wife. They would not go to
+the Campagna this year, because these bills must be paid, unless his
+father, in an access of pride due to his having bought several more
+eulogies at bookstalls along the line, offered to pay all debts up to
+the day of his wedding; in which case they could go to the Campagna:
+
+    _I wonder do you feel to-day_
+        _As I have felt since, hand in hand,_
+    _We sat down on the grass, to stray_
+        _In spirit better through the land,_
+    _This morn of Rome and May?_
+
+They would drive out from the city along the Appian Way and turn aside
+to sit among the ghostliness of innumerable grasses in those primal
+fields, the air of which would be full of the feathery seeds and the dry
+scents of that onrushing summer. There would be no thought of time and
+no need for words: there would merely be the two of them on a morn of
+Rome and May. And later in the warm afternoon they would drive home,
+coming back to the city's heart to eat their dinner within sound of the
+Roman fountains. Then all the night-time she would be his, not his in
+frightened gasps as when wintry England was forbidding all joy to their
+youth, but his endlessly, utterly, gloriously. They would travel farther
+south and perhaps come to that Parthenopean shore calling to him still
+now from the few days he had spent upon its silver heights and beside
+its azure waters. In his dream Pauline was leaning on his shoulder
+beneath an Aleppo pine, at the cliff's edge, Pauline whose alien
+freshness would bring a thought of England to sigh through its boughs,
+and a cooler world to the aromatic drouth. Theirs should be sirenian
+moons and dawns, and life would be this dream's perfect fulfilment. In
+what loggia, firefly-haunted, would he hold her? The desire with which
+the picture flamed upon his imagination was almost intolerable, and here
+he always brought her back to Plashers Mead on a June dusk. Then she
+could be conjured in this house, summoned in spirit here to this very
+room; and if they had loved Italy, how they would love England, as they
+walked across their meadows, husband and wife. With such visions Guy set
+on fire each January night that floated frorely into his bedroom, until
+one morning a letter arrived from Mr. William Worrall, that made his
+fingers tremble, as he broke the envelope and read the news:
+
+     217 COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
+
+     _January 6th._
+
+     _Dear Sir,_
+
+     _I have looked at the poems you were kind enough to send for my
+     consideration, and I shall be happy to hand them to a reader for
+     his opinion. The reader's fee is one guinea. Should his opinion be
+     favourable, I shall be glad to discuss terms with you._
+
+     _Yours faithfully,
+
+     William Worrall._
+
+Guy threw the letter down in a rage. He would almost have preferred a
+flat refusal to this request for money to enable some jaded hack to read
+his poems. The proposal appeared merely insolent, and he wrote curtly to
+Mr. William Worrall to demand the immediate return of his manuscript.
+But after all, if Worrall did not accept his work, who would? Money was
+an ulterior consideration when the great object was to receive such
+unanimous approval as would justify the apparent waste of time in which
+he had been indulging. The moment his father acknowledged the right he
+had to be confident, he in turn would try to show by following his
+father's advice that he was not the wrong-headed idler of his
+reputation. Perhaps he would send the guinea to Worrall. He tore up his
+first letter and wrote another in which a cheque was enclosed. Then he
+began to add up the counterfoils of his cheque book, a depressing
+operation that displayed an imminent financial crisis. He had overdrawn
+L5 last quarter. That left L32 10s. of the money paid in on December 21.
+The quarter's rent was L4 10s. That left L28. Miss Peasey's wages were
+in arrears, and he must pay her L4 10s. on the fifteenth of this month.
+That would leave L23 10s. and he must knock off 7s. 6d. for Bob's
+licence. About L3 had gone at Christmas and there were the books still
+to pay. L20 was not much for current expenses until next Lady Day.
+However, he decided that he could manage in Wychford, if he did not have
+to pay out money for Oxford debts, the creditors of which were pressing
+him harder each week.
+
+                                           L  s. d.
+    _Lampard._       Books.           39 15 0
+    _Harker._        Furniture.       17 18 0
+    _Faucett._       Books.           22 16 6
+    _Williamson._    Books.           13 19 0
+    _Ambrose._       Books.            4  7 0
+    _Brough._        Tobacco.          9 19 0
+    _Clary._         Clothes.         44  4 0
+    _Miscellaneous._ Books, Clothes,
+                            Stationery, Chemist,
+                            etc., etc.             about L50
+
+A total of L202 18s. 6d. Practically he might say that L200 would clear
+everything. Yet was L50 enough to allow for those miscellaneous
+accounts? Here for instance was a bill of L11 for boots and another of
+L14 for hats apparently, though how the deuce he could have spent all
+that on hats he did not know. It would be wiser to say that L250 was
+required to free himself from debt. Guy read through the tradesmen's
+letters and detected an universal impatience, for they all reminded him
+that not merely for fifteen months had they received nothing on account
+of large outstanding bills, but also they made it clear that behind
+reiterated demands and politeness strained to breaking-point stood
+darkly the law. That brute Ambrose, to whom after all he only owed L4
+7s., was the most threatening. In fact he would obviously have to pay
+the ruffian in full. That left only L15 13s. for current expenses to
+Lady Day, or rather L14 12s., for by the way Worrall's guinea had been
+left out of the reckoning.
+
+Guy wondered if he ought to get rid of Miss Peasey and manage for
+himself in future. Yet the housekeeper probably earned her wages by what
+she saved him, and if he relied on a woman who 'came in' every morning,
+that meant feeding a family. It would be better to sell a few books. He
+might raise L50 that way. Ten pounds to both Lampard and Clary, and six
+fivers among the rest would postpone any violent pressure for a while.
+Guy at once began to choose the books with which he could most easily
+part. It was difficult to put aside as many as might be expected to
+raise L50, for his collection did not contain rarities, and it would be
+a sheer quantity of volumes, the extraction of which would horribly
+deplete his shelves, upon which he must rely.
+
+The January rain dripped monotonously on the window-sills, while Guy
+dragged book after book from the shelves that for only fifteen months
+had known their company. They were a melancholy sight, when he had
+stacked on the floor as many books as he could bear to lose, each shelf
+looking as disreputable as a row of teeth after a fight. A hundred
+volumes were gone, scarcely a dozen of which had he sacrificed without a
+pang. But a hundred volumes in order to raise L50 must sell at an
+average of ten shillings apiece, and in the light of such a test of
+value he regarded dismayfully the victims. Precious though they were to
+him, he could not fairly estimate the price they would fetch at more
+than five shillings each. That meant the loss of at least a hundred more
+books. Guy felt sick at the prospect and looked miserably along the rows
+for the farther tribute of martyrs they must be forced to yield. With
+intense difficulty he gathered together another fifty, and then with a
+final effort came again for still another fifty. Here was the first
+edition of Swinburne's Essays and Studies. That must go, for it might
+count as ten shillings and therefore save a weaker brother. Rossetti's
+Poems in this edition of 1871 must go in order to save the complete
+works, for he could copy out the sonnet which was not reprinted in the
+later edition. Here was Payne's translation of Villon which could
+certainly go, for it would fetch at least fifteen shillings, and he
+still possessed that tattered little French edition at two francs. The
+collected Verlaine might as well go, and the Mallarme with the Rops
+frontispiece: the six volumes would save others better loved. Besides,
+he was sick of French poetry, wretched stuff most of it. Yet, here was
+Heredia and the Pleiad and de Vigny, all of whom were beloved
+exceptions. He must preserve too the Italians, (what a solace Leopardi
+had been), though here were a couple of Infernos, one of which could
+surely be sacrificed. He opened the first:
+
+    _Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona,_
+        _Mi prese del costui piacer si forte,_
+    _Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona._
+
+The words were stained with the blue anemone to which he had likened
+Pauline's eyes that first day of their love's declaration. He opened the
+other:
+
+    _Ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse,_
+      _Quando leggemmo il disiato riso_
+    _Esser baciato da cotanto amante,_
+      _Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,_
+    _La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante:_
+
+And in this volume the words were stained with a ragged robin which
+unnoticed had come back to Plashers Mead in his pocket that May eve and
+which when it fell out later he had pressed between those burning pages.
+It was doubtless the worst kind of sentiment, but the two books must go
+back upon their shelves, and never must they be lost, even if everything
+but Shakespeare went.
+
+Guy put his hand to his forehead and found that it was actually wet
+with the agony of what on this January afternoon he had been compelling
+himself to achieve. Each book before it was condemned he stroked fondly
+and smelt like incense the fragrant mustiness of the pages, since nearly
+every volume still commemorated either the pleasure of the moment when
+he had bought it or some occasion of reading equally good to recall.
+Then he covered the pile with a shroud of tattered stuff and wrote a
+letter offering them to the only bookseller in Oxford with whom he had
+never dealt. Two days later an assistant came over to inspect the booty.
+
+"Well?" said Guy painfully, when the assistant put away his note-book
+and shot his cuffs forward.
+
+"Well, Mr. Hazlewood, we can offer you L35 for that little lot."
+
+Guy stammered a repetition of the disappointing sum.
+
+"That's right, sir. And we don't really want them."
+
+"But surely L50...."
+
+The assistant smiled in a superior way.
+
+"We must _try_ and make a _little_ profit," he murmured.
+
+"Oh, God, you'll do that. Why, I must have paid very nearly a hundred
+for them, and they were practically all second hand when I bought them."
+
+The assistant shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I'm sorry, sir, but in offering you L35, I'm offering too much as it
+is. We don't really want them, you see. They're not really any good to
+us."
+
+"You're simply being damned charitable in fact," said Guy. "All right.
+Give me a cheque and take them away when you like ... the sooner the
+better."
+
+He could have kicked that pile of books he had with such hardship
+chosen; already they seemed to belong to this smart young assistant with
+the satin tie; and he began to hate this agglomeration which had cost
+him such agony and in the end had swindled him out of L15. The
+assistant sat down and wrote a cheque for Guy, took his receipt and
+bowed himself out, saying that he would send for the books in the course
+of the week.
+
+Through the rain Guy went for consolation to Pauline. He told her of his
+sacrifice and she with all she could give of exquisite compassion
+listened to his tale.
+
+"But, Guy, my darling, why don't you borrow the money from Father? I am
+sure he'd be delighted to lend it to you."
+
+Guy shook his head.
+
+"It's impossible. My debts must be paid by myself. I wouldn't even
+borrow from Michael Fane. Dearest, don't look so sad. I would sell my
+soul for you. Kiss me. Kiss me. I care for nothing but your kisses. You
+must promise not to say a word of this to any one. Besides, it's no
+sacrifice to do anything that brings our marriage nearer by an inch.
+These debts are weighing me down. They stifle me. I am miserable too
+about the poems. I haven't told you yet. It's really a joke in one way.
+Yes, it's really funny. Worrall wrote to ask for a guinea before he read
+them. Now, don't you think there is something very particularly humorous
+in being charged a guinea by a reader? However, don't worry about that."
+
+"How could he be so stupid?" she cried. "I hope you took them away from
+him."
+
+"Oh, no. I sent the guinea. They must be published. Pauline, I must have
+done something soon or I shall go mad! Surely you see the funny side of
+his offer? I think the notion of my expecting to get five shillings
+apiece out of a lot of readers, and my only reader's getting a guinea
+out of me is funny. I think it's quite humorous."
+
+"Nothing is funny to me that hurts you," Pauline murmured. "And I'm
+heartbroken about the books."
+
+"Oh, when I'm rich I can buy plenty."
+
+"But not the same books."
+
+"That's mere sentiment," he laughed. "And the only sentiment I allow
+myself is in connection with things that you have sanctified."
+
+Then he told her about the flowers pressed in the two volumes of Dante,
+both in that same fifth canto.
+
+"And almost you know," Guy whispered, "I value most the ragged robin,
+because it commemorates the day you really began to love me."
+
+"Ah, no," she protested. "Guy, don't say that. I always loved you, but I
+was shy before. I could not tell you. Sometimes, I wish I were shy now.
+It would make our love so much less of a strain."
+
+"Is it a strain?"
+
+"Oh, sometimes," she cried nearly in tears, her light brown hair upon
+his shoulder. "Oh, yes, yes, Guy. I can't bear to feel.... I'm
+frightened sometimes, and when Mother has been cross with me, I've not
+known what to do. Guy, you won't ever ask me to come out again at
+night?"
+
+"Not if it worries you afterward."
+
+"Oh, yes, it has, it has. Guy, when shall we be married?"
+
+"This year. It shall be this year," he vowed. "Let us believe that,
+Pauline. You do believe that?"
+
+"Oh, Guy, I adore you so wildly. It must be this year. My darling, my
+darling, this year ... let it be this year."
+
+Guy doled out very carefully the L35 he had accumulated by the sale of
+his books. Lampard and Clary had to be content with L7 apiece. Five more
+creditors received L4, or rather one of them only L3 19s., so that the
+guinea left over could be put back into the current account for poetic
+justice. There was for the present nothing more to do but await the
+verdict of Worrall's reader, and in a fortnight Guy heard from the
+publisher to say this had been favourable enough to make Mr. Worrall
+wish to see him in order to discuss the matter of publication. Guy was
+much excited and rushed across to the Rectory in a festivity of
+hopefulness. He had wired to say he would be in London next day, and all
+that evening the name of Worrall was lauded until round his unknown
+personality shone the aureole of a wise and benevolent saint. There
+seemed no limit to what so discerning a publisher might not do for Guy,
+and he and Pauline became to themselves and to her family the hero and
+heroine of such an adventure as never had been. In the course of the
+evening Guy had an opportunity of talking to Margaret, and for the first
+time for a long while he availed himself of it.
+
+"Are you really going to talk to me then?" she asked in mock surprize.
+
+"Margaret, I've been rather objectionable lately," said Guy, remembering
+with an access of penitence that it must be almost exactly a year ago
+that he and Margaret in that snowy weather had first talked about his
+love for Pauline.
+
+"Well, I have thought that you were forgetting me," said Margaret. "I
+shall be sad if we are never going to be friends again."
+
+"Oh, Margaret, we are friends now. I've been worried, and I thought that
+you had been rather unkind to Pauline."
+
+"I haven't really."
+
+"Of course not. It was absolutely my fault," Guy admitted. "Now that
+there seems a chance of our being married in less than ten years, I'm
+going to give up this continual exasperation in which I live nowadays.
+It's curious that my first impression of you all should have been as of
+a Mozart symphony, so tranquil and gay and self-contained and perfectly
+made did the Rectory seem. How clumsily I have plunged into that life,"
+he sighed. "Really, Margaret, I feel sometimes like a wild beast that's
+escaped from a menagerie and got into a concert of chamber-music. Look
+here, you shall never have to grumble at me again. Now tell me, just to
+show that you've forgiven my detestable irruption ... when Richard
+comes back...."
+
+Margaret gave him her hand for a moment, and looked down.
+
+"And you're happy?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"I'm sure I shall be."
+
+"Oh, you will be, you will be."
+
+Pauline asked him afterward what he had said to Margaret that could have
+made her so particularly sweet, and when Guy whispered his discovery,
+Pauline declared that the one thing necessary to make this evening
+perfect had been just that knowledge.
+
+"Guy, how clever of you to make her tell you what she will never tell
+us. You don't know how much it has worried me to feel that you were
+always angry with Margaret. How I've exaggerated everything! And what
+friends you really are, you dears!"
+
+"I've never been angry with her except on your account."
+
+"But you won't ever be again, because I'm so foolish. I'm really a sort
+of young Miss Verney."
+
+They laughed at this idea of Pauline's, and soon it was time for Guy to
+go. He thought luxuriously as he walked up the drive how large a measure
+of good news he would bring back with him from London.
+
+Guy was surprized to be kept waiting when he enquired for Mr. Worrall at
+three o'clock on the following afternoon. All the way up in the train he
+had thought so much about him and so kindlily that it seemed he must the
+very moment he entered the dusty Georgian antechamber shake his
+publisher warmly by the hand. He had pictured him really as looking out
+for his coming, almost as vividly indeed in his prefiguration of the
+scene as to behold Mr. Worrall's face pressed tight against a pane and
+thence disappearing to greet him from the step.
+
+It was a shock to be invited to wait, and he repeated his name to the
+indifferent clerk a little insistently.
+
+"Mr. Worrall will see you in a minute," the clerk repeated.
+
+Guy looked at the few objects of interest in the outer office, at the
+original drawings of wrappers and frontispieces, at the signed
+photograph of a moderately distinguished poet of the 'nineties, at a
+depressing accumulation of still unsold volumes. The window was grimy,
+and the raindrops seemed from inside to smear it as tears smudge the
+face of a dirty child. The clerk pored over a ledger, and from the grey
+afternoon the cries of the porters in Covent Garden came drearily in. At
+last a bell sounded, and the clerk invited him 'to step this way,'
+lifting the counter and pointing up a narrow staircase beyond a glass
+door. Guy went up and at last entered Mr. Worrall's private office.
+
+The publisher was a short fat man with a bald and curiously conical
+head, reminding Guy very much of a dentist in his manner. The poet sat
+down and immediately caught in his first survey Mr. William Worrall's
+caricature by Max Beerbohm. As a result of this observation Guy
+throughout the interview could only perceive Mr. Worrall as the
+caricaturist had perceived him, and like a shape in a dream his head all
+the time grew more and more conical, until it seemed as if it would soon
+bore a hole in the festooned ceiling.
+
+"Well, Mr. Hazlewood," said the publisher referring as he spoke to Guy's
+card with what Guy thought was a rather unnecessary implication of
+oblivion. "Well, Mr. Hazlewood, my reader reports very favourably on
+your poems, and there seems no reason why I should not publish them."
+
+Guy bowed.
+
+"No reason at all," Mr. Worrall continued. Then making a gothic arch
+with his fingers and looking up at the ceiling, he added:
+
+"Though, of course, there will be a risk. However, my reader's opinion
+was certainly favourable."
+
+And so it ought to be, thought Guy, for a guinea.
+
+"And I don't think," Mr. Worrall went on, "that in the circumstances we
+need be very much afraid. Have you any ideas about the price at which
+your sheaf, your little harvest is to be offered to the public?"
+
+"Oh, I should leave that to you," said Guy hastily.
+
+"Precisely," said the publisher. "Yes, I think perhaps we might say five
+shillings or ... of course it might be done in paper in the Covent
+Garden Series of Modern English Poets. Yes, the reader speaks most
+highly of your work. You know the Covent Garden series of modern poets?
+In paper at half-a-crown net?"
+
+"I should be very proud to appear in such a series," said Guy
+pleasantly. The series as a matter of fact was one that could do him no
+discredit.
