Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

"You won't be able to do any more than they will," said Margaret laughing. "But if you want to come and help, you'd better. Hasn't your canoe arrived yet?"

Guy shook his head.

"It's such a glorious morning that I could almost swim the river," he declared.

"Oh, Margaret, don't let him," Pauline exclaimed.

Guy said he would be in the churchyard before they were back in Rectory Lane to meet him, and with Bob barking at his heels he ran at full speed through the orchard, through the garden, over the bridge and down Rectory Lane just as the two girls reached the lych-gate. They all went into the big church, even Bob, though he slunk at their heels as modestly as might the Devil. High up over the chancel they could see the Rector and the shiny-pated sacristan leaning from the windows of the bell-ringers' chamber and scratching with wands at some blind arches where bats might most improbably lurk.

"Let's go to the top of the tower," Guy proposed.

"Father isn't on the top of the tower," said Margaret. "But you go up with Pauline. I'll wait for you."

So Guy and Pauline went through a low door beaked by Normans centuries ago, and climbed the stone stairs until they reached the bell-ringers' chamber where they paused to greet the Rector, who waved a vague arm in greeting. The stairs grew more narrow and musty as they went higher; but all the way at intervals there were deep slits in the walls, framing thin pictures of the outspread country below the tower. Still up they went past the bell-ropes, past the great bells themselves that hung like a cluster of mighty fruit, until finally they came out through a small turret to meet the March sky. The spire, that rose as high again as they had already come, occupied nearly all the space and left only a yard of leaded roof on which to walk; but even so, up here where the breeze blew strongly, they seemed to stand in the very course of the clouds with the world at their feet. Northward they looked across the brown mill-stream; across Guy's green orchard; across the flashing tributary beyond; across the meadows, to where the Shipcot road climbed the side of the wold. Westward they looked to Plashers Mead and Miss Peasey flapping a table-cloth; to Guy's mazy garden and the grey wall under the limes; and farther to the tree-tops of Wychford Abbey; to the twining waters of the valley and the rounded hills. Southward they looked to Wychford town in tier on tier of shining roofs; and above the translucent smoke to where the telegraph-poles of the long highway went rocketing into Gloucestershire. And lastly Eastward they looked through a flight of snowy pigeons to the Rectory asleep in gardens that already were painted with the simple flowers of Spring.

Guy took Pauline's hand where it rested on the parapet.

"Dearest, Spring is here," he said. "And this is our world that you and I are looking at to-day."

_April_

Pauline in the happiness which had come to her lately had forgotten Miss Verney; and when one morning she met that solitary spinster, whose pale and watery eyes were uttering such reproach, she promised impulsively to come to tea that very afternoon and bring with her a friend.

"You've certainly quite deserted me lately," said Miss Verney in that wavering falsetto of hers through which the echoes maybe of a once admired soprano could still be distinctly heard.

"Oh, but I've been so busy, Miss Verney."

"Yes, I daresay. Well, I used to be busy once myself. Here's lovely weather for the first of April. Quite a treat to be out of doors. Now, don't make an April fool of your poor old Miss Verney by forgetting to come this afternoon. Who's the friend you are anxious to bring?"

"Mr. Hazlewood. He's living at Plashers Mead, you know."

"Dear me, a gentleman? Then he won't enjoy coming to see me."

"But he will, Miss Verney, because he writes poetry, and you know you told me once that you used to write poetry."

"Ah, well, dear me, that's a secret I should never have let out. Well, good-bye, my dear, and pray don't forget to come, for I shall be having cakes, you know."

Miss Verney, whose unhappy love-affair in a dim past had been Pauline's cherished secret since the afternoon of her seventeenth birthday, bowed with much dignity; and Pauline, lest she should offend her again, had to turn round several times to smile and wave farewells before Miss Verney disappeared into the confectioner's shop.

When she got home, Pauline asked her mother if she thought it mattered taking Guy to tea with Miss Verney.

"Because, of course, she's sure to guess that we're engaged."

"But, my dear child, you're not really engaged, at least not publicly. You must remember that."

"But I could tell Miss Verney as a great secret. And I know she won't tell anyone because once she told me a great secret about herself. Besides, she's gone to buy cakes for tea, and if I don't take Guy she'll be so dreadfully disappointed."

"Why can't you take Guy without saying anything about being engaged?" asked Mrs. Grey.

"Oh, because Miss Verney is so frightfully sharp, especially in matters of love. I think you don't like her much, Mother darling, but really, you know, she _is_ sympathetic."

Mrs. Grey looked hopelessly round for advice, but as neither Margaret nor Monica were in the room, she had to give way to Pauline's entreaty, and the leave was granted.

When Guy arrived at the Rectory about three o'clock, he seemed delighted at the notion of going out to tea with Pauline, though he looked a little doubtfully at the others, as if he wondered at the permission's being accorded. However, they set out in an atmosphere of good-will, and Pauline was happy to have him beside her walking up Wychford High Street. Miss Verney's house was at the very top of the hill, which meant that the eyes of the whole population had to be encountered before they reached it. They could see Miss Verney watching for them, as they walked across the slip of grass that with white posts and a festoon of white chains warded off general traffic. The moment they reached the gate, her head vanished from the window; and they had scarcely rung the bell, when the maid had opened the door. And they were scarcely inside the hall, when Miss Verney came grandly out of the drawing-room (which was not the front room) to greet them.

