Guy and Pauline Part 22

When Pauline was in bed her mother fetched Margaret and Monica, who both came and kissed her good-night and asked what could have given her the idea that they were angry with her.

"You foolish little thing, go to sleep," said Monica.

"You mustn't let your being in love with Guy spoil the Rectory," said Margaret. "Because, you know, the Rectory is so much, much better than anything else in the world."

Her mother and sisters left her, going gently from the room as if she were already asleep.

Pauline read for awhile from Guy's green volume of Blake; then taking from under her pillow the crystal ring, she put it on her third finger and blew out the light.

Was he thinking of her at this moment? He must be, and how near they brought him to her, these nights of thoughts, for then she seemed to be floating out of her window to meet him half-way upon the May air. How she loved him; and he had given her this ring of which no one knew except themselves. It was strange to have been suddenly frightened in that sunset, for now, as she lay here looking back upon it, this evening was surely the most wonderful of her life. He had called her his burning rose. His burning rose ... his burning rose? Why had she not brought back a few of those ragged robins to sit like confidantes beside her bed? Flowers were such companions; the beautiful and silent flowers. How far away sleep was still standing from her: and Pauline got out of bed and leaned from the window with a sensation of resting upon the buoyant darkness. The young May moon had already set, and not a sound could be heard; so still indeed was the night that it seemed as if the stars ought to be audible upon their twinkling. If now a nightingale would but sing to say what she was wanting to say to the darkness! Nightingales, however, were rare in the trees round Wychford, and the garden stayed silent. Perhaps Guy was leaning from his window like this, and it was a pity their lights could not s.h.i.+ne across, each candle fluttering to the other. If only Plashers Mead were within view, they would be able to sit at their windows in the dark hours and sometimes signal to one another.

Or would that be what Margaret called 'cheapening' herself? Had she cheapened herself this evening, when she had kissed him for the gift of this ring? Yet could she cheapen herself to Guy? He loved her as much as she loved him; and always she and he must be equal in their love. She could never be very much reserved with Guy: she did not want to be. She loved him, and this evening for the first time she had kissed him in the way that often in solitude she had longed to kiss him.

"I only want to live for love," she whispered.

Naturally Margaret did not know what love like hers meant; and perhaps it was as well, for it was sad enough to be parted from Guy for two days, when there was always the chance of seeing him in the hours between; but to be separated from him by oceans for two years, as Richard and Margaret were separated, that would be unbearable.

"I suppose Margaret would call it 'cheapening' myself to be standing at my window like this. Good-night, dearest Guy, good-night. Your Pauline is thinking of you to the very last moment of being the smallest bit awake."

Her voice set out to Plashers Mead, no louder than a moth's wing; and, turning away from the warm May night, Pauline went back to bed and fell asleep on the happy contemplation of a love that between them was exactly equal.

The floods went down rapidly during the week; green Summer flung her wreaths before her: the cuckoo sang out of tune and other birds more rarely: chestnut-blossom powdered the gra.s.s: and the pinks were breaking all along the Rectory borders. These were days when not to idle down the river would have been a slight upon the season. So Pauline and Guy, with their two afternoons a week, which were not long in becoming four, spent all their time in the canoe. The Rectory punt could only be used on the mill-stream; and Pauline rejoiced, if somewhat guiltily, that they could not invite either of her sisters to accompany them. She and Guy had now so much to say to each other, every day more it seemed, that it was impossible any longer not to wish to be alone.

"Margaret says we are becoming selfish, are we?" she asked, dragging her fingers through the water and perceiving the world through ranks of fleurs-de-lys.

Guy from where in the stern he sat hunched over his paddle asked in what way they were supposed to be selfish.

"Well, it is true that I'm dreadfully absent-minded all the time. You know, I can't think about anything but you. Then, you see, we used always to invite Margaret to be with us, and now we hurry away in the canoe from everybody."

"One would think we spent all our time together," said Guy. "Instead of barely four hours a week."

"Oh, Guy darling, it's more than that. This is the fourth afternoon running that we've been together; and we weren't back yesterday till dinner-time."

Guy put a finger to his mouth.

"Hus.h.!.+ We're coming to the bend in the river that flows round the place we first met," he whispered. "Hus.h.!.+ if we talk about other people, it will be disenchanted."

He swung the canoe under the bushes, tied it to a hawthorn bough and declared triumphantly, as they climbed ash.o.r.e up the steep bank, that here was practically a desert island. Then they went to the narrow entrance and gazed over the meadows which in this sacred time of growing gra.s.s really were impa.s.sable as the sea.

"Not even a cow in sight," Guy commented in well satisfied tones. "I shall be sorry when the hay is cut, and people and cattle can come here again."

"People and cattle! How naughty you are, Guy. As if they were just the same!"

"Well, practically you know, as far as we're concerned, there isn't very much difference."

For a long while they sat by the edge of the stream in their fragrant seclusion.

"Dearest," Pauline sighed. "Why can I listen to you all day, and yet whenever anybody else talks to me, why do I feel as if I were only half awake?"

"Because even when you're not with me," said Guy, "you're still really with me. That's why. You see you're still listening to me."

This was a pleasant explanation; but Pauline was anxious to be rea.s.sured about what Margaret had hinted was a deterioration in her character lately.

"Perhaps we are a little selfish. But we won't be, when we're married."

Guy had been scribbling on an envelope which he now handed to her; and she read:

_Mrs. Guy Hazlewood Plashers Mead Wychford Oxon._

"Oh, Guy, you know I love to see it written: but isn't it unlucky to write it?"

"I don't think you ought to be so superst.i.tious," he scoffed.

She wished he were not obviously despising the weakness of her beliefs.