+
+"It's a charming idea, isn't it?" said Mr. Worrall, fondling one of the
+set that lay on his desk. "Every five volumes has its own floral emblem.
+We've done The Rose, The Lily, The Violet. Let me see, your poems are
+mostly about London, aren't they?"
+
+"No, there isn't one about London," Guy pointed out rather sharply.
+
+"No, precisely, then of course they would not come in The London Pride
+set which still has a vacancy. Perhaps The Cowslip? What does the reader
+say? Um, yes, pastoral. Precisely! Well, then why not let us decide that
+your poems shall be Number Three in The Cowslip set. Capital! I think
+you'd be wise to choose the Covent Garden series in paper. The cost of
+publication is really less in that series, and I have always chosen my
+poets so carefully that I can be sure the Press will pay attention
+to--er neophytes. That is a great advantage for a young writer, as you
+no doubt realize without my telling you?"
+
+"The cost?" echoed Guy in a puzzled voice.
+
+"It will run you in for about L30--as a guarantee of course. The terms
+I suggest are simply a written agreement that you will guarantee L30
+toward the cost. Your royalty to be ten per cent on the first thousand,
+twelve and a half on the next thousand and fifteen over two thousand. We
+might fairly say that in the event of selling a thousand you would have
+nothing to pay, but of course if you only sell twenty or thirty, you
+will have to--er--pay for your piping."
+
+"And when should I have to produce this L30?" Guy asked.
+
+"Well, I might ask for a cheque to be placed to my account on the day of
+publication; and then of course I should send in a written statement
+twice a year with the usual three months' margin for settlement."
+
+"So that supposing my book came out in March?" Guy enquired.
+
+"By the following November I should hope to have the pleasure of sending
+you back your L30 and a cheque on account of royalties," said the
+publisher briskly.
+
+"They don't seem very good terms somehow," said Guy.
+
+Mr. Worrall shrugged his shoulders, and his conical head grew more
+conical.
+
+"You forget the advantage of being in the Covent Garden series of modern
+poets. However, don't, pray do not, entrust your manuscript to my
+pilotage unless you are perfectly satisfied. I have a good many poems to
+consider, you know."
+
+"May I write within a week or so and give you my decision?" Guy asked.
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"Well, good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Hazlewood. Clever fellow, isn't he?"
+
+Guy had given a farewell glance at Max Beerbohm's caricature.
+
+"Very clever," the poet fervently agreed.
+
+Guy left Mr. William Worrall's office and wandered dismally across
+Covent Garden, wondering where on earth he was going to be able to raise
+L30. He had intended to spend the night in town and look up some old
+friends, but foreseeing now the inevitable question 'What are you
+doing?' he felt he had not the heart to explain that at present he was
+debating the possibility of spending L30 in order to produce a book of
+poems. All the people whom he would have been glad to see had held such
+high hopes of him at Oxford, had prophesied for his career such
+prosperity; and now when after fifteen months he emerged from his
+retirement it was but to pay a man to include him in the Covent Garden
+series of modern poets. The rain came down faster, and a creeping fog
+made more inhospitable the dusk of London. He thought of a quick train
+somewhere about five o'clock, and in a sudden longing to be back in the
+country and to sleep, however dark and frore the January night that
+stretched between them, nearer to Pauline than here in this city of
+drizzled fog, he took a cab to Paddington.
+
+During the railway journey Guy contemplated various plans to raise the
+money he wanted. He knew that his father at the cost of a long letter
+would probably have given him the sum: but supposing a triumph lay
+before him, all the sweets of it would have been robbed by paternal
+help. Moreover if the book were paid for thus, there would be a
+consequent suspicion of all favourable criticism: it would never seem a
+genuine book to his father, and the reviews would give him the
+impression of being the work of well-disposed amateurs or of personal
+friends. There was the alternative of borrowing the money from Michael
+Fane; and then as the train went clanging through the night Guy made up
+his mind to be under an obligation to nobody and to sacrifice all the
+rest of his books if necessary that this new book might be born.
+
+When he was back at Plashers Mead, his resolution did not weaken:
+coldly and unsentimentally he began to eviscerate the already mutilated
+library. At the end of his task he had stacked upon the floor five
+hundred volumes to be offered as a bargain to the bookseller who had
+bought the others. All that was left indeed were the cheapest and most
+ordinary editions of poets, one or two volumes of the greatest of all
+like Rabelais and Cervantes, and the eternally read and most
+companionable like Boswell and Gilbert White and Sir Thomas Browne. In
+the determination that had seized him he rejoiced in his bare shelves,
+so much exalted by the glories of abnegation that he began to despise
+himself in his former attitude as a trifler among books and to say to
+himself, as he looked at the volumes which had survived this heartless
+clearance, that now he was set on the great fairway of literature
+without any temptation to diverge up the narrow streams of personal
+taste. The bookseller's assistant was not at all eager for the proferred
+bargain, and in the end Guy could only manage to obtain the L30 and not,
+as he had hoped, another L10 towards his debts. Nevertheless he locked
+the cheque up in his desk with the satisfaction of a man who for the
+first time in his life earns money, and later on went across to tell
+Pauline the result of the visit to London.
+
+There was a smell of frost in the air that afternoon, and the sharpness
+of the weather consorted well with Guy's mood, taking away the heavy
+sense of disappointment and giving him a sparkling hopefulness. He and
+Pauline went for a walk on Wychford down, and in the wintry cheer he
+would not allow her to be cast down at the loss of his books or to
+resent Worrall's reception of the poems.
+
+"Everything is all right," he assured her. "The more we have to deny
+ourselves now, the greater will be my success when it comes. The law of
+compensation never fails. You and I are Davidsbuendler marching against
+the Philistines. So be brave, my Pauline."
+
+"I will try to be brave," she promised. "But it's harder for me because
+I'm doing nothing."
+
+"Oh, nothing," said Guy. "Nothing except endow me with passion and
+ambition, with consolation ... oh, nothing, you foolish one."
+
+"Am I really all that to you?"
+
+"Forward," he shouted, hurling his stick in front of him and dragging
+Pauline at the heels of Bob across turf that was already beginning to
+crackle in the frost. Pauline could not resist his confidence, and when
+at last they had to turn round and leave a smoky orange sunset, they
+came home glowing to the Rectory, both in the highest spirits. Guy wrote
+to the publisher that night and announced his intention of accepting the
+"offer," a word which he could not resist framing with inverted commas
+in case the sarcastic shaft might pierce Mr. Worrall's hard and conical
+head.
+
+Sitting back in his chair and thinking over his poems, all sorts of
+verbal improvements suggested themselves to Guy; and he added a note
+asking for the manuscript to be sent back for a few corrections. He
+looked at his work with new eyes when it arrived, and bent with all the
+enthusiasm that fruition gave his pen upon reviewing each line for the
+hundredth time. He had enjoyed few things so well in his life as going
+to bed tired with the intense consideration of a rhyme and falling
+asleep in the ambition to reconsider it early next morning.
+
+About ten days had passed since Guy sold the second lot of books, and
+the poems were now as good as he could make them until print should
+reveal numbers of fresh faults. He hoped that Worrall would hurry on
+with the printing in order to allow him plenty of time for an even more
+severe scrutiny; and he wrote to suggest April as the month of
+publication, so anxious was he to have one specially bound copy to offer
+Pauline on her birthday.
+
+On the very morning when the manuscript had been wrapped up and was
+ready to be sent off a disturbing letter arrived from Lampard, his
+favourite Oxford bookseller, to say that having made a purchase of books
+two or three days ago he had been surprized to find among them a large
+number of volumes with Mr. Hazlewood's name inscribed on the fly-leaves,
+for which Mr. Hazlewood had not yet paid him. He ventured to think it
+was only by an oversight that Mr. Hazlewood had not paid his long
+outstanding account before disposing of the books and in short he was
+anxious to know what Mr. Hazlewood intended to do about it. His bill,
+L32 15s., was enclosed. Guy wrote back to say that it was indeed a most
+unaccountable oversight on his part, but that he hoped in order to mark
+his sympathy with Mr. Lampard's point of view to send him another cheque
+very shortly, reminding the bookseller at the same time that he had
+scarcely three weeks ago sent him L7 on account. Mr. Lampard in his
+reply observed very plainly that Guy's letter was no reply at all and
+threatened politely to make matters rather unpleasant if the bill were
+not paid in full instantly. Guy tried once more a letter full of bland
+promises, and received in response a letter from Mr. Lampard's
+solicitor. The L30 intended for Mr. Worrall had to be sacrificed, and
+even L2 15s. had to be taken from his current account. Savagely he tore
+the paper from the manuscript, wrapped it up again and despatched it to
+another publisher. The bad luck of the Lampard business made him only
+the more resolute not to invoke aid from his father or anyone else. He
+was a prey to a perverse determination to do everything himself; but it
+was gloomy news that he had to tell Pauline that afternoon, and she
+broke down and cried in her disappointment.
+
+
+
+
+_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 L2000.
+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 entrusted.
+
+"William had the same difficulty," sighed the old maid. "Really it
+seems as if money _is_ the root of all evil. L200, 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
+quarrelled 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 sombre-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 grey-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 month 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 favourite 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 argued.
+
+"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 nun-like 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 toward 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 toward 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 someone 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 someone 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 behaviour, 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 anyone'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 afterward 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 mattins 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.
+
+
+
+
+ANOTHER SPRING
+
+
+
+
+_March_
+
+
+When the poems were returned by three publishers within the first
+fortnight of March, Guy was inclined to surrender his vocation and to
+think about such regular work as would banish the reproach he began to
+fancy was now perceptible at the back of everybody's eyes. The weather
+was abominably cold, and even Plashers Mead itself was no longer the
+embodiment of the old enthusiasm. Already in order to pay current
+expenses he was drawing upon the next quarter, and the combination of
+tradesmen's books with icy draughts curling through the house produced
+an atmosphere of perpetual exasperation. It always seemed to be coldest
+on Monday morning and Miss Peasey _would_ breathe over his shoulder
+while he was adding up the bills.
+
+"We apparently live on butter," he grumbled.
+
+"Oh, no, it was really lamb you had yesterday," the housekeeper
+maintained irrelevantly.
+
+"I said we apparently live on butter," Guy shouted.
+
+Then of course Miss Peasey _would_ poke her veiny nose right down into
+the book, while the draught blew her hair about and unpleasantly tickled
+his cheek.
+
+"It's the best butter," she said sorrowfully at last.
+
+"But my watch is quite all right."
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"I made an allusion to Alice in Wonderland," he shouted.
+
+Miss Peasey retired from the room in dudgeon, and Guy wasted ten minutes
+in examining various theories on what his housekeeper could have
+thought he meant by his last remark. Finally he wrote off to a friend of
+his, an ardent young Radical peer with whom he had shared rooms at
+Oxford.
+
+     PLASHERS MEAD, WYCHFORD, OXON.
+
+     _March 15._
+
+     _Dear Com,_
+
+     _Why the dickens haven't you written to me for such ages? I'm going
+     to chuck this place. Haven't you got any scheme on hand for
+     teaching the democracy to find out the uselessness of your order?
+     Why not a new critical weekly, with me as bondslave-in-chief? Or
+     doesn't one of your National Liberals want a bright young fellow to
+     dot his i's and pick up his h's? For L250 a year I'll serve any of
+     them, write his speeches, interview his constituents or even teach
+     his cubs to prey on the body politic like Father Lion himself.
+     Seriously though, if you hear of anything, do think of me._
+
+     _Yours ever
+
+     G. H._
+
+Comeragh wrote back at once:
+
+     420 Brook Street, W.
+
+     _March 16._
+
+     _Dear old Guy,_
+
+     _If you will bury yourself like a misanthropic badger, you can't
+     expect to be written to by every post. Oddly enough there has been
+     some talk of starting a new paper; at least it isn't really very
+     odd because the subject is mooted three times a day in the advanced
+     political circles round which I revolve. However, just at present
+     the scheme is in abeyance. Never mind, I'll fetch you out of your
+     earth at the first excuse that offers itself. Do you ever go in and
+     see the Balliol people? My young brother's up now, you know. Ask
+     him over to lunch some day. He's a shining light of Tory Democracy
+     and is going to preserve or I suppose I ought to say conserve the
+     honour of our family. When are your poems coming out? I heard from
+     Tom Anstruther the other day. He seems rather hurt that an attache
+     at Madrid is not given an opportunity of adjusting or upsetting the
+     balance of power in Europe. I'll try to get down for a week-end,
+     but I'm betraying my order by voting against an obscurantist
+     majority whenever I can, and plotting hard against the liberties of
+     landowners when I'm not voting. However, when the House flies away
+     to search for summer I'll drop out of the flock and perch a while
+     on your roof. One thing I will promise, which is that when I'm
+     Prime Minister you shall be offered the Laurel at L200 a year._
+
+     _Yours ever
+
+     Com._
+
+It was jolly to hear from Comeragh like this, and the letter opened for
+Guy a prospect of something that, when he came to think about it,
+appeared very much like a retreat. He realized abruptly that the strain
+of the last two months had been playing upon his nerves to such an
+extent that the notion of leaving Wychford was no longer very
+distasteful. The realization of his potential apostasy came with rather
+a shock, and he felt that he ought somehow to atone to Pauline for the
+disloyalty toward her his attitude seemed to involve. He began to go to
+church again in a desperate endeavour to pursue the phantom that she
+called faith, but this very endeavour only made more apparent the vital
+difference in their relations with life. She always had for his attempts
+to capture something worth while for himself in religion a kind of
+questioning anxiety which was faintly irritating; and though he always
+pushed the problem hastily out of sight, the fact that he could now be
+irritated by her was dolefully significant.
+
+All through this month of maddening East wind Guy felt that he stood
+upon the verge of a catastrophe, and the despatch of the poems which at
+first had done so much to help matters along was now only another source
+of vexation. Formerly he had always possessed the refuge of work, but in
+this perpetual uncertainty he could not settle down to anything fresh,
+and the expectation every morning of his poems being once again rejected
+was a handicap to the whole day. Partly to plunge himself into a
+reaction and partly to avoid and even to crush their spiritual
+divergence Guy always made love passionately to Pauline during these
+days. He was aware that she was terribly tried by this, but the
+knowledge made him more selfishly passionate. A sort of brutality had
+entered into their relation which Guy hated, but to which in these
+circumstances that made him feverishly glad to wound her he allowed more
+liberty every day. The merely physical side of this struggle between
+them was of course accentuated by the gag placed upon discussion. He
+would not give her the chance of saying why she feared his kisses, and
+he took an unfair advantage of the conviction that Pauline would never
+declare a reason until he demanded one. He was horribly conscious of
+abusing her love for him, and the more he was aware of that, the more
+brutal he showed himself until sometimes he used to wonder in dismay if
+at the back of his mind the impulse to destroy his love altogether had
+not been born.
+
+Easter was approaching, and Pauline went to Oxford for a week to get
+summer clothes. When she came back, Guy found her attitude changed. She
+was remote, almost evasive, and at the back of her tenderest glance was
+now a wistful appeal that perplexed his ardour.
+
+"I feel you don't want me to kiss you," he said reproachfully. "What has
+happened? Why have you come back from Oxford so cold? What has happened
+to you, Pauline?"
+
+Her eyes took fire, melted into tenderness, flamed once more, and then
+were quenched in rising tears.
+
+The voice in which she answered him seemed to come from another world.
+
+"Guy, I am not cold ... I'm not cold enough...."
+
+She flung herself away from his gesture of endearment and buried her
+cheeks in the cushion of the faded old settee. A wild calm had fallen
+upon the room as if like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm it could
+register a warning of the emotional tempest at hand. The books, the
+furniture, the very pattern of birds and daisies upon the wall stood out
+sharply, almost luridly it seemed: the cuckoo from the passage called
+the hour in notes of alarm as if a stormcock were sweeping up to cover
+from dangerous open country.
+
+"What do you mean?" Guy asked. He knew that he was carrying the
+situation between Pauline and himself farther along than he had ever
+taken it since the night they met. Yet nothing could have stopped his
+course at this moment and, if the end should ruin his life, he would
+persist.
+
+"What do you mean?" he repeated.
+
+"Don't ask me," she sobbed. "It's cruel to ask me."
+
+"You mean your mother...." he began.
+
+"No, no, it's myself, myself."
+
+"My dearest, if it's only yourself, you need not be afraid. Why, you're
+so adorable...."
+
+Pauline seemed to cry out at the wound he had given her, and Guy started
+back afraid for an instant of what he was provoking.
+
+"Don't treat me like a stupid little girl that petting can cure. I'm not
+adorable, I'm bad ... I'm ... oh, Guy, I am so unhappy!"
+
+"What do you mean by 'bad'?" he asked. "You talk as if we were ...
+really, darling, you don't grasp life at all."
+
+"Guy," she said turning to him with fierce earnestness. "Don't persuade
+me I've done nothing. I have. I ought not. I've known that all the
+time. If you don't want me to be miserable for the rest of my life, you
+mustn't persuade me. I've been so weak...."
+
+He was annoyed at the exaggeration in her words and perplexed by her
+violence.
+
+"Anybody would think, you know," he told her, "that we had behaved
+terribly."
+
+"We have. We have."
+
+Her mouth was drawn with pain: her eyes were wild.
+
+"But we've not," Guy contradicted, mustering desperately all the forces
+of normality to allay Pauline's overstrained ideas. "We've not," he
+repeated. "You don't understand, darling Pauline, that when you talk
+like that you give the impression of something that is unimaginable of
+you. It's dreadful really to have to talk about this, but it's better
+that we should discuss it than that you should torture yourself
+needlessly like this."
+
+"It's not what we've done so much," she said. "It's what you've made me
+think about you."
+
+Guy laughed rather miserably.
+
+"That seems a very trifling reason for so much ... well, you know, it's
+very nearly hysteria."
+
+"To you, perhaps," she retorted bitterly. "To me it's like madness."
+
+"I can't understand these morbid fancies of yours. What have you been
+doing in Oxford? Ah, I know," he shouted in a rage of sudden divination.
+"You've been talking to a priest.... Oh, if I could burn every
+interfering scoundrel who...." The scene swept over him, choking the
+words in his throat with indignant impotent jealousy. "You've been to
+Confession. And what good have you got from it, but lies, lies?"
+
+"I've always been to Confession," Pauline answered coldly.
+
+In a flash Guy visualized her religious life as one long creeping
+toward a gloomy Confessional where lurked a smooth-faced priest who
+poured his poison into her ears.
