Part 15

"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, spelled 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 spelled with an E, I dare say 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 corn-fields, 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 corn-fields 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 gray. 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 learned 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 any one, 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 surprised 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 color 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 towards 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 arm-chair 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 surprise 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 moldering 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 candle-light 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 spilled milk that the briefest letter would have settled everything. If now he wrote to announce an engagement, he ran the risk of his father's refusal to come and pay him that visit on which he was building such hopes from the combined effect of Pauline and Plashers Mead in restoring to the schoolmaster the bright mirror of his own youth. It would scarcely be fair to the Greys to introduce him while he was still ignorant of the relation in which he was supposed to stand to them, for they could scarcely be expected to regard him as a man to be humored up to such a point. After all, it was not as if he in his heart looked to his father for practical help; in reality he knew already that the engagement would meet with his opposition, notwithstanding Pauline ... notwithstanding Plashers Mead. Perhaps it would be better to write and tell him about it; if he came it would obviate an awkward explanation and there could be no question of false pretenses; if he declined to come, no doubt he would write such a letter as would justify his son in holding him up to the Greys as naturally intractable. Indeed, if it were not that he knew how sensitive Pauline was to the paternal benediction, he would have made no attempt to present him at all.

His father kept him waiting over a week before he replied to the announcement Guy had ultimately decided to send him; and when it came, the letter did not promise the most favorable prospect.

FOX HALL, GALTON, HANTS, _September 1st_.

DEAR GUY,--I have taken a few days to think over the extraordinary news you have seen fit to communicate. I hope I am not so far removed from sympathy with your aspirations as not to be able to understand almost anything you might have to tell me about yourself. But this I confess defeats my best intentions, setting as it does a crown on all the rest of your acts of folly. I tried to believe that your desire to write poetry was merely a passing whim. I tried to think that your tenancy of this house was not the behavior of a thoughtless and wilful young man. I was most anxious, as I clearly showed (i) by my gift of L150, (ii) by my offer of a post at Fox Hall, to put myself in accord with your ambition; and now you write and tell me after a year's unprofitable idling that you are engaged to be married! I admit as a minute point in your favor you do not suggest that I should help you to tie yourself for life to the fancy of a young man of just twenty-three. Little did I think when I wrote to wish you many happy returns of the 20th of August, although you had previously disappointed me by your refusal to help me out of a nasty difficulty, little did I think that my answer was going to be this piece of reckless folly. May I ask what her parents are thinking of, or are they so blinded by your charms as to be willing to allow this daughter of theirs to wait until the income you make by selling your poetry enables you to get married? I gathered from your description of Mr. Grey that he was an extremely unpractical man; and his attitude towards your engagement certainly bears me out. I suppose I shall presently get a post-card to say that you are married on your income of L150, which, by the way, in the present state of affairs is very likely soon to be less. You invite me to come and stay with you before term begins, in order to meet the young lady to whom with extremely bad taste you jocularly allude as my "future daughter-in-law." Well, I accept your invitation, but I warn you that I shall give myself the unpleasant task of explaining to your "future father-in-law," as I suppose you would not blush to call him, what an utterly unreliable fellow you are and how in every way you have disappointed

Your affectionate father, JOHN HAZLEWOOD.

I shall arrive at two-thirty on the fifth (next Thursday). I wish I could say I was looking forward to seeing this insane house of yours.

There was something in the taste of marmalade very appropriate to an unpleasant letter, and Guy wondered how many of them he had read at breakfast to the accompaniment of the bitter savor and the sound of crackling toast. He also wondered what was the real reason of his father's coming. Was it curiosity, or the prospect of lecturing a certain number of people gathered together to hear his opinion? Was it with the hope of dissuasion, or was it merely because he had settled to come on the fifth of September, and could not bear to thwart that finicking passion of his for knowing what he was going to do a month beforehand?

Anyhow, whatever the reason, he was coming, and the next problem was to furnish for him a bedroom. How much had he in the bank? Four pounds sixteen shillings, and there was a blank counterfoil which Guy vaguely thought represented a cheque for two pounds. Of course Pauline's ring had lowered his balance rather prematurely this quarter; he ought to be very economical during the next one, and, as ill-luck would have it, next quarter would have to provide fuel. Two pounds sixteen shillings was not much to spend on furnishing a bedroom, even if the puny balance were not needed for the current expenses of the three weeks to Michaelmas. Could he borrow some bedroom furniture from the Rectory? No doubt Mrs. Grey would be amused and delighted to lend all he wanted, but it seemed rather an ignominious way of celebrating his engagement. Could he sleep on the chest in the hall? And as it wabbled to his touch he decided that not only could he not sleep on it nor in it, but that it would not even serve as a receptacle for his clothes.