"How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Miss Grey will have told you that I rarely have visitors. And therefore this is a great pleasure."

Pauline threw sparkling blue glances at Guy for the Miss Grey, while they followed her into the drawing-room full of cats and ornaments. The cats all marched round Guy in a sort of solemn quadrille, so that what with the embarrassment they caused to his legs and the difficulty that the rest of him found with the ornaments, Pauline really had to lead him safely to a chair.

"Have you been long in Wychford, Mr. Hazlewood?" enquired Miss Verney. "I fear you'll find the valley very damp. We who live at the top of the hill consider the air up here so much more bracing. But then, you see, my father was a sailor."

So the conversation progressed, conversation that was cut as thinly and nicely as the lozenges of bread and butter, fragments of which on various parts of the rug the cats were eating with that apparent difficulty cats always find in mastication.

"I sadly spoil my pets," said Miss Verney. "For really, you see, they are my best friends, as I always say to people who look surprized at my indulgence of them.... Would you mind telling Bellerophon he's left a piece of butter just by your foot, that you might otherwise tread into the carpet. You'll forgive my fussiness, but then, you see, my father was a sailor."

Pauline was longing to know what Miss Verney thought of Guy, and presently when tea was over she suggested that he should be shown the garden, the green oblong of which looked so inviting from the low windows.

"Dear me, the garden," said Miss Verney. "Rather early in the year, don't you think, for the garden? My shoes. For though my father was a sailor, I do not, alas, inherit his constitution. I really think, Pauline, we must wait for the garden. But perhaps Mr. Hazlewood would care...."

"Guy, you must see the garden," Pauline declared.

So Guy rose and, having listened to Miss Verney's instructions about the key in the garden-door, went out followed by several cats. A moment later they saw him still with two cats in attendance bending with an appearance of profound interest over the narrow flower-beds that fringed the grass.

"I declare that Pegasus and dear Bellerophon have taken quite a fancy to him. Most remarkable and gratifying," said Miss Verney, watching from the window through which the western sun flaming upon her thin hair kindled a few golden strands from the ashes that seemed before entirely to have quenched them.

"Miss Verney, can you keep a secret?" asked Pauline breathlessly.

"My dear, you forget my father was a sailor," replied Miss Verney supporting with each arm a martial elbow.

"He and I are engaged," Pauline whispered through a blush.

"Pauline, you amaze me," the old maid exclaimed. "My dear child, I hope you'll let me wish you happiness." She came to Pauline and kissed with cold lips her cheek. "You have always been so kind and considerate to me. Yes, I am sure, without irreverence I can say you have been to me as welcome as the sun. I pray that you will always be happy. Ah, the dear fellow," exclaimed Miss Verney, looking with the utmost affection to where Guy was now completing the circuit of her borders. "The dear fellow, how droll he must have thought it when I referred to you as Miss Grey. Though to this flinging about of Christian names without regard for the sacredness of real intimacy, which is so common nowadays, I shall never submit."

Miss Verney tapped upon the window to summon Guy within again. When he was back in the drawing-room, she fluttered toward him and took his hand.

"My dear Mr. Hazlewood, for my father having been a sailor I must always be rather blunter than most people, I have to congratulate you. This dear child! My greatest friend in Wychford, and indeed really, so scattered now are all the people I have known, I might almost say, my greatest friend anywhere! You are a most enviable young man. But the secret is safe with me. No one shall know."

"I had to tell Miss Verney," Pauline explained.

"I'm delighted for Miss Verney to know," said Guy. "I only wish the time were come when everybody could know."

Miss Verney was in a state of the greatest excitement, and made so many references to her nautical paternity that Pauline half expected her to hitch up her skirt and dance a triumphant hornpipe in the middle of the cats' slow waltzing.

"This dear child," Miss Verney went on, clasping rapturous hands. "I have known her since she was twelve. The dearest little thing! I really wish you had known her; you would have fallen in love with her then, I do declare." And Miss Verney laughed in a high treble at her joke. "Lately I have been rather worried because I had an idea I was being deserted. But now I understand the reason. Oh, the secret is perfectly safe. In me you have a true sympathizer. Pauline will tell you that with the people she loves, there is no one so sympathetic as I am." Suddenly Miss Verney stopped and looked very suspicious. "You're not making an April fool of me?" she asked.

"Miss Verney!" Pauline gasped. "How could you think I would joke about love?"

The old maid's forehead cleared.

"Of course you wouldn't, my dear, but really this morning I have been so pestered by some of the boys ringing the bell and saying my chimney is on fire that ... ah, but, I am ashamed of myself. You must forgive me, Pauline. And is it not the thing to drink the health of lovers? There is a bottle of sherry, I feel sure. I brought several bottles that were left from my father's cellar, when I first came to Wychford eight years ago, and they have not all been drunk yet."