+
+"You shall go no more," he vowed. "What right have you to drag the
+holiness of love in the mud of a priest's mind?"
+
+"You don't know how stupidly you're talking," said Pauline. "You say I
+exaggerate. You don't know how much you are exaggerating. You don't
+understand."
+
+"I thought you wanted me to have faith! How can I have faith when I hear
+of priests degrading our love. What right had you to go to a priest?
+What does he know of you or me? What has he suffered? What does he
+understand? Why do you listen to him and pay no heed to me? What did you
+say?"
+
+Pauline looked at him in silence.
+
+"What did you say?" he repeated angrily. He was caring for nothing at
+that moment but to tear from her the history of the scene that made a
+furnace of his brain. "He must have tried to put the idea into your head
+that you've been doing wrong. I say you have done nothing wrong. I
+suppose you told him you came out at night with me on the river and I
+suppose he concluded from that ... oh, Pauline, I cannot let you be a
+prey to the mind of a priest. You don't realize what it means to me. You
+don't realize the raging jealousy it rouses."
+
+"Guy," she moaned, "love is too much for me. I can't bear the
+uncertainty. Your debts ... the sending back of your poems ... the fear
+that we shall never be married ... the doubts ... the thought that I've
+deceived my family ... the misery I bring to you because I can't think
+everything is right...."
+
+"I don't want you always to agree with me. I've promised never to ask
+you again to come out with me at night. I'll even promise never to kiss
+you again, until we are married. But you must promise me never again to
+go to Confession."
+
+"I can't give up what I believe is right," she said.
+
+"Then I won't give up what I believe is right."
+
+He strained her to him and kissed her lips so closely that they were
+white instead of red. Then he went from her in an impulse to let her if
+she would break off the engagement. If he had stayed he must have
+blasphemed the religion which was soiling with its murk their love. He
+must have hurt her so deeply that he would have compelled her to bid him
+never come back. It was for her now, the responsibility of going on, and
+she should find what religion would do for her when she was left alone
+to battle with the infamous suggestions the fiction was giving to her
+mind. She should find that beside his love religion was nothing, that
+the folly would topple down and betray her at this very moment. When
+next he saw her, she would have forgotten her priests and their mummery:
+she would think only of him and live only for him.
+
+"Blow, you damned wind," he shouted to the brilliant and tranquil March
+day. "Blow, blow, can't you? You've blown all these days and now when I
+want you in my face, you lie still."
+
+But the weather stayed serene, and Guy had to run in order to tire the
+fury in his mind. He did not stop until he realized by the scampering of
+the March hares to right and left of his path how very absurd he must
+appear even to the blind heavens.
+
+"Why," he exclaimed suddenly standing still and addressing a thorn-tree
+on the green down. "Why, of course, now I realize the Reformation!"
+
+This sudden apprehension of a tremendous historical fact was rather
+disconcerting in the way it brought home to him the uselessness of all
+the information that he had for years absorbed without any real response
+of recognition. It brought home to him how much he would have to
+discover for himself and appalled him with the mockery it made of his
+confidence hitherto. How if all those poems he had written were merely
+external emotion like his conception of religion until this moment? He
+really hoped the manuscript would come back this evening from whatever
+publisher had last eyed it disdainfully, so that in the light of this
+revelation of his youthfulness he could judge his life's achievement
+afresh. It was indeed frightening that in one moment all his comfortable
+standards could be struck away from beneath his feet, for if an outburst
+of jealousy on account of a priest's interference could suddenly
+re-shape his conception of history, what fundamental changes in his
+conception of art might not be waiting for him a little way ahead?
+
+The spectacle of Pauline's simple creed had hitherto pleasantly affected
+his senses; and she had taken her place with the heroines of romantic
+poets and painters. It had been pleasant to murmur:
+
+    _Pray but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips,_
+    _Think but one thought of me up in the stars:_
+
+and to compare himself with the lover of The Blessed Damozel had been a
+luxurious melancholy. Pauline and he had worshipped together in chapels
+of Lyonesse where, if he had knelt beside her with rather a tender
+condescension toward her prayers, he had always been moved sincerely by
+the decorative appeal they made to him. He had felt a sentimental awe of
+her hushed approach to the altar and he had derived a kind of
+sentimental satisfaction from the perfection of her attitude, perhaps,
+even more, he had placed upon it a sentimental reliance. Her faith had
+been the decorative adjunct of a great deal of his verse, and he flushed
+hotly to remember lines that now appeared as damnable insincerities with
+which he had allowed his pen to play. All that piety of hers he had
+sung so prettily was real and possessed an intrinsic power to injure
+him, so that what he had patronized and encouraged could rise up and pit
+itself deliberately against him. Pauline actually believed in her
+religion, believed in it to the extent of dishonouring their love to
+appease the mumbo-jumbo. That something so monstrously inexistent could
+have any such power was barely comprehensible, and yet here he was faced
+with what easily might prove to be a force powerful enough to annihilate
+their love. He remembered how in reading of Christina Rossetti's
+renunciation of a lover who did not believe as she believed, he had
+thought of the incident as a poet's exaggeration. And it might well have
+happened. Now indeed he could see why she was so much the greatest
+poetess of them all: her faith had been real. Lines from that Sonnet of
+sonnets came back to him, broken lines but full of dread:
+
+                _I love ... God the most;_
+    _Would lose not Him but you, must one be lost:_
+
+And if Pauline should speak so to him, if Pauline should disown him at
+the bidding of her phantom gods? How the thought swept into oblivion all
+his pitiful achievement, all his fretful emotions set down in rhyme.
+Either he must convince her that she was affrighted by vain fancies or
+he must bow before this reality of belief and seek humbly the truth
+where she discovered it. Yet if he took that course, it held no pledge
+of faith for him. Shamefacedly and scarcely able to bear even the
+thorn-tree's presence Guy knelt down and prayed that he might be given
+Pauline's single heart. The song of the innumerable larks rose into the
+crystalline, but all the prayers tumbled down from that stuffy pavilion
+of sky. The moment that the first emotional aspiration was thus defeated
+Guy was only conscious of his lapse into superstition, and furious with
+the surrender he went walking over the downs in a determination to shake
+Pauline's faith at whatever the cost temporarily to the beautiful
+appearance of their love.
+
+He wrote that evening in a fine frenzy of declamation against God,
+affirming in his verse the rights of man; but on reading the lines
+through next morning they seemed like the first vapours of adolescence;
+and when he turned for consolation to Shelley, he found that even a
+great poet's rage on behalf of man against God was often turgid enough.
+It was however a hopeful sign that he could still perceive what puddles
+these aerial fountains of song often left behind them, and he was glad
+to find that not all the value of critical experience had been destroyed
+by the imperative need to readjust his values of reality.
+
+Birdwood brought a note from Pauline just when Guy had burnt his
+effusion of the night before and come to the conclusion that as a
+polemical and atheistic rhymester he was of the very poorest quality.
+
+The gardener was inclined to be chatty, and when the weather and the
+flowers in season had been discussed at length, he observed that Miss
+Pauline was not looking so well as she ought to look.
+
+"You'll have to speak to her about it, Mr. Hazlenut."
+
+Birdwood had never learned to give Guy his proper name, and there had
+been many jokes between him and Pauline about this and many vows by Guy
+that one day he would address the gardener as Birdseed. How far away
+such foolish little jokes were seeming now.
+
+"It's been a tiring Spring," said Guy. "The East wind...."
+
+"Her cheeks isn't nothing like so rosy as they was," said the gardener.
+"You'll excuse the liberty I'm taking in mentioning them, but having
+known Miss Pauline since she couldn't walk ... why I happen to mention
+it is that there was a certain somebody up in the town who passed the
+remark to me and, I having to give him a piece of my mind pretty sharp
+on account of him talking so free, it sort of stuck in my memory and ...
+you don't think she's middling?"
+
+"Oh, no, I think she's quite well," said Guy.
+
+"Well, as long as you aren't worrited, I don't suppose I've got any call
+to be worrited; only anyone can't help it a bit when they see witches'
+cheeks on a young lady. She certainly does look middling, but maybe, as
+you say, it is this unnatural East wind."
+
+Birdwood touched his cap and retired, but his words had struck at Guy
+remorsefully while he walked away to a corner of the orchard, reading
+Pauline's letter. The starlings were piping a sweet monotony of Spring,
+and daffodils, that he and she had planted last Summer when they came
+back from Ladingford, haunted his path.
+
+     _My darling,_
+
+     _Why haven't you been to see me this morning? Why weren't you in
+     the orchard? I stayed such a long while in the churchyard, but you
+     never came. If I said anything yesterday that hurt your feelings,
+     forgive me. You mustn't think that I was angry with you because
+     perhaps I spoke angrily. Darling, darling Guy, I adore you so, and
+     nothing else but you matters to my happiness. I should not have
+     spoken about religion--I don't know how we came to argue about it.
+     It was unkind of me to be depressed and sad when my dearest was
+     sad. Truly, truly I am so anxious about your poems only because I
+     want you to be happy. Sometimes I must seem selfish, but you know
+     that before anything it is your work I think of. I'm not really a
+     bit worried about our being married. I have these fits of
+     depression which are really very wrong. I'm not worried about
+     anything really, only I had a dream about you last month which
+     frightened me. Oh, Guy, come this afternoon and tell me you're not
+     angry. I promise you that I won't make you miserable with my stupid
+     depression. Guy, if I could only tell you how I love you. If you
+     only knew how never, never for an instant do I care for anything
+     but your happiness. You don't really want me to give up believing
+     in anything do you? It doesn't really make you angry, does it? Come
+     and tell me this afternoon that you've forgiven_
+
+     _Your
+
+     Pauline._
+
+     _I love you. I love you._
+
+Gently the daffodils swayed in this light breeze of dying March, and the
+grass was already tall enough to sigh forth its transitory summer tune.
+Guy in a flood of penitence hastened at once to the Rectory to accuse
+himself to Pauline, and when he saw her watching for him at the nursery
+window he had no regrets that could stab to wound him as deeply as he
+deserved to be wounded. She was very tender and still that afternoon,
+and as he held her in his arms there seemed to him nothing more worth
+while in life than her cherishing. For them sitting in that nursery the
+hours swung lazily to and fro in felicity, and all the time there was
+nobody to disturb the reconciliation. They talked only of the future and
+allowed recent despairs and foreboding agitations to slink away
+disgraced. Janet, coming to take away the tea-things, beamed at their
+happiness and through a filigree of bare jasmine twigs the slanting sun
+touched with new life the faded wall-paper, opening wider, it seemed,
+the daisies' eyes, mellowing the berries and tinting the birds with
+brighter plumes for their immutable and immemorial courtship.
+
+Plunged deep in such a peace Guy prompted by damnable discord asked idly
+what had been that dream of which Pauline had spoken in her letter. She
+was unwilling for a long while to tell him, but he spurred on by
+mischief itself persuaded her in the end and she recounted that
+experience of waking to find herself prone upon the floor of her room.
+
+"No wonder you're looking pale," he exclaimed. "Now you see the result
+of exciting yourself unnecessarily."
+
+"But it was so vivid," she protested, "and really the light was blinding
+and it thought so terribly all the time."
+
+"I shall think very terribly that you've been reading some
+spiritualistic rot in a novel," said Guy, "if you talk like that. Your
+religion may be true, but I'm quite sure these conjuring tricks of your
+fancy are a sign of hysteria. And this poor speck that was me? How did
+you know it was me if it was a speck? Did that think too? My foolish
+Pauline, you encouraged your morbid ideas when you were awake and when
+you were asleep you paid the penalty."
+
+She had gone away from him and was standing by the window.
+
+"Guy, if you talk like that, it means you don't really love me. It means
+you have no sympathy, that you're cold and cruel and cynical."
+
+He sighed with elaborate compassion for her state of mind.
+
+"And what else? I wonder how you ever managed to fall in love with me."
+
+"Sometimes I wonder too," she said slowly.
+
+He turned quickly and went out of the room.
+
+Guy regretted before he was half-way down the passage what he had done,
+but he steeled himself against going back by persuading himself that
+Pauline's hysteria must be remorselessly checked. All the way back to
+Plashers Mead he had excuses for his behaviour, and all the way he was
+wondering if he had done right. Supposing that she were to persist in
+this exaggeration of everything, who could say into what extravagance of
+attitude she might not find herself driven? Rage seized him against this
+malady that was sapping the foundations of their love, and all his
+affection for her was obscured in the contemplation of that overwrought
+Pauline who sacrificed herself to baseless doubts and alarms. If he
+once admitted her right to dream ridiculously about him, he would be
+encouraging her upon the road to madness. Had she not already fondled
+the notion of going mad, just as she would often fondle the picture of
+herself as the heroine of an unhappy love-affair? If he were severe now,
+she would surely come to see the absurdity of these religious fears,
+this heart-searching and morbid sensitiveness. It was curious that he
+was able to keep his idea of Pauline herself quite apart from Pauline as
+the subject of nervous depression. He was practically ascribing to her a
+double personality, so distinct were the two views of her in his mind.
+When he got home he found the manuscript had been sent back by a seventh
+publisher, and on top of the packet lay a letter from his friend
+Comeragh.
+
+     420 BROOK STREET, W.
+
+     _Dear Guy,_
+
+     _Sir George Gascony asked me to-day if I knew of someone who would
+     suit him as private secretary. He's going out to Persia next month.
+     I told him about you. Come up to town and meet him. He's dining
+     here on Thursday. I'm certain you can have the job._
+
+     _Yours ever
+
+     Comeragh._
+
+At first the letter only presented itself to his imagination as an easy
+way of punishing Pauline's hysteria. It seemed to him the very weapon
+that was wanted to 'give her a lesson,' and after dinner he went across
+to the Rectory and announced his news in front of everybody, asking
+everybody if they did not think he ought to go and talking
+enthusiastically of oriental adventure until quite late. He sternly
+refused to allow himself a moment alone with Pauline in which to talk
+over the plan; and, even when they were left alone together in the hall
+he kissed her good-night hurriedly and silently and rather guiltily.
+
+When Guy was back at home and thought about his behaviour, he began to
+wonder if he had committed himself to Persia too finally. The prospect,
+except so far as it would affect Pauline, had not really sunk into his
+mind yet, but now as he read the letter over he began to think that he
+really would like to go. It might mean a separation of two years but it
+would reconcile him to his father and it would assure his marriage at
+the end of the time. Persia might easily be almost as interesting as it
+sounded, and how remote from debts looked Baghdad. If last year he had
+been able practically to settle to be a schoolmaster, how much more
+easily could this resolution be taken. Dreamily he let his imagination
+play round the notion of Persia, dreamily and rather pleasantly it would
+solve so many difficulties and it held the promise of so much active
+romance.
+
+Next morning Mrs. Grey sent round to ask if Guy would come to lunch
+early enough to have a talk with her first.
+
+"Yes ... charming.... I really wanted us to have a little talk
+together," she said in nervous welcome, as she led the way to her own
+sitting-room that with its red lacquer and its screen painted with birds
+of paradise hid itself away in a corner of the house. Ordinarily Guy
+would have accepted it as a sign of the highest favour to be brought to
+her small room, but this morning it seemed to imprison him.
+
+"Yes ... charming ... a little talk," said Mrs. Grey; and Guy while he
+waited for her to begin, watched the mandarins that moved in absurd
+reduplications all about her armchair's faded green pattern.
+
+"Of course it was rather a surprize to us all last night ... yes ... I
+expect it was a surprize to you. And you really think you ought to go?"
+
+"I'm getting rather discouraged about poetry," Guy confessed. "I'm
+beginning to think that what I've written isn't much good and that if I
+am ever going to write anything worth while, it will be because I've
+learnt to be less self-conscious about it. If I went to Persia with Sir
+George Gascony I should probably be kept fairly busy and if there was
+any poetry left in me after that, well, it might be good stuff."
+
+"But you've not seen yet what people think of what you have written ...
+no ... you see the poems haven't been published yet, which is very
+vexing ... and so I thought ... I mean the Rector thought that if there
+was any difficulty he would like to help you to publish them ... yes ...
+rather than go away to Persia ... you know ... yes ... poor little
+Pauline was crying nearly all night and I don't think you ought to go
+away suddenly like this ... no ... and we couldn't find an atlas
+anywhere!"
+
+"You think I ought not to go?" said Guy, and he realized as he spoke
+that he was disappointed.
+
+"I do think that after all these months of hoping for your poems to be a
+success that you ought at least to try them first, and then afterwards
+we can talk about Persia. I'm afraid you think I've been too strict
+about Pauline ... perhaps I have ... yes ... and so I think that now
+Spring is here you can go out every day ... yes ... charming ... now
+that the weather is getting better...."
+
+But now every day, thought Guy bitterly, there would be recriminations
+between them.
+
+"Of course if you think I ought not to go, I won't," he said. "I'll
+write to Comeragh and refuse."
+
+"I'm sure you're glad, aren't you?"
+
+"Oh, rather."
+
+"We all understood why you thought you ought to go, and now I've another
+plan ... yes ... charming.... I'm going to send Pauline away for a month
+... with Miss Verney ... yes ... charming, charming plan ... and you
+must make arrangements at once about your poems ... and then perhaps you
+could give them to Pauline for her birthday...."
+
+"But I don't think the Rector ought to pay for them," Guy objected.
+
+"The Rector wants to pay for them. But of course he won't say anything
+about it, and you will have to make the arrangements yourself."
+
+"You're all so good to me, and I feel such a fraud," said Guy.
+
+"You'd better make arrangements with the man you sent them to first ...
+and Pauline needn't know anything about it ... and I shan't say I've
+persuaded you not to go to China ... or else she will be worried ...
+she's looking rather pale ... I think two or three weeks by the seaside
+... Lyme Regis perhaps or Cromer ... Lyme Regis, I think, because the
+trains to Folkestone have been torn out ... yes ... charming, charming."
+
+After lunch Guy told Pauline in the garden that he had decided not to
+accept the post he had been offered, and she was so obviously overjoyed
+at his decision, that he no longer had the heart to feel the slightest
+disappointment.
+
+"Guy, I've been so stupid," she told him. "I've depressed you without
+any reason, but I will come back from Scarborough quite well."
+
+Guy began to laugh.
+
+"Oh, why are you laughing?"
+
+"Dearest, because I cannot make out where you really are going."
+
+"Scarborough, because Miss Verney has chosen Scarborough."
