Part 9

The gray-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 pretense 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 plow-lands 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 spindle-shanked 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 24th_.

DEAR GUY,--I send you this with the third instalment of the L150. Please let me have a prompter acknowledgment 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 his 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 inclosed 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 spoiled. 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 famed with gray 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, quarreled over the holes in the apple-tree 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-ringer's 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-ringer's 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 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 gray 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 dare say. 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-by, 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 any one 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 was 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?" inquired 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 surprised 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 towards 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.