She rang the bell, and when the maid came in said:

"Mabel, if you take my keys and open the store-cupboard, you will find some bottles of wine on the top shelf. Pray open one, and having carefully decanted it, bring it as carefully in with three glasses on the silver tray."

Mabel naturally looked very much astonished at this order, and while she was gone Miss Verney thought one after another of all the reasons that Mabel could possibly ascribe to her request for wine.

"But she will never guess the real one," said Miss Verney.

The wine was brought in and poured out. Miss Verney coughed a great deal over her glass, and two small pink spots appeared on her cheeks.

"I am sure," she said, "that when my dear father brought this wine back from Portugal, he would have been happy to know that some of it would be drunk to the health of two young people in love. For he was, if I may say so without impropriety, a great lady's man."

Pauline and Guy drank Miss Verney's health in turn and thanked her for the good omens she had wished for their love.

"My dear Pauline," said Miss Verney. "Do you think? I wonder if I dare. You know what I mean? Do you think I could show it to Mr. Hazlewood?"

"Do you mean the miniature?" whispered Pauline.

Miss Verney nodded.

"Oh, do, Miss Verney, do! Guy would so appreciate it," Pauline declared.

The old maid went to her bureau and from a small locked drawer took out a leather case which she handed to Guy.

"The spring is broken. It opens very easily," she said in a gentle voice.

Pauline forgot her shyness of Guy and leant over his shoulder, while he looked at the picture of a young man rosy with that too blooming youth which miniatures always portray.

"We were engaged to be married," said Miss Verney. "But circumstances alter cases; and we were never married."

Pauline looked down at Guy with tears in her eyes and felt miserable to be so happy when poor Miss Verney had been so sad.

"Thank you very much for showing me that," said Guy.

Soon it was time to say good-bye to Miss Verney and, having made many promises to come quickly again, they left her and went down the steep High Street, where in many of the windows of the houses there were hyacinths and on the old walls plum-trees in bloom.

"Pauline," said Guy. "Let's go for a walk to-morrow morning and see if the gorse is in bloom on Wychford down. There are so many things I want to tell you."

"Do you think Mother will let us?"

"If we can go to tea with Miss Verney," said Guy, "we shall be able to go for a walk. And I never see you alone in the Rectory."

"I'll ask Mother," said Pauline.

"You want to come?"

"Of course. Of course."

"You see," said Guy. "It's one of the places where I nearly told you I loved you. And it wouldn't be fair not to tell you there, as soon as I can."

In the Rectory everybody was anxious to know how Guy liked Pauline's Miss Verney.

"Margaret, you are really unkind to laugh at her," protested Pauline. "Guy understands, if you don't, how frightfully sympathetic she is. She is one of the people who really understands about being in love."

Margaret laughed.

"Don't I?" she said.

"No, indeed, Margaret, sometimes I don't think you do," said Pauline.

"Nor I?" asked Monica.

"You don't at all!" Pauline declared.

"Well, if it means being like Miss Verney, I hope I never shall," said Monica.

"Now, children, children," interrupted Mrs. Grey. "You must not be cross with one another."

"Well, Mother, Margaret and Monica are not to laugh at Miss Verney," Pauline insisted. "And to-morrow Guy and I want as a great exception to go for a walk to Wychford down. May we?"

"Well, as a great exception, yes," said Mrs. Grey; and Guy with apparently an access of grateful industry said he must go home and work.

Pauline wondered what Guy would have to tell her to-morrow, and she fell asleep that night, hoping she would not be shy to-morrow; for, since Guy was still no more to Pauline than the personification of a vague and happy love just as Miss Verney's miniature was the personification of one that was not happy, she always was a little alarmed when the personification became real.

Wychford down seemed to rest on billowy clouds next morning, so light was Pauline's heart, so light was the earth on which she walked; and when Guy kissed her the larks in their blue world were not far away, so near did she soar upon his kiss to the rays of their glittering plumes.

"Every time I see you," said Guy, "the world seems to offer itself to us more completely. I never kissed you before under the sky like this."

She wished he would not say the actual word, for it made her realize herself in his arms, and brought back in a flood all her shyness.

"I think it's dry enough to sit on this stone," said Guy.

So they sat on one of the outcrops of Wychford freestone that all around were thrusting themselves up from the grass like old grey animals.

"Now tell me more about Miss Verney," he went on. "Why was her love-affair unhappy?"

"Oh, she never told me much," said Pauline.

"You and I haven't very long," said Guy. "Love travels by so fast. You and I mustn't have secrets."

"I haven't any secrets," said Pauline. "I had one about Richard, but you know about him. And that was Margaret's secret really. Why do you say that, Guy?"

"I was thinking of myself," he answered. "I was thinking how little you know about me--really not much more than you know of Miss Verney's miniature."

"Guy, how strange," she said. "Last night I thought that."

Then he began to talk in halting sentences, turned away from her all the time and digging his stick deep down in the turf, while Bob looked on with anxious curiosity for what these excavations would produce.

"Pauline, I so adore you that it clouds everything to realize that before I loved you, I should have had love-affairs with other girls. Of course they meant nothing, but now they make me miserable. Shall I tell you about them or shall I ... can I blot them for ever out of my mind?"