+
+They talked for a while of the letters that each would write to the
+other and of what a Summer should follow that short parting, when every
+day they would be together and when perhaps even such days as those at
+Ladingford might come again.
+
+"And you won't worry about anything all this time you're away?" Guy
+asked.
+
+"I won't, indeed I won't."
+
+Guy went home to find a telegram from Comeragh saying that Sir George
+Gascony had got appendicitis and would not be going to Persia for a
+month or two at least. Yet he did not mention this telegram at the
+Rectory when next day he came to say good-bye to Pauline, because he was
+anxious to preserve the idea of his having vainly attempted to do
+something, and when he sat alone in his orchard the same afternoon, he
+had an emotion of something very near to relief that for a while there
+would be no more heart-searchings and stress, no more misgivings and
+reproaches and despairs. He was perfectly happy, sitting by himself in
+the orchard and staring at the blackthorn by the margin of the stream.
+
+
+
+
+_April_
+
+
+Miss Verney was so droll at Scarborough and enjoyed herself so much that
+Pauline in her pleasure at the success of what the old maid called their
+'jaunt' really was able to put aside for the present her own
+perplexities. The sands were empty at this season and the Spa unpopulous
+except for a few residents. The wind blew inland from a sparkling sea,
+while Miss Verney with bonnet all awry sitting in a draughty shelter
+declared that somehow like this she pictured the Riviera; and when the
+weather was too bad even for Miss Verney's azure dreams Pauline and she
+sat cosily among the tropic shells and Berlin wool of their lodgings.
+Long letters used to come every day from Guy, and long letters had to be
+written by Pauline to him; while perpetually Miss Verney tinkled on with
+marine tales that if no doubt nautically inaccurate had nevertheless a
+fine flavour of salt water.
+
+"I remember I was sitting in the parlour window at Southsea when a
+regiment.... I remember a Captain in the Royal Marines.... I remember
+how anxious my father was that I should have been a boy."
+
+"Oh, dear Miss Verney, you can't remember that."
+
+"Oh, yes, he invariably spoke of me as the Midshipman, I remember. I
+would then have been about eight years of age ... pray give my very kind
+regards to Mr. Guy and say how well we are both looking and what a
+benefit this fine air is to be sure, and don't forget our little
+expedition to the theatre. You must tell Mr. Guy the story of the piece.
+He will certainly enjoy hearing about that very nice-mannered convict
+who ... ah dear! how my poor father used to revel in the play."
+
+Miss Verney's conversation scarcely ever stopped, and while Pauline was
+writing letters it was always particularly brisk, but she used to enjoy
+the accompaniment as she would have enjoyed the twittering of a bird. It
+seemed to inspire her letters with the equable gaiety that Guy was so
+glad to think was coming back to her. His own letters were invariably
+cheerful, and Pauline began to count the days to the time when she would
+see him again. Easter had gone by, and the weather was so steadily fine
+that it was a pity not to be together. He wrote of primroses awaiting
+her footsteps in the forest, of blue dog-violets and cowslips in the
+hollows of Wychford down, of all the birds that were now arrived in
+England, of the cuckoo's first call and of the first swallow seen.
+
+     _Come back soon, my own, my sweet,_ he wrote. _Come back and let
+     this winter be all forgotten. I climbed up to the top of the church
+     tower to-day, and oh, the tulips in your garden and oh, the
+     emptiness of that garden notwithstanding! Come back, my Pauline,
+     for you'll see the iris buds in the paddock and you've no idea of
+     the way in which that river of ours sparkles on these April
+     mornings. I wish I could tell you how remote this Winter already
+     has grown. It has crept out of memory like a dejected nightmare at
+     breakfast. You are never to think again about the stupid things
+     I've said about religion: think only, my dearest, that I hope
+     always for your faith. It would be dishonest of me to say that I
+     believe now exactly as you believe, but I want to believe like
+     that. Perhaps I'm illogical in writing this: perhaps all the time I
+     do believe. Forget too what I said about Confession. I would almost
+     go myself to prove my penitence (to you!), but I just can't bring
+     myself to do that, because for me it really would be useless and
+     would turn me against everything you count as holy. Forget all that
+     has cast a shadow on our love. Count it all as my heedlessness and
+     be confident that I alone was to blame. I would write more, but
+     letters are such impossible things for intimacy. Some people can
+     pour out their souls on paper: I can't. That's really what my poems
+     suffer from. I have been working at them again since you were away,
+     and they have a kind of coldness, a sort of awkward youthful
+     reserve. Perhaps that's better than youthful exuberance, and yet I
+     don't know. One can prune the too prodigal growth, but one can't
+     always be sure of having the prodigality when one has the maturity.
+     The metaphors seem to be getting rather tied up, and you must be
+     bored by now with my chattering criticism._
+
+     _Your mother came to tea yesterday and brought Monica. Margaret is
+     rather in seclusion at present on account of Richard's arrival, I
+     fancy. She's obviously dreading other people's notice. It is rather
+     a self-conscious business, this waiting for the arrival of someone
+     whom everybody expects is going to play such an important part in
+     her life. If we were separated now for two years, it would be
+     different; but I can see that Margaret is dreadfully afraid that
+     now, having at last made up her mind to marry Richard, she may not
+     care for him as much as she did. He must be a fine fellow. I'm
+     looking forward tremendously to his coming. Monica was perfectly
+     delightful yesterday, and grew quite excited in her nun-like way
+     over the ultimate decoration of Plashers Mead. Dear me, what taste
+     you all have got, and what a very great deal you've taught me! You
+     must most of all forget that I ever said a word against your
+     sisters. They have really equipped me in a way with a point of view
+     toward art. I tried to tell Monica so yesterday afternoon. In fact
+     we got on very well together. In a way, you know, she almost
+     appreciates you more than Margaret does. You represent her hope,
+     her ideal of the world. Worldly one, I must say good-night. Tell
+     Miss Verney with my love that all her cats send their best respects
+     and compliments and that Bellerophon particularly requests that his
+     mistress will bring back whatever fish is in season at Scarborough.
+     Oh, the funniest thing I've forgotten to tell you! Miss Peasey was
+     chased by some bullocks across the big field behind the orchard!
+     She was too priceless about it when she got home._
+
+Pauline began to think it was impossible for her ever to have had the
+least worry in the course of her engagement. This was the first time she
+had been parted from Guy for more than a week during the whole of a
+year, and there was something very reassuring in such an opportunity to
+regard him like this so disinterestedly, to find that the separation was
+having the traditional effect and to be positive that she was going to
+meet him again at the end of April more in love than ever. Nevertheless
+she was always aware of being grateful for the repose from problems, and
+she did once or twice play with the idea of having perhaps made a
+mistake in objecting to his going abroad. It was on occasions of doubt
+like this that Pauline would try to impress Miss Verney with what
+existence had already meant to her.
+
+"I'm feeling so old, Miss Verney."
+
+"Old, my dear? Oh, that cannot be true," exclaimed her friend.
+
+"Falling very much in love does make one feel old," Pauline declared.
+
+"Let me see," Miss Verney went on, "let me try to remember how I felt.
+My impression is _now_ that when I was in love I felt much younger that
+I do at present, but perhaps that is natural, for it is very nearly
+thirty years ago since William and I parted."
+
+"Is he still alive?"
+
+"Oh, yes, he is still alive, but I have never seen him and he must be
+wonderfully altered. Sometimes I think of all the days that have gone by
+since we parted. It seems so strange to think of our lives being able to
+go on, when once it seemed to both of us that life could not go on at
+all if we were not together. It seems so strange to think of him eating
+his lunch somewhere at the same time that somewhere else I am eating my
+lunch. Who knows if he ever thinks of me, who knows indeed?"
+
+"If anything happened to prevent our marriage," began Pauline
+thoughtfully, and then was silent.
+
+Miss Verney opened wide her pale blue eyes.
+
+"And what could happen?" she asked grandly.
+
+"I've no business to imagine such a thing, have I?"
+
+"None whatever," said Miss Verney decidedly.
+
+But had Miss Verney's love affair been complicated by anything more than
+merely natural difficulties? Guy's debts and unsuccess were nothing in
+comparison with other elements of disaccord ... and then Pauline pulled
+herself up from brooding and resolutely forced her mind to contemplate a
+happy Summer. Had she not just now been congratulating herself upon the
+disappearance of all worries in this sea-air?
+
+The time at Scarborough drew to a close, and about a week before her
+birthday came the news of Richard's arrival from India. She and Miss
+Verney packed up and were home in Wychford two days before they were
+expected.
+
+"Richard, how lovely to see you again," Pauline cried. "And oh, Richard,
+I'm sure you've grown. Don't you think he has grown?" she demanded of
+everybody. "Richard, how clever of you to grow when you're
+twenty-seven."
+
+It was really like old times to go babbling on like this, while Richard
+sat and smiled encouragingly and spoke never a word.
+
+"Coming for a stroll?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, but I ought to see Guy first," she said. "Richard, I hope you like
+Guy."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Do you think he looks like a poet?"
+
+"Never seen a poet before," said Richard.
+
+"Oh, but like your idea of a poet?"
+
+"Never thought much about poets," said Richard. "So you aren't coming
+for a stroll?"
+
+"I will to-morrow, but I must spend the sunset with Guy."
+
+Guy was waiting for her by the paddock, and they floated downstream out
+of reach of people. In their own peninsula they kissed away the absence
+of twenty-two days.
+
+"You look much better," said Guy critically.
+
+"I'm perfectly well."
+
+"And happy?"
+
+She answered him with her eyes.
+
+"Why, Pauline, I believe you're quite shy of me!"
+
+She blushed.
+
+"I really am a little, you know," she whispered. "Did you like Richard?
+Oh, Guy, I hope you did."
+
+"Of course I did."
+
+"And, Guy, you don't mind if I go for a walk with him to-morrow morning?
+You see, I know he's longing to hear about Margaret and himself."
+
+"But you'll come out with me in the afternoon?"
+
+"Why, of course."
+
+"Then Richard may have the morning," said Guy. "And I hope you'll
+arrange everything between him and Margaret so successfully that he
+won't steal any more hours from me."
+
+When Pauline had left Guy that evening she thought how strangely it had
+been like meeting him for the first time all over again. Or rather it
+was as if they had walked a long way down the wrong road and were now
+beginning to walk somewhat tentatively along what she hoped was surely
+the right road at last. Her duty was above all to help Guy with the
+material burdens: she must never again let him think that his debts or
+his prospects had any power to worry her. Merely most tactfully must she
+try to keep him from extravagance, and, oh dear, how she hoped that he
+had not bought her an expensive birthday present. It was too late to
+say anything about it now, but if Guy had been wisely economical, how
+happy she would be. How she hoped too that Richard had not brought home
+from India a present that would annoy Margaret. Really it was a most
+oppressive business, this week before her coming of age, for between
+Guy's extravagance and Richard's ... well, it was really not so much bad
+taste as Indian taste. She would love anything he gave her of course,
+but perhaps he would consult beforehand with Margaret. Dear Richard, he
+was so sweet and touching, and if only he had not brought her something
+very elaborately carved. She met him next morning half way to Fairfield,
+and two years were obliterated as she kept pace with his long stride
+when they turned aside from the high road and tramped upward over the
+grassy wold.
+
+"Richard, isn't it very hot in India?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"And didn't you ever get used to walking a bit more slowly in India?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"You lazy little thing. I thought you and Aunt Verney had been in
+training at Scarborough. Come on, let's sit down then."
+
+They sat down, and Richard drew with his stick in the close turf.
+
+"Is that your bridge?" Pauline asked with all the interest she could put
+into her voice.
+
+He laughed for a long time.
+
+"Pauline, you villain, it's the beginning of Margaret's face!"
+
+She clapped her hands.
+
+"Oh, Richard, aren't I a villain? But, you know, it's not very
+frightfully like anything, is it?"
+
+"Pauline," he said suddenly in that sharp voice in which two years ago
+he had entrusted his interests to her before he went away. "Pauline, is
+Margaret going to marry me?"
+
+"Why, of course she is, Richard."
+
+"Has she spoken to you about me?"
+
+"But you know she never speaks about her own affairs and that she can't
+bear anybody else to speak of them to her."
+
+"Then how do you know?" he asked.
+
+"Well, perhaps because I'm so much in love with Guy," Pauline whispered.
+
+"I don't see how that quite works. I'm a very dull sort of a chap after
+that Guy of yours."
+
+"But you're not at all," Pauline declared. "And if you take my advice
+you won't think you're dull. You'll make Margaret marry you. Really I'm
+sure that what she would like best is to be made to do something. You
+see, she's a darling but she is just a very tiny little bit spoilt. You
+mustn't be so patient with her. But, Richard dear, I know she loves you,
+because she practically told Guy that she did."
+
+"Guy?" he echoed looking rather indignant.
+
+"Well, you must understand how sweet Margaret was to him about me. She
+was so sympathetic, and really she practically brought about our
+engagement. Oh, I do love her so, Richard, and I do want her to be happy
+and I do know so dreadfully well that you are the very person to make
+her happy."
+
+"Pauline, you are a pink brick," he avowed.
+
+And scarcely another word did he say for the rest of their walk.
+
+Pauline went to Margaret's room that night and, after fidgeting all the
+while her sister was undressing, suddenly plunged down beside her bed
+and caught hold of her hand.
+
+"Margaret, you're not to snub me, because I absolutely must speak. I
+must beg you not to keep Richard waiting any longer. Do, my darling,
+darling Margaret, do be kind to him and not so cold. He simply adores
+you, and ... why, Margaret, you're crying ... oh, let me kiss you, my
+Margaret, because you were so wonderful about Guy, and I've been a beast
+to you and you must, you must be happy."
+
+"If I could only love him as you love Guy," Margaret sighed between her
+tears.
+
+"You do really ... at least perhaps not quite as much. Oh, Margaret,
+don't be angry with me if I whisper something to you: think how much you
+would love him if you and he had ... Margaret, you know what I mean."
+
+Pauline blew out the candle and rushed from the dark room; and lying
+awake in her own bed, she fancied among the flowers of the Rectory such
+fairy children for Margaret and herself, such fairy children dancing by
+the margin of the river.
+
+
+
+
+_May_
+
+
+On the morning before Pauline's birthday Guy received a letter from
+Michael Fane announcing abruptly his engagement and adding that on
+account of worldly opposition he had been persuaded into a postponement
+of his marriage for two months. Guy was rather ironically amused by the
+serious manner in which Michael took so brief a delay, and he could not
+help thinking how unreasonably impatient of trifles people with ample
+private means often showed themselves. Michael wrote that he would like
+to spend some of his probation at Plashers Mead and alluded to the
+'luck' of his friend in being so near his Pauline.
+
+Guy wrote a letter of congratulation, and then he put Michael's news out
+of his mind in order to examine the two complete sets of the proofs of
+his poems which had also arrived that morning. He was engaged in the
+task of making rather a clumsy binding for them out of a piece of
+stained vellum, when Richard Ford came round to Plashers Mead. Guy
+welcomed him gladly, for besides the personal attraction he felt toward
+this lean and silent engineer he perceived in the likelihood of
+Richard's speedy marriage an earnest of his own. Somehow that marriage
+was going to break the spell of inactivity, to which at the Rectory all
+seemed to be subject and from which Guy was determined to keep Richard
+free, even if it were necessary to shake him as continuously as tired
+wanderers in the snow are shaken out of a dangerous sleep.
+
+"I came round to consult with you about my present to Pauline
+to-morrow," said Richard very solemnly. "I've brought round one or two
+little things, so that you could give me your advice."
+
+"Why, of course I will," said Guy.
+
+"They're downstairs in the hall. I had some difficulty in explaining to
+your housekeeper that I wasn't a pedlar."
+
+In the hall was stacked a pile completely representative of the bazaar:
+half-a-dozen shawls, the model of a temple, a carved table, some inlaid
+stools, every sort of typical oriental gewgaw, in fact an agglomeration
+that seemed to invite the smell of cheap incense for its effective
+display.
+
+"Godbold drove them over," Richard explained as he saw Guy's
+astonishment. "Now look here, what's the best present for Pauline? You
+see I'm not at all an artistic sort of chap, and I don't want to hoick
+forward something that's going to be more of a nuisance than anything
+else."
+
+"It's really awfully difficult to choose," said Guy rather ambiguously.
+
+Then he discovered a simple ivory paper-knife which he declared was just
+the thing, having the happy thought that he would not cut the set of
+proofs he was binding for Pauline, so that to-morrow Richard could have
+the pleasure of beholding his gift put to immediate use.
+
+"You've chosen the smallest thing of the lot," said the disappointed
+donor. "You don't think a shawl as well?" he asked, holding up yards of
+gaudy material.
+
+"Well, candidly I think Pauline's too fair for that colour scheme, don't
+you?"
+
+"All right, the paper-knife. You don't mind if I leave these things here
+till Godbold can fetch them away, and ... er.... I wish you'd choose
+something for yourself. I've always taken a kind of interest in this
+house, don't you know, and I've often thought about it in India."
+
+"I'd like a gong," said Guy at once, and Richard was obviously gratified
+by his quick choice, and still farther gratified when Guy suggested they
+should sound it immediately outside the kitchen-door. Solemnly Richard
+held it up in the passage, while Guy crashed forth a glorious clamour,
+at the summons of which Miss Peasey came rushing out.
+
+"Good gracious," she gasped. "I thought that dog Bob had jumped through
+the window."
+
+"This is a present for us from India," Guy shouted.
+
+"Oh, that's extremely handsome, isn't it? Well now, I shall expect you
+to be punctual in future for your meals. Dear me, yes, quite a variety,
+I'm sure, after that measley bell."
+
+The gong was given a prominent position in the bare hall, and Guy
+invited Richard up to his own room. After the question of the presents
+had been solved Richard was shy and silent again, and Guy found it very
+hard to make conversation. Several times his visitor seemed on the point
+of getting something off his mind, but when he was given an opportunity
+for speech, he never accepted it. Desperate for a topic Guy showed him
+the proofs of the poems and explained that he was binding them roughly
+as his present to Pauline to-morrow.
+
+"That's something I can't understand," said Richard intensely. "Writing!
+It beats me!"
+
+"Bridges would beat me," said Guy.
+
+Richard looked quite cheerful at this notion and under the influence of
+the encouragement he had received seemed at last on the point of getting
+out what he wanted to say, but he could manage nothing more confidential
+than a tug at his bristled fair moustache.
+
+"When are you and Margaret going to be married?" Guy asked abruptly, for
+of course he had guessed that it was Margaret's name which was
+continually on the tip of his tongue.
