Chapter XI: Front Matter (11)

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."