"Oh, don't tell me about them, don't tell me about them," Pauline murmured in a low hurried voice. She felt that if Guy said another word she would run from him in a wild terror that would never let her rest, that would urge her out over the down's edge in desperate descent.

"I don't want to tell you about them," said Guy. "But, they've stood so at the back of my thoughts whenever I have been with you; and yesterday at Miss Verney's, I had a sense of guilt as if I were responsible in some way for her unhappiness. I had to tell you, Pauline."

She sat silent under the song of the larks that in streams of melodious light poured through their wings.

"Why do you say nothing?" he asked.

"Oh, don't let's talk about it any more. Promise me never to talk about it. Oh, Guy, why 'of course'? Why 'of course'?"

"Of course?" he repeated.

"'Of course they meant nothing.' That seems so dreadful to me. Perhaps you won't understand."

"Dear Pauline, isn't that 'of course' the reason they torment me?" he said. "It isn't kind of you to assume anything else."

She forgave him in that instant; and before she knew what she had done had put her hand impulsively on his. To the Pauline who made that gesture he was no more the unapproachable lover but someone whom she had wounded involuntarily.

"My heart of hearts, my adored Pauline."

With a sigh she faded to him: with a sigh the dog sat down by his master's neglected stick: with a sigh the April wind stole through the thickets of gorse and out over the down. And always more and more dauntlessly the larks flung before them their fountainous notes to pierce those blue spaces that burned between the clouds. No more was said of the past that morning, and with April come they were happy sitting up there, although, as Guy said, such weather could hardly be expected to last. And since this walk was a great exception to the rule of their life, they were back at the Rectory very punctually, so that by propitiating everybody with good behaviour they might soon demand another exception.

That night there recurred to Pauline when she was in her room a sudden memory of what Guy had said to her about girls with whom he had had love-affairs; and with the stark forms of shadows they made a procession across her walls in the candlelight. She wished now she had let Guy tell her more, so that she could give distinguishing lineaments of humanity to each of these maddening figures. What were they like and why, taken unaware, was she set on fire with rage to know them? For a long while Pauline tossed sleeplessly on that bed to which usually morning came so soon; and even when the candle was put out, she seemed to feel these forms of Guy's confession all about her. To-morrow she must see him again; she could no longer bear to think of him alone. These shapes that from his past vaguely jeered at her were to him endowed, each, with what memories. Oh, she could cry out with exasperation even in this silent house where she had lived so long unvexed.

"What is happening to me? What is happening to me?" asked Pauline, as the darkness drew nearer to her. "Why doesn't Margaret come?"

She jumped out of bed and ran trembling to her sister's room.

"Pauline, what is it?" asked Margaret starting up.

"I'm frightened, Margaret. I'm frightened. My room seemed full of people."

"You goose. What people?"

"Oh, Margaret, I do love you."

She kissed her sister passionately; and Margaret, who was usually so lazy, got out of bed and came back with her to her room; where she read aloud Alice in Wonderland, sitting by the bed with her dark hair fallen about her slim shoulders.

In the morning the impression of the night's alarm remained sharply enough with Pauline to make her anxious to see Guy, without waiting for the ordained interval to which they should submit; and all that day, when he did not come, for the first time she felt definitely the clamorous and persistent desire for his company, the absence of which the old perfection of her home was no longer able to counteract. For the first time in her life the Rectory had a sort of emptiness; and there was not a room on this tediously beautiful day, nor any nook in the garden, which could calm her with the familiar assurance of home. When the time for music came round, that night, it seemed to Pauline not at all worth while to play quartets in celebration of a day that had been so barren of events.

"Don't you want to play?" they asked her in surprize.

"Why should we play?" she countered. "But I'll listen to you, if you like."

Of course she was persuaded into taking her part, and never had she been so often out of tune and never had her strings snapped so continuously. Always until to-night the performance of music had brought to her the peaceful irresponsibleness of being herself in a pattern: now this sense of design was irritating her with an arduous repression, until at last she put down her violin and refused to play any more. Pauline felt that the others knew the cause of her ill-temper, but none of them said anything about Guy and, with her for audience in one of the Caroline chairs, they played trios instead.

Next day when Guy did come, it was wet; and Pauline wished Margaret would leave them together, so that they could talk: but Margaret stayed all the afternoon in the nursery, and Pauline made up her mind that somehow she must go for another walk with Guy.

She found her mother alone in the drawing-room before dinner.

"Mother, don't you think, Guy and I might go for a walk to-morrow?"

"Oh, Pauline, you only went for a walk together the day before yesterday. And you really must remember you're not engaged. The Wychford people will gossip so, and that will make your father angry."

"Well, why can't we be engaged openly?"

"No, not yet. Now, please don't ask me. Pauline, I beg you will say no more about it."

"Then I can go to-morrow," said Pauline. "Oh, Mother, you are so sweet to me."

Mrs. Grey looked rather perplexed and as if she were vainly trying to determine what she had said to make Pauline suppose that leave for walks had been given. However, she evidently supposed it had; and when next Guy came to the Rectory, Pauline whispered to him they could go for a walk if they did not have to go through Wychford. She could not understand herself when she found it so difficult to tell Guy this delightful news, for it was she who had managed it; and yet here she was blushing in the revelation.