+
+"By Jove, there you are, I'm rather stumped," said Richard gloomily.
+"You see the thing is ... well ... I suppose you know that when I
+started off to India last June year, Margaret and I were sort of engaged
+... at least I was certainly engaged to her, only she hadn't absolutely
+made up her mind about me ... and of course that's just what you'd
+expect would happen to a chap like me ... dash it all, Hazlewood, I'm
+afraid to ask her again!"
+
+"I don't think you need be," said Guy. "Of course we haven't discussed
+you, except very indirectly," he hastily added, "but I'm positive that
+Margaret is only waiting for you to ask her to marry her on some
+definite day: on some definite day, Ford, that's the great thing to
+remember."
+
+"You mean I ought to say 'Margaret, will you marry me on the twelfth of
+August, or the first of September?' That's your notion, is it?"
+
+Guy nodded.
+
+"By gad, I'll ask her to-day," said Richard.
+
+"And you'll be engaged to-morrow," Guy prophesied.
+
+"When are you and Pauline going to be married?"
+
+Guy looked up quickly to see if the solid Richard were laughing at him,
+but there was nothing in those steel-blue eyes except the most
+benevolent enquiry.
+
+"That's the question," said Guy. "Writing is not quite such a certainty
+as bridge-building."
+
+"You mean there's the difficulty of money? By Jove, that's bad luck,
+isn't it? Still, you know, I expect that having the good fortune to have
+Pauline in love with you ... well, I expect, you've got to expect a bit
+of difficulty somewhere, you know. You know, Pauline was...." he stopped
+and blinked at the window.
+
+"Pauline's awfully fond of you," Guy said encouragingly.
+
+"Hazlewood, that kid's been ... well, I can't express myself, you know,
+but I'd ... well, I really can't talk about her."
+
+"I understand though," said Guy. "Look here, you'll stay and have lunch
+with me, and then we can go across to the Rectory afterwards."
+
+Emotional subjects were tacitly put on one side to talk of the birds and
+butterflies that one might expect to find round Wychford, of Miss Verney
+and Godbold and other local characters, or of the prospects of the
+cricket team that year. After lunch Guy put the unbound set of proofs in
+his pocket and, launching the canoe, they floated down to the Rectory
+paddock. Mrs. Grey and the girls were all in the garden picking purple
+tulips, and Guy taking Pauline aside told her on what momentous quest
+Richard was come, suggesting that he should occupy the Rector's
+attention, while Pauline lured away her mother and Monica.
+
+The Rector was sitting in the library hard at work, rubbing the fluff
+from the anemone seeds with sand.
+
+"And what can I do for you, Sir?" he asked.
+
+"I thought you'd like to see the proofs of my poems," said Guy.
+
+He laid the duplicates on the dusty table and tried to thank his patron
+for what he had done. The Rector waved a clay pipe deprecatingly.
+
+"You must thank Constance ... you must thank my wife, if you thank
+anybody. But if I were you I shouldn't thank anybody till you find out
+for certain that she's done you a service," he recommended with a
+twinkle.
+
+Guy laughed.
+
+"Worrall doesn't want to publish until the Autumn."
+
+The Rector made a face.
+
+"All that time to wait for the verdict?"
+
+"Time seems particularly hostile to me," Guy said.
+
+"You'll have to tweak his forelock pretty hard."
+
+"That's what I've come to consult you about. Do you think I ought to go
+to Persia with Sir George Gascony? Mrs. Grey thought I oughtn't to take
+so drastic a step until I had first tested my poems in public. But I've
+been reading them through, and they don't somehow look quite as
+important in print as they did in manuscript. I can't help feeling that
+I ought to have a regular occupation. What do you really advise me to
+do, Mr. Grey?"
+
+The Rector held up his arms in mock dismay.
+
+"Gracious goodness me, don't implicate a poor country parson in such
+affairs! I can give you advice about flowers and I can pretend to give
+you advice about your soul, but about the world, no, no."
+
+"I think perhaps I'll get some journalistic work in town," Guy
+suggested.
+
+"Persia or journalism!" commented the Rector. "Well, well, they're both
+famous for fairy tales. I recommend journalism as being nearer at hand."
+
+"Then I'll take your advice."
+
+"Oh, dear me, you must not involve me in such a responsibility. Now, if
+you were a nice rational iris I would talk to you, but for a talented
+young man with his life before him I shouldn't even be a good quack.
+Come along, let's go out and look at the tulips."
+
+"You _will_ glance through my poems?" Guy asked diffidently.
+
+The Rector stood up and put his hand on the poet's shoulder.
+
+"Of course I will, my dear boy, and you mustn't be deceived by the
+manner of that shy old boor, the Rector of Wychford. Do what you think
+you ought to do, and make my youngest daughter happy. We shall be having
+her birthday before we know where we are."
+
+"It's to-morrow!"
+
+"Is it indeed? May Day. Of course. I remember last year I managed to
+bloom Iris Lorteti. But this year, no! That wet May destroyed Iris
+Lorteti. A delicate creature. Rose and brown. A delicate lovely
+creature."
+
+Guy and the Rector pored over the tulips a while where in serried
+borders they displayed their sombre sheen of amaranth and amethyst: then
+Guy strolled off to hear what was the news of Margaret and Richard.
+Pauline came flying to meet him down one of the long straight
+garden-paths.
+
+"Darling, they are to be married early in August," she cried.
+
+He caught her to him and kissed her, lest in the first poignant
+realization of other people's joy she might seem to be escaping from him
+utterly.
+
+Guy had a few minutes with Margaret before he went home that evening,
+and they walked beside the tulip borders, she tall and dark and
+self-contained in the fading light being strangely suited by association
+with such flowers.
+
+"Dear Margaret," he said, "I want to tell you how tremendously I like
+Richard. Now that sounds patronizing. But I'm speaking quite humbly.
+These sort of Englishmen have been celebrated enough perhaps, and lately
+there's been a tendency to laugh at them, but, my God, what is there on
+earth like the Richards of England? Margaret, you once very rightly
+reproved me for putting Pauline in a silver frame, do let me risk your
+anger and beg you never to put yourself in a silver frame from which to
+look out at Richard."
+
+"You do rather understand me, don't you?" she said offering him her
+hand.
+
+"Help Pauline and me," he begged.
+
+"Haven't I always helped you?"
+
+"Not always, but you will now that you yourself are no longer uncertain
+about your future. The moment you find yourself perfectly happy you'll
+be longing for everyone else to be the same."
+
+"But how haven't I helped you?" she persisted.
+
+"It would be difficult to explain in definite words. But I don't think
+my idea of your attitude toward us could have been entirely invented by
+my fancy."
+
+"What attitude? What do you mean, Guy?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"My dear, if you aren't conscious of it, I'm certainly not going to
+attempt to put it into words and involve myself in such a net."
+
+"How tantalizing you are!"
+
+"No, I'm not. If you have the least inclination to think I may be right,
+then you know what I mean and you can do what I ask. If you haven't the
+least notion of what I mean, then it was all my fancy and I'm certainly
+not going to give my baseless fancies away."
+
+"This is all too cryptic," she murmured.
+
+"Then let it remain undeciphered," he said smiling; and he led the
+conversation more directly toward their marriage and the strangeness of
+the Rectory without Margaret.
+
+Richard spent the night at Plashers Mead, and Guy heard the halting
+account of two years' uncertainty, of the bungalow that had been taken
+and embowered against Margaret's coming, and of the way in which his
+bridge had spanned not merely the river, but the very ocean, and even
+time itself.
+
+Pauline's birthday morning was cloudless, and Guy, though to himself he
+was inclined to blame the action as weak, went to church and knelt
+beside her. Then afterward there was the scene of breakfast on the lawn
+that already with only this first repetition wore for him an immemorial
+air, so that he could no longer imagine a May Day that was not thus
+inaugurated. The presentation of his poems in proof had not a bit less
+wonderful an effect than he had hoped, for Pauline could never finish
+turning over the pages and loving the ludicrously tumbledown binding.
+
+"Oh, it's so touching! I wish they could all be bound like this. And how
+I adore Richard's paper-knife."
+
+The four lovers disappeared after breakfast to enjoy the flashing May
+Day, and Monica left alone with her mother looked a little sad, she,
+the only one of those three lovely daughters of the Rectory still
+undisturbed by the demands of the invading world.
+
+May that year was like the fabled Spring of poets; and Guy and Pauline
+were left free to enjoy the passionate and merry month as perhaps never
+before had they enjoyed any season, not even that dreamed away fortnight
+at Ladingford last year. They had ceased for a while with the engagement
+of Richard and Margaret to be the central figures of the Rectory whether
+for blame or commendation, and desiring nothing better than to be left
+without interference they were lost in apple-blossom to every-day
+existence. Guy with the prospect of his poems' appearing in the Autumn
+felt that he was justified in forgetting responsibilities and, having
+weathered the financial crisis of the March quarter, he had now nothing
+to worry him until Midsummer. That was the date he had fixed upon in his
+mind as suitable for making a determined attempt upon London. He had
+planned to shut up Plashers Mead and to take a small room in Chelsea
+whence he would conquer in a few months the material obstacles that
+prevented their marriage. The poems now that they were in print seemed a
+less certain talisman to fame; but they would serve their purpose,
+indeed they had served their purpose already, for this long secluded
+time would surely counterbalance the too easy victories of journalism.
+He would surely by now have lost that spruce Oxford cleverness and might
+fairly expect to earn his living with dignity. The least success would
+justify his getting married, and Pauline would enjoy two years spent
+high in some London attic within the sound of chirping sparrows and the
+distant whispers of humanity. They would perhaps be able to afford to
+fly for magic weeks to Plashers Mead, pastoral interludes in that
+crowded life which lay ahead. How everything had resolved itself
+latterly, and how this gift of glorious May should be accepted as the
+intimate and dearest benefaction to their love. He and Pauline were
+together from earliest morn to the last minute of these rich and shadowy
+eves. They wreathed their boat with boughs of apple-blossom and went
+farther up the river than they had ever gone. The cuckoo was still in
+tune, and still the kingcups gilded all that hollow land: there was not
+yet the lush growth of weeds and reeds that indolent June would use to
+delay their dreaming progress: and still all the trees and all the
+hedges danced with that first sharp green of Spring, that cold and
+careless green of Spring.
+
+Then when the hawthorn came into prodigal bloom, and all the rolling
+country broke in endless waves of blossom, Pauline in her muslin dress
+seemed like an airy joy sustained by all these multitudinous petals,
+dancing upon this flowery tide, this sweet foam of May.
+
+"My flower, my sweet, are you indeed mortal?" he whispered.
+
+The texture of her sleeve against his was less tangible than the light
+breeze that puffed idly from the South to where they sat enraptured upon
+the damasked English grass. Apple-blossom powdered her lap and starred
+her light brown hair, and around them like a Circean perfume drowning
+the actual world hung the odorous thickets of hawthorn.
+
+The month glided along until the time of ragged robins came round again,
+and as if these flowers were positively of ill omen to Guy and Pauline,
+Mrs. Grey suddenly took it into her head again that they were seeing too
+much of each other.
+
+"I said you could see Pauline every day," she told Guy. "But I did not
+say all day."
+
+"But I shall be going away soon," he said, "and it seems a pity to lose
+any of this lovely month."
+
+"I'm sure I'm right ... and I did not know you had really decided to go
+away.... I'm sure, yes, I'm positive I'm right.... Why don't you be more
+like Margaret and Richard ... they aren't together all day long ... no,
+not all day."
+
+"But Pauline is so different from Margaret," Guy argued.
+
+"Yes, I know ... that's the reason ... she is too impulsive.... Yes,
+it's much better not to be together all the time.... I'm glad you've
+settled to go to London ... then perhaps you can be married next
+year...."
+
+A rule came into force again, and Guy began to feel the old exasperation
+against the curb upon youth's leisure. Rather unjustly he blamed
+Margaret, because he felt that the spectacle of her sedate affection
+made his for Pauline appear too wild and Pauline herself beside Margaret
+seem completely distraught with love.
+
+It pleased Guy rather, and yet in a way it rather annoyed him that
+Michael Fane should choose this moment to announce his intention of
+spending some time at Plashers Mead. Perhaps a little of the doubt was
+visible in his welcome, because Michael asked rather anxiously if he
+were intruding upon the May idyll: Guy laughed off the slight
+awkwardness and asked why Michael had not yet managed to get married.
+They talked about the evils of procrastination, but Guy could not at all
+see that Michael had much to complain of in a postponement of merely two
+months. His friend, however, was evidently rather upset, and he could
+not resist expatiating a little on his own grief with what Guy thought
+was the petulance of the too fortunate man. The warm May nights lulled
+them both and they used to pass pleasant evenings, leaning over the
+stream while the bats and fern-owls flew across the face of the
+decrescent moon; yet for Guy all the beauty of the season was more than
+ever endowed with intolerable fugacity.
+
+Pauline with Michael's arrival began to be moody again; would take no
+kind of interest in Michael's engagement; would only begin to see again
+the endless delays that hung so heavily round their marriage. Michael
+was not at all in the way, for he spent all the time writing to his
+lady-love, of whom he had told Guy really nothing; or he would sit in
+the lengthening grass of the orchard and read books of poetry, the pages
+of which used to wink with lucid reflections caught from the leaves of
+the fruit-trees overhead.
+
+Guy looked over his shoulder and saw that he was reading The Statue and
+the Bust:
+
+    _So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam_
+    _The glory dropped from their youth and love,_
+    _And both perceived they had dreamed a dream;_
+
+"That poem haunts me," exclaimed Guy with a shudder.
+
+    _Where is the use of the lip's red charm,_
+    _The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,_
+    _And the blood that blues the inside arm--_
+
+    _Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,_
+    _The earthly gift to an end divine?_
+
+"And yet I can't stop reading it," he sighed.
+
+    _How do their spirits pass, I wonder,_
+    _Nights and days in the narrow room?_
+
+    _Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder_
+    _What a gift life was, ages ago,_
+    _Six steps out of the chapel yonder._
+
+On this Summer morning the words wrote themselves in fire across his
+brain.
+
+"They light the way to dusty death," he muttered over and over again,
+when he had left Browning to Michael and flung himself face downward in
+the orchard grass.
+
+In despair of what a havoc time was making of their youth and their
+love, that very afternoon he begged Pauline to meet him again now in
+these dark nights of early Summer, now when soon he would be going away
+from her.
+
+"Going away?" she echoed in alarm. "I suppose that's the result of your
+friend's visit."
+
+Guy, however, was not going to surrender again, and he insisted that
+when a month had passed he would indeed be gone from Plashers Mead. It
+was nothing to do with Michael Fane: it was solely his own determination
+to put an end to this unprofitable dalliance.
+
+"But your poems? I thought that when your poems were published
+everything would be all right."
+
+"Oh, my poems," he scoffed. "They're valueless!"
+
+"Guy!"
+
+"They're mere decoration. They are trifles."
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"I care for nothing but to be married to you. For nothing, do you hear?
+Pauline, everything is to be subordinate to that. I would even write and
+beg my father to take me as a junior usher at Fox Hall for that. We must
+be married soon. I can't bear to see Richard and Margaret sailing along
+so calmly and quietly toward happiness."
+
+In the end he persuaded her to make all sorts of opportunities to meet
+him when no one else knew they were together. Even once most recklessly
+on a warm and moonless night of May's languorous decline to June he took
+her in the canoe far away up the river; and when they floated home dawn
+was already glistening on the banks and on the prow of their ghostly
+canoe. Through bird-song and rosy vapours she fled from him to her
+silent room, while he stood in a trance and counted each dewy footstep
+that with silver traceries marked her flight across the lawn.
+
+
+
+
+ANOTHER SUMMER
+
+
+
+
+_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 toward
+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
+quarrelled 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 toward 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
+surprize, 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 fervour 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 grey 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 behaviour 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 least 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 candlelight 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 toward
+that narrow white bed, toward 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 ballades 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 candlelight 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 grey 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 travelled upstream 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 downstream toward
+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 honour, 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 toward 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 upstairs 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 grey wall. A
+cock crowed in the distance, and through the leaves of the wistaria
+there ran a flutter of waking sparrows.
+
+
+
+
+_July_
+
+
+When Guy looked back next morning at what had happened on the river, he
+felt that the only thing to do was to leave Pauline for a while and give
+her time and opportunity to recover from the shock. He wondered if it
+would be wiser merely to write a note to announce his intention or if
+she had now reached a point at which even a letter would be a disastrous
+aggravation of her state of mind. He felt that he could not bear any
+scene that might approximate to that horrible scene last night, and yet
+to go away abruptly in such circumstances seemed too callous. Supposing
+that he went across to the Rectory and that Pauline should have another
+seizure of hatred for him (there was no other word that could express
+what her attitude had been), how could their engagement possibly go on?
+Mrs. Grey would be appalled by the emotional ravages it had made Pauline
+endure: she would not be justified, whatever Pauline's point of view, in
+allowing the engagement to last a day longer. It would be surely wiser
+to write a letter and with all the love he felt explain that he thought
+she would be happier not to see him for a short while. Yet such a course
+might provoke her to declare the whole miserable business, and the false
+deductions that might be made from her account were dreadful to
+contemplate. He blamed himself entirely for what had happened, and yet
+he could scarcely have foreseen such a violent change. Even now he could
+not say what exactly had begun the outburst, and indeed the only
+explanation of it was by a weight of emotion that had been accumulating
+for months. Of course he should never have persuaded her to come out on
+the river at night, but still that he had done so was only a technical
+offence against convention. It was she who had magnified her
+acquiescence beyond any importance he could have conceived. He must
+thank religion for that, he must thank that poisonous fellow in the
+confessional who had first started her upon this ruinous path of
+introspection and self-torment. But, whatever the cause, it was the
+remedy that demanded his attention, and he twisted the situation round
+and round without being able to decide how to act. He realized how month
+by month his sense of responsibility for Pauline had been growing, yet
+now the problem of her happiness stared at him, brutally insoluble. What
+was it Margaret had once said about his being unlikely to squander
+Pauline for a young man's experience? Good God, had not just that been
+the very thing he had nearly done; and then with a shudder remembering
+last night, he wondered if he ought any longer to say 'nearly.' He must
+see her. Of course he must see her this morning. He must somehow heal
+the injury he had inflicted upon her youth.
+
+Pauline was very gentle when they met. She had no reproaches except for
+herself and the way she had frightened him.
