Part 27

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 rag-wort and teazles and feverfew. Summer had burnt up this abandoned pasturage, and while they sat in silence Guy rattled from the rank umbels of fool's-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 fervor.

"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 spoiled 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's and Margaret's happiness, she was determined at whatever cost of dejection afterwards to bring to the completion of her design all the enthusiasm she had brought to its conception.

"Do you like me as a bridesmaid?" she asked Guy.

And he, with obviously eager welcome of the old Pauline, could not find enough words to say how much he liked her.

"Richard, of course, is wearing a tail-coat," she murmured.

"I sha'n't," he whispered, "when we are married. I shall wear tweeds, and you shall wear your white frieze coat ... the one in which I first saw you. How little you've changed in these two years!"

"Have I? I think I've changed such a lot. Oh, Guy, such a tremendous lot!"

He shook his head.

"My rose, if all roses could stay like you, what a world of roses it would be."

The wedding happened as perfectly as Pauline had imagined it would. Margaret looked most beautiful with her slim white satin gown and her weight of dusky hair, while Richard marched about stiff and awkward, yet so radiant that almost more than any one it was he who inspired the ceremony with hymeneal triumph and carried it beyond the soilure of unmeaning tears, he and Pauline, whose laughter was the expression of the joyous air, since Margaret was too deeply occupied with herself to cast a single questioning look.

In the evening, when the diminished family sat in the drawing-room without going up-stairs to music, as a matter of course, Monica announced abruptly that at the end of the month she was going to be a novice in one of the large Anglican sisterhoods. It seemed as if she had most deliberately taken advantage of the general reaction in order that nobody might have the heart to combat her intention. Pauline and Mrs. Grey gasped, but they had no arguments to bring forward against the idea, and when Monica had outlined the plan in her most precise manner they simply acquiesced in the decision as immutable.

That night, as Pauline lay awake with the excitement of the wedding still throbbing in her brain, the future from every side began to assail her fancy. It seemed to her since Margaret's marriage and Monica's decision to be a nun that she must be more than ever convinced of her absolute necessity to Guy's existence. Unless she were assured of this she had no right to leave her father and mother. No doubt at least a year would pass before she and Guy could be married, but, nevertheless, her decision must be made at once. He had not seemed to depend upon her so much when he was in London; his letters had no longer contained those intimate touches that formerly assured her of the intertwining of their lives. But it was not merely a question of letters, this attitude of his that latterly was continually being more sharply defined. Somewhere their love had diverged, and whereas formerly she had always been able to comfort herself with the certainty that between them love was exactly equal, now instead she could not help fancying that she loved him more than he loved her. It would, of course, be useless to ask him the question directly, for he would evade an answer by declaring it was prompted by unreasonable jealousy. Yet was her jealousy so very unreasonable, and if it were unreasonable was not that another reason against their marriage?

Pauline tried to search in the past of their love for the occasion of the divergence. It must be her own fault. It was she who had often behaved foolishly and impetuously, who had always supposed that her mother and sisters knew nothing about love, who had been to Guy all through their engagement utterly useless. It was she who had stopped his becoming a schoolmaster to help his father, it was she who had discouraged him from accepting that post in Persia. As Pauline looked back upon these two years she saw herself at every cross-road in Guy's career standing to persuade him towards the wrong direction.

Then, too, recurred the dreadful problem of religion. It was she who had not resisted his inclination to laugh at what she knew was true. It was she who had most easily and most weakly surrendered, so that it was natural for him to treat her faith as something more conventional than real.

The worries surged round her like waves in the darkness, and the one anchor of hope she still possessed was dragging ominously. Oh, if she could but be sure that she was essential to his happiness, she would be able to conquer everything else. The loneliness of her father and mother, Guy's debts, the religious difficulties, the self-reproach for those moonlit nights upon the river, the jealousy of his friends, the fear of his poems' failure, his absence in London--all these could be overcome if only she were sure of being vital to Guy's felicity.

A dull Summer wind sent a stir through the dry leaves of the creepers, but the night grew hotter notwithstanding, and sleep utterly refused to approach her room.

Next day, when Guy came round to the Rectory, Pauline was so eager to hear the answer to her question that she would take no account of the jaded spirit of such a day as this after a wedding, and its natural influence on Guy's point of view.

All the afternoon, however, they helped the Rector with his bulbs, and no opportunity of intimate conversation occurred until after tea when they were sitting in the nursery. The wind, that last night had run with slow tremors through the leaves, was now blowing gustily, and banks of clouds were gathering--great clouds that made the vegetation seem all the more dry and stale as they still deferred their drench of rain.

"Guy, I don't want to annoy you, but is it really necessary that your poems should appear without your name?"

"Absolutely," he said, firmly.

"You don't think any of them are good?"

"Oh, some are all right, but I don't believe in them as I used to believe in them."

"Sometimes, my dearest, you frighten me with the sudden way in which you dispose of things.... They were important to you once, weren't they?"

"Of course. But they have outlived their date. I must do better."

She got up and went over to the window-seat, and when she spoke next she was looking at the wicket in the high gray wall.

"Guy, could I outlive my date?"

"Oh, dearest Pauline, I do beg you not to start problems this afternoon! Of course not."

"Are you sure? Are you sure that when you are in London you won't find other girls more interesting than I am?"

"Even if temporarily I were interested in another girl, you may be quite sure that she would always be second to you."

"But you might be interested?" Pauline asked, breathlessly.

"I must be free if I'm going to be an artist."

"Free?" she echoed, slowly.

The cuckoo in the passage struck seven, and Mrs. Grey came into the nursery to invite Guy to stay to dinner. All through the meal Pauline kept saying to herself, "free," "free," "free," and afterwards when her mother suggested a trio in the music-room, because they could no longer have quartets, and because soon they would not even have trios, Pauline played upon her violin nothing but that word "free," "free," "free." In the hall, when she kissed Guy good night, she had impulse to cling to him and pour out all her woes; but, remembering how often lately he had been the victim of her overwrought nerves, she let him go without an effort. For a little while she held the door ajar so that a thin shaft of lamplight showed his tall shape walking quickly away under the trees. Why was he walking so quickly away from her? Oh, it was raining fast, and she shut the door. Up-stairs in her room she wrote to him:

Guy, you must forgive me, but I cannot bear the strain of this long engagement any more. I will go away with Miss Verney somewhere to-morrow so that you needn't hurry away from Plashers Mead before you intended. I meant to write you a long letter full of everything, but there isn't any more to say.

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 some one 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 towards 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 towards 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 two hundred and fifty pounds a year. One hundred pounds 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 one hundred pounds 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 towards 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 surprised 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