The fact that Wychford was out of bounds really made their walk more magical, for Pauline and Guy went past the lily-pond and the lawn in front of the house and slipped through the little wicket in the high grey wall, as it were, in the very eye of the nursery-window. They dallied for a while in the paddock, peering for fritillary buds; then they crossed the rickety bridge to the water-meadows, a territory not spied upon, silver-rosed with lady-smocks. To-day they would visit the peninsula where under the moon they first had met.

Pauline, as they walked over the meads, no longer had the desire to ask Guy more about his tale of old loves. His presence beside her had rested her fears; and she made up her mind that the disquiet of the other evening had been mere fatigue after the excitement of the day. This secluded world from which they were now approaching the even greater seclusion of their peninsula gave itself all to her and Guy.

"How often have I been here without you," said Guy. "How often have I wished you were beside me, and now you are beside me."

They were standing in a wreath of snowy blackthorn, that almost veiled even the narrow entrance to this demesne they held in fief of April.

"What did you think about me that night we met?" Guy asked.

And for perhaps the hundredth time she whispered how she had liked him very much.

"Why don't you ask me what I thought about you?"

"What did you?" she whispered again.

"I went to sleep thinking of you," he said. "I did not know your name. I loved you then, I think. Pauline, when next September comes, we'll pick mushrooms together, shall we? And I shall never gather any mushrooms, because I shall always be gathering your hands. And the September afterward. Pauline! Shall we be married? Pauline Hazlewood! Say that."

She shook her head.

"Whisper it."

But she could not, and yet in her heart the foolish names were singing together.

"How can I leave you?" Guy demanded.

"Leave me?" she echoed.

"I ought. I ought. You see, if I don't, I shall never persuade my father that we must be married next year. I must go to London and show that I'm in earnest."

"But when will you go?" said Pauline in deep dismay.

"Is your voice sad?" he asked. "Pauline, don't you want me to go?"

"Of course I don't," she replied, turning up to his a face so miserable that he held her to him and vowed he would not go.

"My dearest, I only thought it was my duty, but if you will believe in me, then let me stay in Wychford. After all, you are young. I am young. Why, you won't be twenty till May morning. And I shan't be twenty-three till next August. Even if we wait three years to be married, we shall be always together, and it won't seem so long."

So with her arm in his Pauline walked on through the lady-smocks, thinking that never had anyone a lover so wonderful as this long-legged lover beside her.

Holy Week was at hand, and in the variety of functions that Monica insisted her father should hold and her family attend Pauline saw little of Guy, although he came very often to church, sitting as stiff and awkward, she thought, as a brass knight on a tomb. However, it pleased her greatly Guy should come to church, since it pleased her family. Yet that was least of all the true reason, and Pauline used to send the angels that came to visit her down through the church to visit Guy; her simple faith glowed with richer illumination when she thought of him in church, and while her mother and Monica tried to pull the Wychford choir through the notation of Solesmes, and while Margaret knelt apart in carved abstraction, Pauline prayed that Guy would all his life wish to keep Holy Week with her like this.

Pauline hurried through a shower to church on Easter Morning, and shook mingled tears and raindrops from herself when she saw that Guy was come to Communion. So then that angel had travelled from her bedside last night to hover over Guy and bid him wake early next morning, because it was Easter Day. With never so holy a calm had she knelt in the jewelled shadows of that chancel or retired from the altar to find her pew imparadised. When the people came out of church the sun was shining, and on the trees and on the tombstones a multitude of birds were singing. Never had Pauline felt the spirit of Eastertide uplift her with such a joy, joy for her lover beside her, joy for Summer close at hand, joy for all the joy that Easter could bring to the soul.

There were Easter eggs at breakfast dyed yellow, blue and purple. There were new white trumpet daffodils for the Rector to gaze at. There was satisfaction for Monica in having defeated for ever Anglican chants, and for Margaret a letter from Richard, though, to be sure, she did not seem so glad of this as Pauline would have wished. There was all that happy scene and a new quartet for her mother; and for Guy and herself there was a long walk this afternoon to wherever they wanted to go.

At the beginning of the week Monica and Margaret went away on a visit, to which they set out with the usual lamentations now redoubled because they suddenly realized it was universal holiday time. With her two eldest daughters away from the Rectory, Mrs. Grey was no match for Pauline; so she and Guy had a week of freedom, wandering over the country where they willed.

Wychford down saw them, and the water-meadows of the western valley. The road to Fairfield knew their footsteps, and they even went to tea with Mr. and Mrs. Ford, who talked of Richard out in India and bemoaned the inferiority of their garden to the Rector's. They wandered by treeless roads that led to the hills, and to the grassy solitudes that seemed made to be walked over hand in hand. Once they went as far as the forest of Wych, a wild woodland that lay remote from any village and where along the glades myriads of primroses stared at them. Yet, though that day had seemed to Pauline almost more delicately fair than any of their days, it ended dismally with April in black misfeature, and before they reached home they were wet through.

By ill luck her mother met her just as she was hurrying up to her room.