+
+"Oh, my Pauline, can't you forget it?" he begged. "Let me go away for a
+month or more. Let me go away till Margaret and Richard are going to be
+married."
+
+She acquiesced half-listlessly, and then seeming to feel that she might
+have been cold in her manner, she wished him a happy holiday from her
+moods and jealousy and exacting love. He tried to pierce the true
+significance of her attitude, because it held in its heart a premonition
+for him that everything between them had been destroyed last night, and
+that henceforth whatever he or she did or said they would meet in the
+future only as ghosts may meet in shadowy converse and meaningless
+communion.
+
+"You will be glad to see me when I come back?" he asked.
+
+"Why, my dearest, of course I shall be glad."
+
+He kissed her good-bye, but her kiss was neither the kiss of lover nor
+of sister, but such a kiss as ghosts may use, seeking to perpetuate the
+mere form and outward semblance of life lost irrevocably.
+
+When Guy was driving with Godbold along the Shipcot road, he had not
+made up his mind where he would go, and it was on the spur of the
+moment, as he stood in the booking-office, that he decided to go and see
+his father, to whom latterly he had written scarcely at all and of whom
+he suddenly thought with affection.
+
+"I've settled to give up Plashers Mead," Guy told him that night, when
+they were sitting in the library at Fox Hall.
+
+"And try and get on the staff of a paper," he added to his father's
+faint bow. "Or possibly I may go to Persia as Sir George Gascony's
+secretary. My friend Comeragh got me the offer in March, but Sir George
+was ill and did not start."
+
+"That sounds much more sensible than journalism," said Mr. Hazlewood.
+
+"Yes, perhaps it would be better," Guy agreed. "But then of course there
+is the question of leaving Pauline for two years."
+
+Yet even as he enunciated this so solemnly, he knew in his heart that he
+would be rather glad to postpone for two years all the vexations of
+love.
+
+His father shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"My poems are coming out this Autumn," Guy volunteered.
+
+His father gave some answer of conventional approbation, and Guy without
+the least bitterness recognized that to his father the offer of the
+secretaryship had naturally presented itself as the more important
+occasion.
+
+"If you want any help with your outfit...."
+
+"Oh, you mustn't count on Persia," interrupted Guy. "But I'll go up to
+town to-morrow and ask Comeragh when Sir George is going."
+
+Next day, however, when Guy was in the train, he began to consider his
+Persian plan a grave disloyalty to Pauline. He wondered how last night
+he had come to think of it again and fancied it might have been merely
+an instinct to gratify his father after their coolness. Of course he
+would not dream of going really, and yet it would have been jolly. Yes,
+it would certainly have been jolly, and he was rather relieved to find
+that Comeragh was out of town for a week, for his presence might have
+been a temptation. Michael Fane was not in London either, so Guy went
+round to Maurice Avery's studio in Grosvenor Road and in the pleasure of
+the company he found there the Persian idea grew less insistent. Maurice
+himself had just been invited to write a series of articles on the
+English ballet for a critical weekly journal called The Point of View.
+They went to a theatre together, and Guy as he listened to Maurice's
+jargon felt for a while quite rustic and was once or twice definitely
+taken in by it. Had he really been stagnating all this time at Wychford?
+And then the old superiority which at Oxford he always felt over his
+friend reasserted itself.
+
+"You're still skating, Maurice," he drawled. "The superficial area of
+your brain must be unparalleled."
+
+"You frowsty old yokel!" his friend exclaimed laughing.
+
+"I don't believe I shall get much out of breath, catching up with your
+advanced ideas," Guy retorted. "Anyway this Autumn I shall come to town
+for good."
+
+"And about time you did," said Maurice. "I say, mind you send your poems
+to The Point of View, and I'll give you a smashing fine notice the week
+after publication."
+
+Guy asked when Michael was coming back.
+
+"He's made a glorious mess of things, hasn't he?" said Maurice.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Not necessarily."
+
+"Well, I admit he found her out in time. But fancy wanting to marry a
+girl like that. I told him what she was, and he merely got furious with
+me. But he's an extraordinary chap altogether. By the way when are you
+going to get married?"
+
+"When I can afford it," said Guy.
+
+"The question is whether an artist can ever afford to get married."
+
+"What rot you talk."
+
+"Wiser men than I have come to that conclusion," said Maurice. "Of
+course I haven't met your lady-love; but it does seem to me that your
+present mode of life is bound to be sterile of impressions."
+
+"I don't go about self-consciously obtaining impressions," said Guy a
+little angrily. "I would as soon search for local colour. Personally I
+very much doubt if any impressions after eighteen or nineteen help the
+artist. As it seems to me, all experience after that age is merely
+valuable for maturing and putting into proportion the more vital
+experiences of childhood. And I'm not at all sure that there isn't in
+every artist a capacity for development which proceeds quite
+independently of externals. I speculate sometimes as to what would be
+the result upon a really creative temperament of being wrecked at
+twenty-two on a desert island. I say twenty-two, because I do count as
+valuable the academic influence that only begins to be effective after
+eighteen."
+
+"And what is your notion about this literary Crusoe?" asked Maurice.
+
+"Well, I fancy that his work would not suffer at all, that it would
+ripen, just as certain fruit ripens independently of sun, that he would
+display in fact quite normally the characteristic growth of the artist."
+
+"But where would he obtain his reaction?" Maurice asked.
+
+"From himself. If that isn't possible for some people I don't see how
+you're going to make a distinction between literature and journalism."
+
+"Some journalism is literature."
+
+"Only very bad journalism," Guy argued. "The journalistic mind
+experiences a quick reaction, the creative writer a very slow one. The
+journalist is affected by extremes: and he is continually aware of the
+impression they are making at the moment: contrariwise the creative
+artist is always unaware of the impression at the moment it is made; he
+feels it from within first and it develops according to his own
+characteristics. Let me give you an example. The journalist is like a
+man who, seeing a mosquito in the act of biting him, claps his hand down
+and kills it. The creative artist isn't aware of having been bitten
+until he sees the swelling ... big or small according to his
+constitution. It is his business to cure the swelling, not to bother
+about the insect."
+
+"Your theories may be all right for great creative artists," said
+Maurice. "And I suppose you're willing to take the risk of stagnation?"
+
+"I'm not a great creative artist," said Guy quickly. "At the same time
+I'm damned if I'm a journalist. No, the effect of Plashers Mead on me
+has been to make me long to be a man of action. So far it has been
+stimulating, and without external help I've been able to reach the
+conclusion that my poems were never worth writing.... I wrote because I
+wanted to: I don't believe I ever had to."
+
+"Then what are you going to do now?" asked Maurice.
+
+"I'm probably going to work in London at journalism."
+
+"Then, great Scott, why all this preliminary tirade against it?"
+
+"Because I don't want to bluff myself into thinking that I'm going to do
+anything but be a strictly professional writer," said Guy. "Or else
+perhaps because I don't really want to come and live in London at all,
+but go to Persia. Dash it all, for the first time in my life, Maurice, I
+don't know what I do want, and it's a very humiliating state of affairs
+for me."
+
+When Guy left the studio that evening, he came away with that pleasant
+warming of the cockles of the brain that empirical conversation always
+gave. It was really very pleasant to be chattering away about aesthetic
+theories, to be meeting new people and to be infused with this sense of
+being joined up to the motive force of a city's life. At his lodgings in
+Vincent Square a letter from Pauline awaited his return, and with a
+shock he realized half way through its perusal that he was reading it
+listlessly. He turned back and tried to bring to its contents that old
+feverish absorption in magic pages, but something was wanting whether in
+the letter or whether in himself he did not know. He came to the point
+of asking himself if he loved her still as much, and almost with horror
+at the question vowed he loved her more than ever and that of all things
+on earth he only longed for their marriage. Yet in bed that night he
+thought more of his argument in the studio than about Pauline, and when
+he did think about her it was with a drowsy sense of relief. Vincent
+Square under the bland city moon seemed very peaceful, and in retrospect
+Wychford a place of endless storms.
+
+Next morning when Guy sat down to answer Pauline's letter he found
+himself writing with mechanical fluency without really thinking of her
+at all. In fact for the moment she represented something that disturbed
+the Summer calm in London, and he consciously did not want to think
+about her until all this late troublous time had lost its actuality and
+he could be sure of returning to the Pauline of their love's earlier
+days.
+
+These shuttlecock letters were tossed backward and forward between
+Wychford and London throughout the rest of June and most of July, and
+sometimes Guy thought they were as unreal as his own poetry. He spent
+his time in looking up old friends, in second-hand book shops, in the
+galleries of theatres. He did not see Michael Fane, who wrote to him
+from Rome before Guy knew he had gone there. Comeragh however he saw
+pretty often, and he enjoyed talking about politics nearly as much as
+about art. He met Sir George Gascony, and Comeragh assured him afterward
+that when Sir George went out to Persia in August or September he could
+if he liked go with him. Guy put the notion at the back of his mind
+whence he occasionally took it out and played with it. In the end,
+however, when the definite offer came he refused it. This happened at
+the end of his visit to London when his money was running out and when
+he had to be going back to Wychford to live somehow on credit, until the
+Michaelmas quarter replenished his overdrawn account. Before he left
+town he paid a visit to Mr. Worrall and told him that he wanted his
+poems to appear anonymously. In fact if it were not for hurting the
+Rector's feelings he would have stopped their publication altogether.
+
+At the end of a hot and dusty July and about a week before the Lammas
+wedding of Margaret and Richard, Guy came back to Plashers Mead. The
+immediate effect of seeing again the place which was now associated in
+his mind with interminable difficulties was to make him resolute to
+clarify the situation once and for all, to clarify it so completely that
+there could never again be a repetition of that night in June. His
+absence had been in the strictest sense an interlude, and all the
+letters which marked to each the existence of the other had been but
+conventional forms of love and comfortable postponements of reality.
+When he met Pauline, Guy felt that he met her to all intents directly
+after that dreadful night, with only this difference that owing to the
+time they had had for repose he could now say things that six weeks ago
+he could not have said. He had arrived at Wychford for lunch, and as a
+matter of course they were to be together that afternoon. Ordinarily on
+such a piping July day he would have proposed the river for their
+converse, and it was a sign of how near at hand he felt their last time
+on the river that he proposed a walk instead.
+
+Guy was aware of wanting to take Pauline to some place that was neither
+hallowed nor cursed by past hours, and avoiding familiar ways, they
+reached a barren cup-shaped field shut off from the road by a spinney of
+firs that offered such a dry and draughty shade as made the field even
+in the hot sun of afternoon more tolerable. They sat down on the sour
+stony land among the ragwort and teazles and feverfew. Summer had burnt
+up this abandoned pasturage, and while they sat in silence Guy rattled
+from the rank umbels of fools-parsley and hemlock the innumerable seeds
+that would only profit the rankness of another year.
+
+"Well?" he said at last.
+
+Pauline looked at him questioningly, and he felt impatient to be sitting
+here on this sour stony land and wondered how for merely this he could
+have refused that offer of Persian adventure. Not until now had he
+realized how much he had been resenting the performance of a duty.
+
+"You've hardly told me anything about your time in London," said
+Pauline.
+
+He looked at her sharply in case this might be a prelude to jealous
+interrogation.
+
+"There's nothing much to tell. I settled that my poems should appear
+anonymously. I'm afraid their publication may otherwise do me more harm
+than good."
+
+"All your poems?" she asked wistfully.
+
+He nodded impelled by a strong desire for absolute honesty, though he
+would have liked to except the poems about her, knowing how much she
+must be wounded to hear even them called worthless.
+
+"Then I've been no good to you at all?"
+
+"Of course you have. Because these poems are no good, it doesn't follow
+that what I write next won't be good. And yet I'm uncertain whether I
+ought to go on merely writing. I'm beginning to wonder if I oughtn't to
+have gone out to Persia with Gascony. I refused the job because I
+thought it would upset you. And so, dearest Pauline, when next you feel
+jealous, do remember that. Do remember that it is always you who come
+first. Don't think I'm regretful about Persia. I'm only wondering on
+_your_ account if I ought to have gone. It would have made our marriage
+in three years a certainty, but still I hope by journalism to make it
+certain in one year. Are you glad, my Pauline?"
+
+"Yes, of course I'm glad," she answered without fervour.
+
+"And you won't be jealous of my friends? Because it's impossible to be
+in London without friends you know."
+
+"I told you I should never be enough."
+
+Guy tried not to be irritated by this.
+
+"If you would only be reasonable! I realize now that for me at my age
+it's foolish to withdraw from my contemporaries. I shall stagnate. These
+two years have not been wasted...."
+
+"Yes, they have," she interrupted, "if your poems are not worth your
+name."
+
+"Dearest, these two years may well be the foundation on which I build
+all the rest of my life."
+
+"May they?"
+
+"Yes, of course. But a desire for the stimulus of other people isn't the
+only reason for leaving Plashers Mead. I can't afford it here. My debts
+are really getting impossible to manage, and unless I can show my
+father that I'm ready to do anything to be a writer, as I can't go out
+to Persia, well ... frankly I don't know what will happen. I gave
+Burrows notice at Midsummer."
+
+"You never told me," said Pauline.
+
+"Well, no, I was afraid you'd be upset and I wanted you to have this
+quiet time when I was away...."
+
+"You don't trust me any more," she said.
+
+"Oh, yes, I do, but I thought it would worry you. I know my money
+affairs do worry you. But now I shall be all right. I'll come down here
+often, you know, and, oh, really, dearest girl, it is better that I
+should be in London. So don't be jealous, will you, and don't torment
+yourself about my debts, will you, and don't think that you are anything
+but everything to me."
+
+"I expect you'll enjoy being in London," she said slowly shredding the
+flowers from a spray of wild mignonette.
+
+"I hope I shall be so busy that I won't have time to regret Wychford,"
+said Guy.
+
+He had by now broken off all the rank flowers in reach, and the sour
+stony ground was littered with seeds and pungent heads of bloom and
+ragged stalks.
+
+"You'll never regret Wychford," she said. "Never. Because I've spoilt it
+for you, my darling."
+
+She touched his hand gently and drew close to him, but only timidly; and
+as she made the movement a flight of goldfinches lighted upon the
+swaying thistle-down in the hollow of the waste land.
+
+"Pauline! Pauline!" he cried and would have kissed her passionately, but
+she checked him:
+
+"No, no, I just want to lean my head upon your shoulder for a little
+while."
+
+Above her murmur he heard the rustle of the goldfinches' song in parting
+cadences upon the air, rising and falling: and looking down at Pauline
+in the sunlight, he felt that she was a wounded bird he should be
+cherishing.
+
+
+
+
+_August_
+
+
+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
+and Margaret's happiness, she was determined at whatever cost of
+dejection afterward 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 shan'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 anyone 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 upstairs 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 toward 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 grey 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 afterward 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 an 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. Upstairs 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._
+
+     _Pauline._
+
+Her mother found her sobbing over her desk that was full of childish
+things, and asked what was the matter.
+
+"I've broken off my engagement," and wearily she told her some of the
+reasons, but never any reason that might have seemed to cast the least
+blame on him. Next morning very early came a note for her mother from
+Guy in which he said he was leaving Plashers Mead in a couple of hours
+and begged that she would not let Pauline be the one to go away.
+
+
+
+
+EPIGRAPH
+
+
+
+
+_Guy_
+
+
+Guy could not make the effort to fight the doom upon their love declared
+by Pauline in her letter. He felt that if he did not acquiesce he would
+go mad: a deadness struck at him that he fancied was a wonderful sense
+of relief, and hurriedly packing a few things he went in pursuit of his
+friend Comeragh in case it might not even now be too late to go to
+Persia. However, though he did not manage to be in time for Sir George
+Gascony, his friend secured him a job on some committee that was being
+organized in Macedonia by enthusiastic Liberals. His previous experience
+there was recommendation enough, and after he had seen his father,
+acquired his outfit and settled up everything at Plashers Mead by means
+of Maurice Avery, early in September he set out Eastward.
+
+In Rome Guy picked up Michael Fane who was on the point of starting for
+the Benedictine monastery at Cava. Having a few days to spare before he
+went on to Brindisi, he agreed to spend the time with Michael tramping
+in the sun along the Parthenopean shore.
+
+"I can't understand what consolation you expect to find by shutting
+yourself up with a lot of frowsty monks," said Guy fretfully.
+
+"Nor can I understand when just at the moment you have been dealt the
+blow that should at last determine if you are to be an artist," retorted
+Michael, "I can't understand why you choose that exact moment to go and
+be futile in Macedonia."
+
+"Do you think I would be an artist now, even if I could?" asked Guy
+fiercely. "How I hate such a point of view. No, no, I have made myself
+miserable and I have made someone else miserable because I thought I
+wanted to be an artist. But never, never, shall that old jejune ambition
+be gratified now."
+
+"You'll never try to write anything more?"
+
+"Nothing," said Guy.
+
+"Then what has all this been for?"
+
+"Perhaps to come back in a year, and ... listen:
+
+    _O ragged robins, you will bloom each year,_
+    _But we shall never pluck you after rain:_
+    _For aye, O ragged hearts, you beat alone,_
+    _And never more shall you be joined again._
+
+Do you think I want to come back in a year and still be able to versify
+my grief like that? I look forward to something better than minor
+poetry."
+
+"You mean you still hope...." his friend began.
+
+"I daren't even hope yet ... but all my life I'll do penance for having
+said that an artist must be free."
+
+They had reached the inn at Amalfi, where letters might be waiting for
+them.
+
+Guy read aloud one which had arrived from Maurice Avery.
+
+     422 GROSVENOR ROAD,
+
+     WESTMINSTER.
+
+     _My dear Guy,
+
+     _I settled up everything for you at Plashers Mead. Rather a jolly
+     place. I nearly took it on myself. I'm getting quite used to
+     settling up other people's affairs since you and Michael have made
+     me your executor. Good luck to you in Macedonia._
+
+     _Last night I went to the Orient Ballet and met a perfectly
+     delightful girl. If there is such a thing as love at first sight, I
+     am in love. Jenny Pearl she is called. Forgive this apparently
+     casual enthusiasm, but you two cynics will be able to tear me to
+     pieces to your satisfaction. I offer my heart for your bitter mirth
+     to embalm._
+
+     _Yours ever
+
+     M. A._
+
+     _Your dog is at Godalming with my people. My sisters talk of
+     nothing else._
+
+"Maurice rises like a phoenix from our ashes," said Guy grimly.
+
+"He was always irrepressible," Michael agreed.