This was the mood in which she seemed farthest away from him; when she felt afraid of his cleverness; and when what had been simple became maddeningly twisted up like an object in a nightmare.

Yet worries that were so faint as scarcely to have a definite shape could still be bought off with kisses; and always when she kissed Guy they receded out of sight again, temporarily appeased.

June, which had come upon them unawares, drifted on toward Midsummer, and the indolent and lovely month mirrored herself in the stream with lush growth of sedges and gra.s.ses, with yellow water-lilies budding, with starry crowfoot and with spongy reeds and weeds that kept the canoe to a slow progress in accord with the season. At this time, mostly, they launched their craft in the mill-stream, whence they glided under Wychford bridge to the pool of an abandoned mill on the farther side.

Here they would float immotionable on the black water, surrounded by tumbledown buildings that rose from the vivid and exuberant growth of the thick-leaved vegetation flouris.h.i.+ng against these cold and decayed foundations. Pauline was always relieved when Guy with soundless paddle steered the canoe away from these deeps. The mill-pool affected her with the merely physical fear of being overturned and plunged into those glooms haunted by shadowy fish, there far down to be strangled by weeds the upper tentacles of which could be seen undulating finely to the least quiver upon the face of the water. Yet more subtly than by physical terrors did these deeps affect her, for the fathomless mill-pool always seemed, as they hung upon it, to ask a question. With such an air of horrible invitation it asked her where she was going with Guy, that no amount of self-reproach for a morbid fancy could drive away the fact of the question's being always asked, however firmly she might fortify herself against paying attention. The moment they pa.s.sed out of reach of that smooth and cruel countenance, Pauline was always ashamed of the terror and never confided in Guy what a mixture of emotions the mill-pool could conjure for her. Their journey across it was in this sunny weather the prelude to a cool time on the stream that flowed along the foot of the Abbey grounds. During May they had been wont to paddle directly up the smaller main stream, exploring far along the Western valley; but on these June afternoons such a course involved too much energy. So they used to disembark from the canoe, pulling it over a narrow strip of gra.s.s to be launched again on the Abbey stream, which had been dammed up to flow with the greater width and solemnity that suited the grand house s.h.i.+mmering in eternal ghostliness at the top of the dark plantation. Pauline had no dread of Wychford Abbey at this distance, and she was fond of gliding down this stream into which the great beeches dipped their tresses, shading it from the heat of the sun.

Every hour they spent on the river made them long to spend more hours together, and Pauline began to tell herself she was more deeply in love than anyone she had ever known. Everything except love was floating away from her like the landscape astern of the canoe. She began to neglect various people in Wychford over whom she had hitherto watched with maternal solicitude: even Miss Verney was not often visited, because she and Guy could not go together, the one original rule to which Mrs. Grey still clung being a prohibition of walking together through the town.

And with the people went her music. She did not entirely give up playing but she always played so badly that Monica declared once she would rather such playing were given up. In years gone by Pauline had kept white fantail pigeons: but now they no longer interested her and she gave them away in pairs. Birdwood declared that the small bee-garden which from earliest childhood had belonged to her guardians.h.i.+p was a 'proper disgrace.' Her tambour-frame showed nothing but half-fledged birds from which since Winter had hung unkempt shreds of blue and red wool. And even her mother's vague talks about the poor people in Wychford had no longer an audience, because Margaret and Monica never had listened, and now Pauline was as inattentive as her sisters. Nothing was worth while except to be with Guy. Not one moment of this June must be wasted, and Pauline managed to set up a precedent for going out on the river with him after tea, when in the cool afternoon they would float down behind Guy's house under willows, under hawthorns, past the golden fleurs-de-lys, past the scented flags, past the early meadowsweet and the flowering rush, past comfrey and watermint, figwort, forget-me-not and blue cranesbill that s.h.i.+mmered in the sun like steely mail.

On Midsummer Day about five o'clock Pauline and Guy set out on one of these expeditions that they had stolen from regularity, and found all their favourite fields occupied by haymakers whose labour they resented as an intrusion upon the country they had come to regard as their own.

"Oh, I wish I had money," Guy exclaimed. "I'd like to buy all this land and keep it for you and me. Why must all these wretched people come and disturb the peace of it?"

"I used to love haymaking," said Pauline, feeling a little wistful for some of those simple joys that now seemed uncapturable again.

"Yes. I should like haymaking," Guy a.s.sented, "if we were married. It's the fact that haymakers are at this moment preventing us being alone which makes me cry out against them. How can I kiss you here?"

A wain loaded high with hay and laughing children was actually standing close against the ingress to their own peninsula. The mellow sun of afternoon was lending a richer quality of colour to nutbrown cheeks and arms; was throwing long shadows across the shorn gra.s.s; was gilding the pitchforks and sparkling the gnats that danced above the patient horses.

It was a scene that should have made Pauline dream with joy of her England: yet, with Guy's discontent brooding over it, she did not care for these jocund haymakers who were working through the l.u.s.tred afternoon.

"Hopeless," Guy protested. "It's like Piccadilly Circus."

"Oh, Guy dear, you are absurd. It's not a bit like Piccadilly Circus."

"I don't see the use of living in the country if it's always going to be alive with people," Guy went on. "We may as well turn round. The afternoon is ruined."

When they reached the confines of Plashers Mead, he exclaimed in deeper despair:

"Pauline! I must kiss you; and, look, actually the churchyard now is crammed with people, all hovering about over the graves like ghouls. Why does everybody want to come out this afternoon?"

They landed in the orchard behind the house, and Pauline was getting ready to help Guy push the canoe across to the mill-stream, when he vowed she must come and kiss him good-night indoors.

"Of course I will; though I mustn't stay more than a minute, because I promised Mother to be back by seven."