"Pauline," she said with a good deal of agitation. "I must forbid these walks with Guy every day. Wet to the skin! Oh dear, how careless of him to take you so far. You must be reasonable and unselfish. It's so difficult for me. Father asked where you were this afternoon, and I had to pretend to be deaf. He notices more than you think. Now really Guy must not come for a week, and there must be no more walks."

Guy however came the next afternoon, and not only was he reproved by Mrs. Grey for yesterday's disaster, but actually he and Pauline were only allowed a quarter of an hour together in the garden.

"I'll go into Oxford for a week," said Guy with inspiration. "And then we shan't be tempted to see each other this week, and if we don't see each other this week, perhaps next week we shall be able to go out again. Besides, I want to make arrangements about bringing the canoe down. My friend Fane has wired to me to go and stay with him. He's up for the Easter vac, working. Shall I go?"

Pauline wanted to say no, but she was even after all these walks still too shy to bid him stay.

"Perhaps you'd better go," she agreed. "But Guy, come back for my birthday."

"As if I should stay away for that! Pauline, will you write to me? At least in letters you won't be shy to say you love me."

"Oh, no, Guy, no. My writing is so horrid."

"But you must write. Pauline, if you want to know why I'm really going away, it's simply to have a letter from you."

"You must write to me first then," she whispered.

In truth Pauline felt terrified to think how she would even begin a letter to Guy. He would cease to love her any more after she had written to him. He would hate her stupid letters.

"I shall be glad to see Michael again," said Guy. "But I suppose I must not say anything about you. No, I won't talk about you. Oxford will be wonderfully quiet without undergraduates, and I shall have letters from you."

Mrs. Grey came out into the garden.

"Now, Guy, I think you ought to go. Because really the Rector is getting worried about you and Pauline."

"I'm going into Oxford, Mrs. Grey."

"Well, that is a charming idea--charming, yes."

"But I'll be back for Pauline's birthday."

"Charming--charming," Mrs. Grey still declared. "The Rector will have forgotten all about it by then."

So Guy left Pauline for a week, and perhaps for more than a week. Margaret and Monica came home next day, and really, she thought, it was upsetting all the old ways of her life, when she found herself not very much interested in what they had been doing. Miss Verney with her ecstatic praise of Guy was better company; but next morning her first love-letter arrived, and she could not resist peeping into it at breakfast.

99 ST. GILES

OXFORD

_April 18_.

_My adored Pauline,_

_It's really all I can do to stay in Oxford. Even Fane seems dull
and though his rooms are jolly, I long for you._

_Have I told you what you are to me? Have I once been able to tell
you...._

Ah, there were pages crammed full and full of words that she must read alone. She could not read them here with her mother and sisters looking at her over the table. She must read them high in her white fastness at the top of the house. There all the morning she sat, and when she had read of his love once, she read of it again and then again, and once again. How foolish her answering letter would be: how disappointed Guy would be; but since she had promised, she must write to him: and, sitting at her desk that was full of childish things, she curled herself over the note paper.

_May_

A pleasant company of thoughts travelled with Guy and his bicycle on the road to Oxford. In this easy progress the material hindrances to marriage were not seeming very important, and as he thought of his love for Pauline it spread before him, untroublous like the road down which he was spinning before a light breeze. With so much to compensate for their brief parting it was impossible to feel depressed; and as Guy drew near the city he felt he was an undergraduate again; and when he greeted Michael Fane in St. Giles he could positively hear his own Oxford drawl again. It was really delightful to be sitting here in view of his old college; and when after lunch he and Michael started for Wytham woods, more and more Guy was in an Oxford dream and carrying off the fantastic notion of the Parnassian academy with all the debonair confidence of his second year. Yet Guy knew that the scheme was absurd and when Michael argued against it in his solemn way he found himself taking the other side from a mere undergraduate pleasure in argument. Indeed, Michael declared he had become a freshman since he went down, which made Guy stop dead, ankle-deep in kingcups, and laugh aloud for his youth, with hidden thoughts of Pauline to make him rejoice that he was young. He laughed again at Michael's seriousness and flung his scheme to the broad clouds, for on this generous day he and Pauline were enough, and neither anybody else's opinion nor anybody else's help was worth a second thought. The heartening warmth, however, did not last; and when toward evening the sun faded in a blanche of watery clouds with a cold wind for aftermath, Guy felt Michael might have been more sympathetic. Rather silently they walked back from Godstow, with Pauline between them; so that after all, Guy thought, Michael was still an undergraduate, whereas he had embarked upon life.

That night, however, when the curtains were drawn across Michael's bay-window that overhung the whispering and ancient thoroughfare; when the fire burned high and the tobacco-smoke clouded the glimmer of the books on the walls; when his chair creaked with that old Oxford creaking, Guy forgave Michael for any lack in his reception of the great plan. After all, he was writing to Pauline, while his host was reading the Constitutional History of England at a table littered with heavy volumes, on which he brooded like a melancholy spectator of ruins. He must not be hard on Michael, who had not yet touched life, when for himself the vision of Pauline was wreathing this old room with starry blooms of wild rose. The letter was finished, and Guy went out to drop it in the pillar-box. His old college brooded at him across the road; to-morrow he must go and look up some of the dons; to-morrow Pauline would get his letter; to-night there would be rain; to-morrow Pauline would get his letter! The envelope, as it shuffled down into the letter-box, seemed to say 'yes'.