+
+"And still you haven't answered my question about your monkery," Guy
+persisted.
+
+"You want action. I want contemplation. But don't think that I'm going
+to take final vows to-morrow."
+
+"And do you really believe in the Christian religion?" Guy asked
+incredulously.
+
+"Yes, I really do."
+
+"What an extraordinary thing!"
+
+Next day they parted, Michael going to the Benedictine house at Cava,
+Guy pressing on toward Salerno. With every breath of the rosemary, with
+every sough of the Aleppo pines, with every murmur of the blue
+Tyrrhenian winking far below, more and more sharply did he realize that
+what he had thought at the time was wonderful relief had been more truly
+despair. Yet in a happier September might he not hope to come back this
+way, setting his face toward England?
+
+    _One more turn of the head in the gathering gloom_
+      _To watch her figure in the lighted door:_
+    _One more wish that I never should turn again,_
+      _But watch her standing there for evermore._
+
+
+
+
+_Pauline_
+
+
+Pauline went away with Monica to spend the rest of August and the
+beginning of September in the depths of the country, where however for
+all the stillness of the ripe season she did not find very great peace.
+In every lane, in every wood, below the brow of every hill she was
+always half-expecting to meet Guy. It was not until Monica was going to
+her sisterhood and that she came back to see TO LET staring from the
+windows of Plashers Mead that Pauline was able at last to realize what
+she had irrevocably done.
+
+On the day after her return Pauline went to see Miss Verney. To her she
+explained that the engagement was at an end.
+
+"I heard something about it," said Miss Verney. "And feeling sure that
+it was doubtless on account of money, I must very impertinently beg you
+to accept this."
+
+Pauline looked at the packet the old maid had thrust into her hand.
+
+"Those are deeds," said Miss Verney importantly. "I have felt for some
+time past that I do not really need all my money. My income, you know,
+is very nearly L250 a year. L100 would be ample, and therefore I hope
+_you_ will accept the surplus."
+
+"My darling Miss Verney," said Pauline, "it could not be."
+
+But the old maid was with very great difficulty persuaded of the
+impossibility.
+
+"And you mean to say," she gasped, "that you are never going to see each
+other again?"
+
+"Oh, sometimes," Pauline whispered, "sometimes I wonder if it could
+really happen that Guy and I should never meet again. Please don't let's
+talk about it. I shall come and see you often, but you mustn't ever talk
+about Guy and me, will you?"
+
+"I shall put this money aside," Miss Verney announced, "because I am
+_most_ anxious to prove that L100 a year is ample for me. Extravagance
+has always been my temptation!"
+
+Later in the afternoon Pauline left her friend and went down Wychford
+High Street toward home. There were great wine-dark dahlias in the
+gardens, and the bell was sounding for Evensong. She knelt behind a
+pillar, all of the congregation. How through this winter that was coming
+she would love her father and mother. And if Guy ever came back ... if
+Guy ever came back....
+
+She heard her father's voice dying away with the close of the Office;
+and presently they walked about the golden churchyard, arm-in-arm.
+
+"I shouldn't be surprized to see Sternbergia Lutea this year," he
+observed. "We have had a lot of sun."
+
+"Have we?" Pauline sighed.
+
+"Oh, yes, a great deal of sun."
+
+Her father of course would never speak of that broken engagement, and
+already she had made her mother promise never to speak of it again. Deep
+to her inmost heart only these familiar vales and streams and green
+meadows would speak of it for the rest of her life.
+
+THE END
+
+_Capri_
+_December, 1914--April, 1915_
+
+PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
+WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
+PLYMOUTH
+
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF
+
+SINISTER STREET
+
+_By_ COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+_PUNCH:_
+
+     "I shall not easily forget the delightful revelation of a new power
+     that was given me by Mr. Compton Mackenzie's 'Carnival.' 'Sinister
+     Street' confirms and heightens my estimate of its author.... As a
+     study of the education of character it is already a masterpiece....
+     It is not my habit lightly to prophesy fame; but after these two
+     books I am prepared to wager that Mr. Mackenzie's future is bound
+     up with what is most considerable in English fiction."
+
+_EVENING STANDARD:_
+
+     "Not without complacency we remember that, in noticing 'Carnival,'
+     we suggested that Mr. Mackenzie's next novel would mark a critical
+     stage in his career. We are complacent because the author has
+     largely fulfilled the promise of that arresting novel. He has
+     passed the critical stage, and whatever happens now nothing can
+     deprive him of the honour of being the author of 'Sinister
+     Street.'"
+
+_MORNING POST:_
+
+     "'Sinister Street' has indeed interested us profoundly, as the
+     intimate study of the infancy and boyhood of a singularly
+     attractive lad.... Its picture of West Kensington life, and its
+     attempt to describe the atmosphere of the Public School which
+     dominates the social life of West Kensington are really
+     remarkable."
+
+_TIMES:_
+
+     "We do not wish it any shorter, for it is almost wholly delightful
+     in itself."
+
+_STANDARD:_
+
+     "In his pages there is not one which even a reviewer could wish to
+     skip.... The architecture of the book is superb."
+
+_DAILY EXPRESS:_
+
+     "'Sinister Street' is a fine novel, an achievement far removed from
+     the average easy banality."
+
+_MANCHESTER GUARDIAN:_
+
+     "As difficult a task as fiction could undertake; but Mr.
+     Mackenzie's tact and insight and comprehension have brought him
+     through with brilliant success.... Something we would not willingly
+     have missed."
+
+MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF CARNIVAL _By_ COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+
+_ATHENAEUM:_
+
+     "Mr. Mackenzie's second novel amply fulfils the promise of his
+     first.... Its first and great quality is originality. The
+     originality of Mr. Mackenzie lies in his possession of an
+     imagination and a vision of life that are as peculiarly his own as
+     a voice or a laugh, and that reflect themselves in a style which is
+     that of no other writer.... A prose full of beauty."
+
+_PUNCH:_
+
+     "After reading a couple of pages I settled myself in my chair for a
+     happy evening, and thenceforward the fascination of the book held
+     me like a kind of enchantment. I despair, though, of being able to
+     convey any idea of it in a few lines of criticism.... As for the
+     style, I will only add that it gave me the same blissful feeling of
+     security that one has in listening to a great musician.... In the
+     meantime, having recorded my delight in it, I shall put 'Carnival'
+     upon the small and by no means crowded shelf that I reserve for
+     'keeps.'"
+
+_OUTLOOK:_
+
+     "In these days of muddled literary evaluations, it is a small thing
+     to say of a novel that it is a great novel; but this we should say
+     without hesitation of 'Carnival,' that not only is it marked out to
+     be the reading success of its own season, but to be read afterwards
+     as none but the best books are read."
+
+_OBSERVER:_
+
+     "The heroic scale of Mr. Compton Mackenzie's conception and
+     achievement sets a standard for him which one only applies to the
+     'great' among novelists."
+
+_ENGLISH REVIEW:_
+
+     "An exquisite sense of beauty with a hunger for beautiful words to
+     express it."
+
+_ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS:_
+
+     "The spirit of youth and the spirit of London."
+
+_NEW YORK TIMES:_
+
+     "We hail Mr. Mackenzie as a man alive--who raises all things to a
+     spiritual plane."
+
+_MR. C. K. SHORTER in the SPHERE:_
+
+     "'Carnival' carried me from cover to cover on wings."
+
+_NEW AGE:_
+
+     "We are more than sick of it."
+
+MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF
+
+=THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT
+
+_By_ COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+_TIMES:_
+
+     "We are grateful to him for wringing our hearts with the 'tears and
+     laughter of spent joys.'"
+
+_SPECTATOR:_
+
+"As an essay in literary _bravura_ the book is quite remarkable."
+
+_COUNTRY LIFE:_
+
+     "In the kindliness, the humour and the gentleness of the treatment,
+     it comes as near to Thackeray as any man has come since Thackeray."
+
+_DAILY CHRONICLE:_
+
+     "Thanks for a rare entertainment! And, if the writing of your story
+     pleased you as much as the reading of it has pleased us,
+     congratulations too."
+
+_GLOBE:_
+
+     "A little tenderness, a fragrant aroma of melancholy laid away in
+     lavender, a hint of cynicism, an airy philosophy--and so a wholly
+     piquant, subtly aromatic dish, a rosy apple stuck with cloves."
+
+_GLASGOW NEWS:_
+
+     "Fresh and faded, mocking yet passionate, compact of tinsel and
+     gold is this little tragedy of a winter season in view of the pump
+     room.... Through it all, the old tale has a dainty, fluttering,
+     unusual, and very real beauty.'"
+
+_ENGLISH REVIEW:_
+
+     "All his characters are real and warm with life. 'The Passionate
+     Elopement' should be read slowly, and followed from the smiles and
+     extravagance of the opening chapters through many sounding and
+     poetical passages, to the thrilling end of the Love Chase. The
+     quiet irony of the close leaves one smiling, but with the wiser
+     smile of Horace Ripple who meditates on the colours of life."
+
+_WESTMINSTER GAZETTE:_
+
+     "Mr. Mackenzie's book is a novel of genre, and with infinite care
+     and obvious love of detail has he set himself to paint a literary
+     picture in the manner of Hogarth. He is no imitator, he owes no
+     thanks to any predecessor in the fashioning of his book.... Mr.
+     Mackenzie recreates (the atmosphere) so admirably that it is no
+     exaggeration to say that, thanks to his brilliant scene-painting,
+     we shall gain an even more vivid appreciation of the work of his
+     great forerunners. Lightly and vividly does Mr. Mackenzie sketch in
+     his characters ... but they do not on that account lack
+     personality. Each of them is definitely and faithfully drawn, with
+     sensibility, sympathy, and humour."
+
+MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF
+
+KENSINGTON RHYMES
+
+_By_ COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+
+_SATURDAY REVIEW:_
+
+
+     "These are particularly jolly rhymes, that any really good sort of
+     a chap, say a fellow of about ten, would like. Mr. J. R. Monsell's
+     pictures are exceptionally jolly too.... If we may judge by
+     ourselves, not only the children, but the grown-ups of the family
+     will be enchanted by this quite delightful and really first-rate
+     book."
+
+_DAILY MAIL:_
+
+     "Among the picture-books of the season, pride of place must go to
+     Mr. Compton Mackenzie's 'Kensington Rhymes.' They are full of quiet
+     humour and delicate insight into the child-mind."
+
+_OBSERVER:_
+
+     "Far the best rhymes of the year are 'Kensington Rhymes,' by
+     Compton Mackenzie, almost the best things of the kind since the
+     'Child's Garden of Verse.'"
+
+_ATHENAEUM:_
+
+     "Will please children of all ages, and also contains much that will
+     not be read without a sympathetic smile by grown-ups possessed of a
+     sense of humour."
+
+_TIMES:_
+
+     "The real gift of child poetry, sometimes almost with a
+     Stevensonian ring."
+
+_OUTLOOK:_
+
+     "What Henley did for older Londoners, Mr. Compton Mackenzie and Mr.
+     Monsell have done for the younger generation."
+
+_STANDARD:_
+
+     "Our hearts go out first to Mr. Compton Mackenzie's 'Kensington
+     Rhymes.'"
+
+_SUNDAY TIMES:_
+
+     "Full of whimsical observation and genuine insight, 'Kensington
+     Rhymes' by Compton Mackenzie are certainly entertaining."
+
+_EVENING STANDARD:_
+
+     "Something of the charm of Christina Rossetti's."
+
+_VOTES FOR WOMEN:_
+
+     "They breathe the very conventional and stuffy air of Kensington.
+... We are bound to say that the London child we tried it on liked
+     the book."
+
+
+MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI
+
+_MARTIN SECKER_
+
+_HIS COMPLETE CATALOGUE MCMXV_
+
+_The Books in this list should be obtainable from all Booksellers and
+Libraries, and if any difficulty is experienced the Publisher will be
+glad to be informed of the fact. He will also be glad if those
+interested in receiving from time to time Announcement Lists,
+Prospectuses, &c., of new and forthcoming books from Number Five John
+Street will send their names and addresses to him for this purpose. Any
+book in this list may be obtained on approval through the booksellers,
+or direct from the Publisher, on remitting him the published price, plus
+the postage._
+
+_MARTIN SECKER
+Publisher
+Number Five John Street
+Adelphi London_
+
+_Telephone Gerrard 4779
+Telegraphic Address:
+Psophidian London_
+
+
+  PART ONE
+  INDEX OF AUTHORS
+
+  ABERCROMBIE, LASCELLES
+  SPECULATIVE DIALOGUES. _Wide Cr. 8vo._ 5_s._ _net_.
+  THOMAS HARDY: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy 8vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  THE EPIC (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap_
+  _8vo._ 1_s._ _net_.
+
+  AFLALO, F. G.
+  BEHIND THE RANGES. _Wide Demy 8vo._ 10_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  REGILDING THE CRESCENT. _Demy 8vo._ 10_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  BIRDS IN THE CALENDAR. _Crown 8vo._ 3_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  ALLSHORN, LIONEL
+  STUPOR MUNDI. _Medium Octavo._ 16_s._ _net_.
+
+  APPERSON, G. L.
+  THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF SMOKING. _Post 8vo._
+  6_s._ _net_.
+
+  ARMSTRONG, DONALD
+  THE MARRIAGE OF QUIXOTE. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  ARTZIBASHEF, MICHAEL
+  SANINE. _Preface by Gilbert Cannan._ _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  BREAKING-POINT. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  THE MILLIONAIRE. _Intro. by the Author._ _Cr. 8vo._ 6_s._
+  TALES OF THE REVOLUTION. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  BARRINGTON, MICHAEL
+  GRAHAME OF CLAVERHOUSE. _Imperial 8vo._ 30_s._
+  _net_. _Edition de Luxe_ 63_s._ _net_.
+
+  BENNETT, ARNOLD
+  THOSE UNITED STATES. _Post 8vo._ 2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  BLACK, CLEMENTINA
+  THE LINLEYS OF BATH. _Medium 8vo._ 16_s._ _net_.
+  THE CUMBERLAND LETTERS. _Med. 8vo._ 16_s._ _net_.
+
+  BOULGER, D. C.
+  THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE. _Med._ 8_vo._ 21_s._ _net._
+
+  BOTTOME, PHYLLIS
+  THE COMMON CHORD. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  BROWN, IVOR
+  YEARS OF PLENTY. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  SECURITY. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  BURROW, C. KENNETT
+  CARMINA VARIA. _F'cap_ 8_vo._ 2_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+
+  CALDERON, GEORGE (With St. John Hankin)
+  THOMPSON: A Comedy. _Sq._ _Cr._ 8_vo._ 2_s._ _net._
+
+  CANNAN, GILBERT
+  ROUND THE CORNER. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  OLD MOLE. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  YOUNG EARNEST. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  SAMUEL BUTLER: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._ 7_s_. 6_d._ _net._
+  WINDMILLS: A Book of Fables. _Cr._ 8_vo._ 5_s._ _net._
+  SATIRE (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap_ 8_vo._ 1_s._ _net._
+
+  CHESTERTON, G. K.
+  MAGIC: A Fantastic Comedy. _Sq._ _Cr._ 8_vo._ 2_s._ _net._
+
+  CLAYTON, JOSEPH
+  THE UNDERMAN. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE. _Demy_ 8_vo._ 12_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+  ROBERT KETT. _Demy_ 8_vo._ 8_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+
+  COKE, DESMOND
+  THE ART OF SILHOUETTE. _Demy_ 8_vo._ 10_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+
+  CRAVEN, A. SCOTT
+  THE FOOL'S TRAGEDY. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  DAWSON, WARRINGTON
+  THE TRUE DIMENSION. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  DE SELINCOURT, BASIL
+  WALT WHITMAN: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._ 7_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+  RHYME (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap_ 8_vo._ 1_s._ _net._
+
+  DOUGLAS, LORD ALFRED
+  THE WILDE MYTH. _Demy_ 8_vo_. 12_s_. 6_d_. _net_.
+
+  DOUGLAS, NORMAN
+  FOUNTAINS IN THE SAND. _Wide Demy_ 8_vo_. 7_s_. 6_d_. _net_.
+  OLD CALABRIA. _Demy_ 8_vo_. 15_s_. _net_.
+
+  DRAYCOTT, G. M.
+  MAHOMET: FOUNDER OF ISLAM. _Demy_ 8_vo_.
+  12_s_. 6_d_. _net_.
+
+  DRINKWATER, JOHN
+  WILLIAM MORRIS: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo_.
+  7_s_. 6_d_. net.
+  D. G. ROSSETTI: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo_.
+  7_s_. 6d__. _net_.
+  THE LYRIC _(The Art and Craft of Letters)_. _F'cap_
+  8_vo_. 1_s_. net.
+
+  FALLS, CYRIL
+  RUDYARD KIPLING: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_
+  8_vo_. 7_s_. 6_d_. net.
+
+  FEA, ALLAN
+  OLD ENGLISH HOUSES. _Demy_ 8_vo_. 10_s_. 6_d_. _net_.
+  NOOKS AND CORNERS OF OLD ENGLAND. 5_s_. _net_.
+  THE REAL CAPTAIN CLEVELAND. _Demy_ 8_vo_.
+  8S. 6_d_. _net_.
+
+  FLECKER, J. E.
+  THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND. 5_s_. _net_.
+  COLLECTED POEMS. _Demy_ 8_vo_. 7_s_. 6_d_. _net_.
+
+  FRANCIS, RENE
+  EGYPTIAN AESTHETICS. _Wide Demy_ 8_vo_. 7_s_. 6_d_. _net_.
+
+  GRETTON, R. H.
+  HISTORY _(The Art and Craft of Letters)_. _F'cap_ 8_vo_.
+  1_s_. _net_.
+
+  HANKIN, ST. JOHN
+  THE DRAMATIC WORKS, with an Introduction by
+  John Drinkwater. _Small_ 4_to_. _Definitive Limited
+  Edition in Three Volumes_. 25_s_. _net_.
+  THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL. _Sq._ _Cr._ 8_vo._ 2_s._ _net._
+  THE CASSILIS ENGAGEMENT. _Sq._ _Cr._ 8_vo._ 2_s._ _net._
+  THE CHARITY THAT BEGAN AT HOME. 2_s._ _net._
+  THE CONSTANT LOVER, ETC. _Sq._ _Cr._ 8_vo._ 2_s._ _net._
+
+  HAUPTMANN, GERHART
+    The Complete Dramatic Works. 6 _vols._ _Crown_
+    8_vo._ 5_s._ _net per volume_.
