Plashers Mead Part 28

"Father has remembered Guy's birthday!" she cried, clapping her hands.

"Now I do call that wonderful. Francis, you're wonderful. You're really wonderful!"

"Pauline, Pauline, don't get too excited," her mother begged. "And please don't call your father Francis in the garden."

"Propertius," Guy murmured, shyly opening the book; but when he was going to say something about that Roman lover to the Rector, the Rector had vanished.

After breakfast Pauline and Guy walked in the inner wall-garden, that was now brilliant with ten thousand deep-throated gladioli.

"Pauline," said Guy, "this morning I learned Milton's sonnet on his twenty-third birthday, and I feel rather worried. Listen:

"How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!

My hasting days fly on with full career, But my late Spring no bud or blossom shew'th.

"Well, now, if Milton felt like that," he sighed, "what about me?

Pauline, tell me again that you believe in me."

"Of course I believe in you," she vowed.

"And I am right to stay here?" he asked, eagerly.

"Oh, Guy, of course, of course."

"You see, I shall be writing to my father to-night to tell him of our engagement, and I don't want to feel you have the least doubt of me. You haven't, have you? Never? Never? There must never have been the slightest doubt, or I shall doubt."

"Dearest Guy," she said, "if you changed anything for me, our love wouldn't be the best thing for you, and I only want my love to be my love, if it is the love you want, Guy. I'm not clever, you know. I'm really stupid, but I can love. Oh, I can love you more than any one, I think. I know, I know I can. Guy, I do adore you. But if I felt you were thinking you ought to go away on account of me, I would have to give you up."

"You couldn't give me up," he proclaimed, holding her straight before him with looks that were hungry for one word or one gesture that could help him to tell her what he wanted to say.

"Does my love worry you?" she whispered, faint with all the responsibility she felt for the future of this lover of hers.

"Pauline, my love for you is my life."

But quickly they glided away from pa.s.sion to discuss projects of simple happiness; and walking together a long while under the trees beyond the wall-garden, they were surprised to hear the gong sound for lunch before they had finished the decoration of Plashers Mead as it should be for their wedding-tide. Back in the sunlight, they were dazzled by the savage color of the gladioli in the hot August noon, and found them rather gaudy after the fronded half-light where nothing had disturbed the outspread vision of a future triumphantly attainable.

After lunch her mother called Pauline aside and told her that now was the moment to impress the Rector with the fact of her engagement. The tradition was that her father went up to his library for half an hour every day in order to rest after lunch before he sallied out into the garden or the parish. As usual, his rest was consisting of standing on a chair and dragging down old numbers of _The Botanical Magazine_ or heavy volumes of _The Garden_ in order to search out a fact in connection with some plant. When Pauline and Guy presented themselves the Rector gave them a cordial invitation to enter, and Pauline fancied that he was being quite exceptionally kindly in his tone towards Guy.

"Well, and what can I do for you two?" he asked, as he lit his long clay pipe and sat upright in his old leather arm-chair to regard them.

"Father," said Pauline, coming straight to the heart of her subject, "have you seen my engagement ring?"

She offered him the pink topaz to admire, and he bowed his head, conveying that faint mockery with which he treated anything that was not a flower.

"Very fine. Very fine, my dear."

"Well, aren't you going to congratulate me?" Pauline asked.

"On what?"

"Oh, Father, you are naughty. On Guy, of course."

"Bless my heart," said the Rector. "And on what am I to congratulate him?"

"On me, of course," said Pauline.

"Now I wonder if I can honestly do that?" said the Rector, very seriously.

"Father, you do realize, don't you, because you are being so naughty, but you do realize that from to-day we are really engaged?"

"Only from to-day?" the Rector asked, a twinkle in his eye.

"Well, of course," Pauline explained, "we've been in love for very nearly a year."

"And when have you decided to get married?"

Pauline looked at Guy.

"We thought in about two years, sir," said Guy. "That is, of course, as soon as I've published my first book. Perhaps in a year, really."

"Just when you find it convenient, in fact," said the Rector, still twinkling.

"Well, Father," Pauline interrupted, "have we got your permission?

Because that's what we've come up to ask."

"You surprise me," said the Rector, starting back with an exaggerated look of astonishment such as one might use with children.

"Father, if you won't be serious about it, I shall be very much hurt."

"I am very serious indeed about it," said the Rector. "And supposing I said I wouldn't hear of any such thing as an engagement between you two young creatures, what would you say then?"

"Oh, I should never forgive you," Pauline declared. "Besides, we're not young. Guy is twenty-three."

"Now I thought he was at least fifty," said the Rector.

"Father, we shall have to go away if you won't be serious. Mother told us to explain to you, and I think it's really unkind of you to laugh at us."

The Rector rose and knocked his pipe out.

"I must finish off the perennials. Well, well, Pauline, my dear, you're twenty-one...."

Pauline would have liked to let him go on thinking she was of age, but she could not on this solemn occasion, and so she told him that she was still only twenty.

"Ah, that makes a difference," said the Rector, pretending to look very fierce. And when Pauline's face fell he added, with a chuckle, "of one year. Well, well, I fancy you've both arranged everything. What is there left for me to say? You mustn't forget to show Guy those Nerines. G.o.d bless you, pretty babies. Be happy."

Then the Rector walked quickly away and left them together in his dusty library where the botanical folios and quartos displaying tropic blooms sprawled open about the floor, where along the mantelpiece the rhizomes of _Oncocyclus irises_ were being dried; and where seeds were strewn plenteously on his desk, rattling among the papers whenever the wind blew.

"Guy, we are really engaged."

"Pauline, Pauline!"