When Guy was back in the fumy St. Giles room, he decided there was something rather finely ascetic about Michael seated there and reading imperturbably in the lamp-light. His courteously fatigued manner was merely that of the idealist who had overreached himself; there was nothing bilious about him, not even so much cynicism as had slightly chilled Guy's own career at Oxford; rather did there emanate from Michael a kind of mediaeval steadfastness comparable only to those stone faces that look calmly down upon the transitory congregations of their church. Michael had this solemn presence that demanded an upward look, and once again an upward look, until without conversation the solemnity became a little disquieting. Guy felt bound to interrupt with light-hearted talk of his own that slow still gaze across the lampshine.

"Dash it, Michael, don't brood there like a Memento Mori. Put away Magna Charta and talk to me. You used to talk."

"You talk, Guy. You've been living alone all this time. You must have a great deal to say."

So Guy flung theories of rhyme and metre to overwhelm Magna Charta; and, next day, he and Michael walked all over Oxford in the rain, he himself still talking. The day after, there came with the sun a letter from Pauline which he took away with him to read in the garden of St. John's, leaving Michael to Magna Charta.

There was nobody on the lawn, and Guy sat down on a wooden seat in air that was faintly perfumed by the precocious blooms of a lilac breaking to this unusual warmth of April. Unopened the letter rested in his hand: for his name written in this girlish charactery took on the romantic look of a name in an old tale. A breathlessness was in the air, such as had brooded upon Pauline's first kiss; and Guy sat marmoreal and rapt in an ecstasy of anticipation that he would never have from any other letter; so still he was, that an alighting blackbird slipt over the grass almost to his feet before it realized the mistake and shrilled away on startled wings into the bushes behind. The trance of expectation was spoilt, and Guy with a sigh broke the envelope.

WYCHFORD RECTORY

OXON.

_Wednesday._

_I am writing to you at my desk. I began this morning but it was
time to go out when I began. Now it's after tea. Margaret came in
just now and said I looked all crinkled up like a shell: it's
because I simply don't know how to write to you. I have read your
letter over and over and over again. I never thought there could be
such a wonderful letter in the world. But I feel very sorry for
poor Richard who can't write letters as exquisite as yours. I
really feel miserable about him. And this letter to you makes me
feel miserable because I can't write letters even as well as
Richard. Mother was glad you thought of going to Oxford because she
says we are a great responsibility to her. Isn't she sweet? She
really is you know. So I talked to Father myself very seriously. I
explained to him that I was quite old enough to know my own mind,
and he listened to all the things I told him about you. He said he
supposed it was innevvitable, which looks very funny somehow. Are
you laughing at my spelling? And then he said it was nothing to do
with him. So of course I rushed off to Mother and told her and when
you come back we are to be allowed to go out twice a week and in
three more months we can be engaged properly. Are you happy? Only,
dear Guy, Mother doesn't want you to come back till my birthday.
She thinks the idea of you and me will be better when Father has
got an Iris Lorti or some name like that. He has never had a flower
of it before and he's so excited about it's coming out just when my
birthday is. Every day he goes down and pinches the stalk of it. He
says it's the loveliest flower in the world and grows on Mount
Lebanon. So if it comes out on my birthday, you and I can certainly
be engaged in August. Guy, I do hate my handwriting._

_Your loving

Pauline._

It was a letter of gloriously good news, thought Guy, though he was a little disappointed not to have had the thrill of Pauline's endearment. Then, on the blank outside page, he saw scrawled in writing that went tumbling head over heels down the paper: _My darling Guy, I love you and underneath I have kissed the letter for you._

The sentence died out in faint ink that seemed to show forth the whisper in which it had been written. For Guy the tumbledown letters were written in fire; and with the treasure in his heart of that small sentence, read a hundred times, he did not know how he should endure ten long days without Pauline, and in this old college garden, on this sedate and academic lawn, he cried out that he adored her as if indeed she were beside him in this laylocked air. At the sound of his voice the birds close at hand were all silent: they might have stopped to listen. Then a green-finch called 'sweet! sweet!', whose gentle and persistent proclamation was presently echoed by all the other birds twittering together again in the confused raptures of their Spring.

The days with Michael at St. Giles went by slowly enough, and their fairness was a wasted boon. Guy wrote many long letters to Pauline and received from her another letter in which she began with '_My dearest_' as he had begged her. Yet when he read the herald vocative, he wished he had not tried to alter that old abrupt opening, for never again would she write in the faint ink of shyness such a sentence as had tumbled down the back of her first letter.

Michael seemed to divine that he was in love, and Guy wondered why he could not tell him about it. Once or twice he nearly brought himself to the point, but the thought of describing Pauline kept him mute: Michael must see her first. The canoe would be ready at the end of the week, and Guy announced he should paddle it up to Wychford, travelling from the Isis to the upper Thames and from the upper Thames turning aside at Oldbridge to follow the romantic course of the Greenrush even to his own windows.

"Rather fun," said Michael. "If the weather stays all right."