+
+  HEWLETT, WILLIAM
+  TELLING THE TRUTH. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  UNCLE'S ADVICE: A NOVEL IN LETTERS. _Cr._ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  THE CHILD AT THE WINDOW. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  HORSNELL, HORACE
+  THE BANKRUPT. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  HOWE, P. P.
+  THE REPERTORY THEATRE. _Cr._ 8_vo._ 2_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+  DRAMATIC PORTRAITS. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 5_s._ _net._
+  BERNARD SHAW: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._
+    7_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+  J. M. SYNGE: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._
+    7_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+  CRITICISM (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap_
+    8_vo_. 1_s._ _net._
+
+  HUEFFER, FORD MADOX
+  HENRY JAMES: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._
+    7_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+  COLLECTED POEMS. _Demy_ 8_vo._ 6_s._ _net._
+
+  IBSEN, HENRIK
+  PEER GYNT. A New Translation by R. Ellis
+    Roberts. _Wide Crown_ 8_vo._ 5_s._ _net._
+
+  JACOB, HAROLD
+  PERFUMES OF ARABY. _Wide Demy_ 8_vo._ 7_s._ 6_d._ _net._
+
+  JAMES, HENRY
+  THE TURN OF THE SCREW. THE ASPERN PAPERS.
+  THE LESSON OF THE MASTER. DAISY MILLER.
+  THE DEATH OF THE LION. THE COXON FUND.
+  THE REVERBERATOR.
+  THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD.
+  THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE.
+  THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET.
+  GLASSES.
+  THE PUPIL.
+    _Each F'cap 8vo._ 2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  JOHNSON, OWEN
+  THE SALAMANDER. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  MAKING MONEY. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  LAMONT, L. M.
+  A CORONAL: AN ANTHOLOGY. _F'cap 8vo._ 2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  LEWISOHN, L.
+  THE MODERN DRAMA. _Crown 8vo._ 5_s._ _net_.
+
+  LLUELLYN, RICHARD
+  THE IMPERFECT BRANCH. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  LOW, IVY
+  THE QUESTING BEAST. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  LYNCH, BOHUN
+  UNOFFICIAL. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  L.S.D. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  McFEE, WILLIAM
+  CASUALS OF THE SEA. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  MACHEN, ARTHUR
+  HIEROGLYPHICS. _F'cap 8vo._ 2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  MACKENZIE, COMPTON
+  THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT. _Cr. 8vo._ 6_s._ _and_ 2_s._ _net_.
+  CARNIVAL. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  SINISTER STREET. Volume I. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  SINISTER STREET. Volume II. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  GUY AND PAULINE. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  KENSINGTON RHYMES. _Crown 4to._ 5_s._ _net_.
+
+  MAKOWER, S. V.
+  THE OUTWARD APPEARANCE. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  MAVROGORDATO, JOHN
+  LETTERS FROM GREECE. _F'cap 8vo._ 2_s._ _net_.
+  CASSANDRA IN TROY. _Small 4to._ 5_s._ _net_.
+
+  MELVILLE, LEWIS
+  SOME ECCENTRICS AND A WOMAN. _Demy 8vo.
+  10s. 6d. net._
+
+  METHLEY, VIOLET
+  CAMILLE DESMOULINS: A Biography. _Dy. 8vo. 15s. net._
+
+  MEYNELL, VIOLA
+  LOT BARROW. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  MODERN LOVERS. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  COLUMBINE. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  NARCISSUS. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+
+  NORTH, LAURENCE
+  IMPATIENT GRISELDA. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  THE GOLIGHTLYS: FATHER AND SON. _Cr. 8vo. 6s._
+
+  ONIONS, OLIVER
+  WIDDERSHINS. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE. _Cr. 8vo. 6s._
+  THE DEBIT ACCOUNT. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  THE STORY OF LOUIE. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+
+  PAIN, BARRY
+  ONE KIND AND ANOTHER. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  COLLECTED TALES: Volume I. _Medium 8vo. 6s._
+  COLLECTED TALES: Volume II. _Medium 8vo. 6s._
+
+  THE SHORT STORY (_The Art and Craft of Letters_).
+  _F'cap 8vo. 1s. Net._
+
+  PALMER, JOHN
+  PETER PARAGON. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+  COMEDY (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap 8vo.
+  1s. net._
+
+  PERUGINI, MARK E.
+  THE ART OF BALLET. _Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net._
+
+  PHILIPS, AUSTIN
+  BATTLES OF LIFE. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+
+  PRESTON, ANNA
+  THE RECORD OF A SILENT LIFE. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
+
+  REID, FORREST
+  W. B. YEATS: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy 8vo.
+  7s. 6d. net._
+
+  ROBERTS, R. ELLIS
+  HENRIK IBSEN: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy 8vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  LEO TOLSTOI: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy 8vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  PEER GYNT: A NEW TRANSLATION. _Wide Crown
+  8vo._ 5_s._ _net_.
+
+  SABATINI, RAFAEL
+  THE SEA-HAWK. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  THE BANNER OF THE BULL. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  SAND, MAURICE
+  THE HISTORY OF THE HARLEQUINADE. _Two
+  Volumes._ _Med. 8vo._ 25_s._ _net the set_.
+
+  SCOTT-JAMES, R. A.
+  PERSONALITY IN LITERATURE. _Demy 8vo._ 7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  SIDGWICK, FRANK
+  THE BALLAD (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap
+  8vo._ 1_s._ _net_.
+
+  SOLOGUB, FEODOR
+  THE OLD HOUSE. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+
+  STONE, CHRISTOPHER
+  THE BURNT HOUSE. _Crown 8vo._ 6_s._
+  PARODY (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap 8vo._
+  1_s._ _net_.
+
+  STRAUS, RALPH
+  CARRIAGES AND COACHES. _Med. 8vo._ 18_s._ _net_.
+
+  STREET, G. S.
+  PEOPLE AND QUESTIONS. _Wide Cr. 8vo._ 5_s._ _net_.
+
+  SWINNERTON, FRANK
+  GEORGE GISSING: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy 8vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  R. L. STEVENSON: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy 8vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  TAYLOR, G. R. STIRLING
+  MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. _Demy 8vo._ 7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GREAT WAR. _Cr. 8vo._
+  2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  TAYLOR, UNA
+  MAURICE MAETERLINCK: A CRITICAL STUDY.
+  _Demy_ 8_vo._ 7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  THOMAS, EDWARD
+  FEMININE INFLUENCE ON THE POETS. _Demy_ 8_vo._
+  10_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  A. C. SWINBURNE: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_
+  WALTER PATER: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  THE TENTH MUSE. _F'cap_ 8_vo._ 2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  VAUGHAN, H. M.
+  MELEAGER. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  AN AUSTRALASIAN WANDER-YEAR. _Dy._ 8_vo._ 10_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  WALPOLE, HUGH
+  FORTITUDE. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  THE DUCHESS OF WREXE. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  WILLIAMS, ORLO
+  VIE DE BOHEME. _Demy_ 8_vo._ 15_s._ _net_
+  GEORGE MEREDITH: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_
+   8_vo._ 7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+  THE ESSAY (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _F'cap_
+   8_vo._ 1_s._ _net_.
+
+  YOUNG, FILSON
+  NEW LEAVES. _Wide Crown_ 8_vo._ 5_s._ _net_.
+  A CHRISTMAS CARD. _Demy_ 16mo. 1_s._ _net_.
+  PUNCTUATION (_The Art and Craft of Letters_).
+  _F'cap_ 8_vo._ 1_s._ _net_.
+
+  YOUNG, FRANCIS BRETT
+  DEEP SEA. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  THE DARK TOWER. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  THE IRON AGE. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+
+  YOUNG, F. & E. BRETT
+  UNDERGROWTH. _Crown_ 8_vo._ 6_s._
+  ROBERT BRIDGES: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Demy_ 8_vo._
+  7_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
+
+  PART TWO: CLASSIFIED
+  INDEX OF TITLES
+
+  _General Literature_
+  ART OF BALLET, THE. _By Mark E. Perugini._
+  ART OF SILHOUETTE, THE. _By Desmond Coke._
+  BATTLE OF THE BOYNE, THE. _By D. C. Boulger._
+  BEHIND THE RANGES. _By F. G. Aflalo._
+  BIRDS IN THE CALENDAR. _By F. G. Aflalo._
+  CAMILLE DESMOULINS. _By Violet Methley._
+  CARRIAGES AND COACHES. _By Ralph Straus._
+  CHRISTMAS CARD, A. _By Filson Young._
+  CUMBERLAND LETTERS, THE. _By Clementina Black._
+  DRAMATIC PORTRAITS. _By P. P. Howe._
+  FEMININE INFLUENCE ON THE POETS. _By E. Thomas._
+  GRAHAME OF CLAVERHOUSE. _By Michael Barrington._
+  HIEROGLYPHICS. _By Arthur Machen._
+  HISTORY OF THE HARLEQUINADE, THE. _By M. Sand._
+  LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE. _By Joseph Clayton._
+  LETTERS FROM GREECE. _By John Mavrogordato._
+  LINLEYS OF BATH, THE. _By Clementina Black._
+  MAHOMET. _By G. M. Draycott._
+  MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. _By G. R. Stirling Taylor._
+  NEW LEAVES. _By Filson Young._
+  PEOPLE AND QUESTIONS. _By G. S. Street._
+  PERSONALITY IN LITERATURE. _By R. A. Scott-James._
+  PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GREAT WAR. _By Stirling Taylor._
+  REAL CAPTAIN CLEVELAND, THE. _By Allan Fea._
+  REGILDING THE CRESCENT. _By F. G. Aflalo._
+  ROBERT KETT. _By Joseph Clayton._
+  SOCIAL HISTORY OF SMOKING, THE. _By G. L. Apperson._
+  SOME ECCENTRICS AND A WOMAN. _By Lewis Melville._
+  SPECULATIVE DIALOGUES. _By Lascelles Abercrombie._
+  STUPOR MUNDI. _By Lionel Allshorn._
+  TENTH MUSE, THE. _By Edward Thomas._
+  THOSE UNITED STATES. _By Arnold Bennett._
+  VIE DE BOHEME. _By Orlo Williams._
+  WILDE MYTH, THE. _By Lord Alfred Douglas._
+  WINDMILLS. _By Gilbert Cannan._
+
+
+  _Verse_
+
+  COLLECTED POEMS OF J. E. FLECKER.
+  COLLECTED POEMS OF F. M. HUEFFER.
+  CARMINA VARIA. _By C. Kennett Burrow._
+  CORONAL, A. A New Anthology. _By L. M. Lamont._
+  GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND, THE. _By J. E.
+  Flecker._
+  KENSINGTON RHYMES. _By Compton Mackenzie._
+
+
+  _Drama_
+
+  DRAMATIC WORKS OF ST. JOHN HANKIN. _3 vols._
+  DRAMATIC WORKS OF GERHART HAUPTMANN. _6 vols._
+  CASSANDRA IN TROY. _By John Mavrogordato._
+  MAGIC. _By G. K. Chesterton._
+  MODERN DRAMA, THE. _By L. Lewisohn._
+  PEER GYNT. _Translated by R. Ellis Roberts._
+  REPERTORY THEATRE, THE. _By P. P. Howe._
+  THOMPSON. _By St. John Hankin and G. Calderon._
+
+
+  _Travel_
+
+  AUSTRALASIAN WANDER YEAR, AN. _By H. M. Vaughan_
+  EGYPTIAN AESTHETICS. _By Rene Francis_.
+  FOUNTAINS IN THE SAND. _By Norman Douglas_.
+  NOOKS AND CORNERS OF OLD ENGLAND. _By Allan Fea_.
+  OLD CALABRIA. _By Norman Douglas_.
+  OLD ENGLISH HOUSES. _By Allan Fea_.
+  PERFUMES OF ARABY. _By Harold Jacob_.
+
+
+  _Martin Secker's Series of
+  Critical Studies_
+
+  ROBERT BRIDGES. _By F. E. Brett Young_.
+  SAMUEL BUTLER. _By Gilbert Cannan_.
+  GEORGE GISSING. _By Frank Swinnerton_.
+  THOMAS HARDY. _By Lascelles Abercrombie_.
+  HENRIK IBSEN. _By R. Ellis Roberts_.
+  HENRY JAMES. _By Ford Madox Hueffer_.
+  MAURICE MAETERLINCK. _By Una Taylor_.
+  GEORGE MEREDITH. _By Orlo Williams_.
+  WILLIAM MORRIS. _By John Drinkwater_.
+  WALTER PATER. _By Edward Thomas_.
+  D. G. ROSSETTI. _By John Drinkwater_.
+  BERNARD SHAW. _By P. P. Howe_.
+  R. L. STEVENSON. _By Frank Swinnerton_.
+  A. C. SWINBURNE. _By Edward Thomas_.
+  J. M. SYNGE. _By P. P. Howe_.
+  LEO TOLSTOI. _By R. Ellis Roberts_.
+  WALT WHITMAN. _By Basil de Selincourt_.
+  W. B. YEATS. _By Forrest Reid_.
+
+  _The Art and Craft of Letters_
+
+  BALLAD, THE. _By Frank Sidgwick._
+  COMEDY. _By John Palmer._
+  CRITICISM. _By P. P. Howe._
+  EPIC, THE. _By Lascelles Abercrombie._
+  ESSAY, THE. _By Orlo Williams._
+  HISTORY. _By R. H. Gretton._
+  LYRIC, THE. _By John Drinkwater._
+  PARODY. _By Christopher Stone._
+  PUNCTUATION. _By Filson Young._
+  SATIRE. _By Gilbert Cannan._
+  SHORT STORY, THE. By Barry Pain.
+
+
+  _Fiction_
+
+  ALTAR OF THE DEAD, THE. _By Henry James._
+  ASPERN PAPERS, THE. _By Henry James._
+  BANKRUPT, THE. _By Horace Horsnell._
+  BANNER OF THE BULL, THE. _By Rafael Sabatini._
+  BATTLES OF LIFE. _By Austin Philips._
+  BEAST IN THE JUNGLE, THE. _By Henry James._
+  BREAKING-POINT. _By Michael Artzibashef._
+  BURNT HOUSE, THE. _By Christopher Stone._
+  CARNIVAL. _By Compton Mackenzie._
+  CASUALS OF THE SEA. _By William McFee._
+  COLLECTED TALES: Vol. I. _By Barry Pain._
+  COLLECTED TALES: Vol. II. _By Barry Pain._
+  COLUMBINE. _By Viola Meynell._
+  COMMON CHORD, THE. _By Phyllis Bottome._
+  COXON FUND, THE. _By Henry James._
+  DAISY MILLER. _By Henry James._
+  DARK TOWER, THE. _By E. Brett Young._
+  DEATH OF THE LION, THE. _By Henry James._
+  DEBIT ACCOUNT, THE. _By Oliver Onions._
+  DEEP SEA. _By F. Brett Young._
+  DUCHESS OF WREXE, THE. _By Hugh Walpole._
+  FIGURE IN THE CARPET, THE. _By Henry James._
+  FOOL'S TRAGEDY, THE. _By A. Scott Craven._
+  FORTITUDE. _By Hugh Walpole._
+  GLASSES. _By Henry James._
+  GOLIGHTLYS, THE. _By Laurence North._
+  GUY AND PAULINE. _By Compton Mackenzie._
+  IMPATIENT GRISELDA. _By Laurence North._
+  IMPERFECT BRANCH, THE. _By Richard Lluellyn._
+  IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE. _By O. Onions._
+  IRON AGE, THE. _By F. Brett Young._
+  L.S.D. _By Bohun Lynch._
+  LESSON OF THE MASTER, THE. _By Henry James._
+  LOT BARROW. _By Viola Meynell._
+  MARRIAGE OF QUIXOTE, THE. _By Donald Armstrong._
+  MAKING MONEY. _By Owen Johnson._
+  MELEAGER. _By H. M. Vaughan._
+  MILLIONAIRE, THE. _By Michael Artzibashef._
+  MODERN LOVERS. _By Viola Meynell._
+  NARCISSUS. _By Viola Meynell._
+  OLD MOLE. _By Gilbert Cannan._
+  OLD HOUSE, THE. _By Feodor Sologub._
+  ONE KIND AND ANOTHER. _By Barry Pain._
+  OUTWARD APPEARANCE, THE. _By Stanley V. Makower._
+  PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT, THE. _By Compton Mackenzie._
+  PETER PARAGON. _By John Palmer._
+  PUPIL, THE. _By Henry James._
+  QUESTING BEAST, THE. _By Ivy Low._
+  RECORD OF A SILENT LIFE, THE. _By Anna Preston._
+  REVERBERATOR, THE. _By Henry James._
+  ROUND THE CORNER. _By Gilbert Cannan._
+  SALAMANDER, THE. _By Owen Johnson._
+  SANINE. _By Michael Artzibashef._
+  SEA HAWK, THE. _By Rafael Sabatini._
+  SECURITY. _By Ivor Brown._
+  SINISTER STREET. I. _By Compton Mackenzie._
+  SINISTER STREET. II. _By Compton Mackenzie._
+  STORY OF LOUIE, THE. _By Oliver Onions._
+  TALES OF THE REVOLUTION. _By M. Artzibashef._
+  TELLING THE TRUTH. _By William Hewlett._
+  TRUE DIMENSION, THE. _By Warrington Dawson._
+  TURN OF THE SCREW, THE. _By Henry James._
+  UNCLE'S ADVICE. _By William Hewlett._
+  UNDERGROWTH. _By F. & E. Brett Young._
+  UNDERMAN, THE. _By Joseph Clayton._
+  UNOFFICIAL. _By Bohun Lynch._
+  WIDDERSHINS. _By Oliver Onions._
+  YEARS OF PLENTY. _By Ivor Brown._
+  YOUNG EARNEST. _By Gilbert Cannan._
+
+  BALLANTYNE PRESS: LONDON AND EDINBURGH
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext
+transcriber:
+
+managed somehow that he should chose Monica=managed somehow that he
+should choose Monica
+
+were akin to the birds in their shubberies=were akin to the birds in
+their shrubberies
+
+the tapestries even more beautiful that himself had woven.=the
+tapestries even more beautiful that he himself had woven.
+
+"The train's quite punctual," said Mr. Hazelwood="The train's quite
+punctual," said Mr. Hazlewood
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Guy and Pauline, by Compton Mackenzie
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GUY AND PAULINE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 39556.txt or 39556.zip *****
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