"By Jove," Guy exclaimed, "I believe it was at Oldbridge Inn that I first met you."

"On May Day three years ago," Michael agreed.

And, thought Guy with a compassionate feeling for mere friendship, what a much more wonderful May Day should be this when Pauline was twenty. There was now her birthday present to buy, and Guy set out on the quest of it with as much exaltation as Percival may have sought the Holy Grail. He wished it were a ring he could buy for her; and indeed ultimately he could not resist a crystal set on a thin gold circlet that she, his rose of girls, would wear like a dewdrop. This ring, however, could not be his formal gift, but it would have to be offered when they were alone, and it must be worn nowhere but in the secret country they haunted with their love. The ring, uncostly as it was, took nearly all Guy's spare money, and he decided to buy a book for her, because in Oxford bookshops he still had accounts running. The April afternoon wore away while in his own particular bookshop kept by Mr. Brough, an ancient man with a white beard, he took down from the shelves volume after volume. At last he found a small copy of Blake's Lyrics bound in faded apple-green calf and tooled in a golden design of birds, berries and daisies. This must be for Pauline, he decided, since someone must have known the pattern of that nursery wall-paper and, loving it, have wished it to be recorded more endurably. What more exquisite coincidence could assure him that this book was meant for Pauline? Yet he was half-jealous of the unknown designer who had thought of something of which himself might have thought. Oh, yes, this must be for Pauline; and, as Guy rescued it from the dust and darkness of the old shop, he ascribed to the green volume an emotion of relief and was half-aware of promising to it a new and dearer owner who with cherishing would atone for whatever misfortune had brought it to these gloomy shelves.

Next morning, when Guy was ready to start, Michael presented him with a glazier's diamond pencil.

"When you fall in love, Guy, this will serve to scribble sonnets to your lady on the lattices of Plashers Mead. I shall probably come there myself when term's over."

"I wish you'd come and live there with me," said Guy in a last effort to persuade Michael. "You see, if you shared the house, it wouldn't cost so much."

"Perhaps I will," said Michael. "Who knows? I wonder what your Rectory people would think of me."

"Oh, Pauline would like you. Pauline's the youngest, you know," added Guy. "And I'm pretty certain you'd like Monica."

Michael laughed.

"Really, Guy, I must tell them in Balliol that, since you went down, you've become an idle matchmaker. Good-bye."

"Good-bye. You're sure you won't mind the fag of forwarding my bicycle? I'll send you a postcard from Oldbridge."

Guy, although there was still more than a week before he would see Pauline, felt, as he hurried towards the boat-builder's moorings, that he would see her within an hour, such airy freedom did the realization of being on his way give to his limbs.

The journey to Wychford seemed effortless, for whatever the arduousness of a course steadily upstream, it was nullified by the knowledge that every time the paddle was dipped into the water it brought him by his own action nearer to Pauline. A railway journey would have given him none of this endless anticipation, travelling through what at this time of the year before the season of boating was a delicious solitude. Guy could sing all the way if he wished, for there was nothing but buttercups and daisies, lambs and meadows and greening willows to overlook his progress. He glided beneath ancient bridges and rested at ancient inns, nearer every night to Pauline. Scarcely had such days a perceptible flight, and were not May Morning marked in flame on his mind's calendar, he could have forgotten time in this slow undated diminution.

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.

This was the song Guy flung before his prow to the vision of Pauline leading him.

What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.

This was the song that Guy felt Shakespeare might have written to suit his journey now, as he paddled higher and higher up the stream that flowed toward Shakespeare's own country.

The banks of the Greenrush were narrower than the banks of the Thames: and all the way they were becoming narrower, and all the way the stream was running more swiftly against him. It was Sunday evening when he reached Plashers Mead; and so massively welded was the sago on his Sheraton table that Guy wondered if Miss Peasey to be ready for his arrival had not cooked it a week ago. But what did sago matter, when in his place there was laid a note from Pauline?

_My dearest,_

_I've had all your letters and I've been very frightened you'd be
drowned. To-morrow you've got to come to breakfast because I always
have breakfast in the garden on my birthday unless it pours. I'm
going to church at eight. I love you a thousand times more and I
will tell you so to-morrow and give you twenty kisses._

_Your own

Pauline._

_Do you like 'your own' better than 'your loving'?_

Guy went to bed very early and resolved to wake at dawn that he might have the hours of the morning for thoughts of Pauline on her birthday.

It was after dawn when Guy woke, for he had fallen asleep very tired after his week on the river; still it was scarcely six when he came down into the orchard, and the birds were singing as Guy thought he had never heard them sing before. The apple trees were already frilled with a foam of blossom; and on quivering boughs linnets with breasts rose-burnt by the winds of March throbbed out their carol. Chaffinches with flashing prelude of silver wings flourished a burst of song that broke as with too intolerable a triumph: then sought another tree and poured forth the triumphant song again. Thrushes, blackbirds and warblers quired deep-throated melodies against the multitudinous trebles of those undistinguished myriads that with choric paean saluted May; and on sudden diminuendoes could be heard the rustling canzonets of the goldfinches, rising and falling with reedy cadences.