Guy and Pauline Part 27

_August_

Pauline and Guy with their formal engagement in sight were careful to give no excuse for a postponement by abusing their privileges. The river was now much overgrown with weeds, and in the last week of July rough weather set in which kept them in the Rectory a good deal on the occasions when they met. Guy too was harder at work than he had been all the Summer. The fact of being presently engaged in the eyes of the world was sufficiently exciting for Pauline to console her for the shorter time spent with Guy. Moreover she was so grateful to her family for not opposing the publication of the engagement that she tried particularly to impress them with the sameness of herself, notwithstanding her being in love with Guy. It happened therefore that the old manner of existence at the Rectory rea.s.serted itself for a while; the music in the evenings, the mornings in the garden, everything indeed that could make the family suppose that she was set securely in the heart of their united life.

"When you and Margaret marry," Monica announced, one afternoon when the three sisters were in their nursery, "I really think I shall become a nun."

"But we can't all leave Father and Mother," Pauline exclaimed shocked at the deserted prospect.

"Now isn't that like people in love?" said Monica.

"Ah, but anyway I shall only be living at Plashers Mead," Pauline went on. "So they won't be left entirely alone."

"And as I probably shan't ever make up my mind to be married," Margaret added, "and as I've yet to meet the Mother Superior whom Monica could stand for more than a week it seems probable that everything at the Rectory will go on pretty much the same."

"Margaret, you will marry. I can't think why you talk like that. If you don't intend to marry Richard, you ought to tell him so now, and not keep him any longer in uncertainty."

Pauline realized that Margaret did not like this direct attack, but it was so rarely that Margaret made it possible even to allude to Richard that she had to take the opportunity.

"I don't think I've interfered much with you and Guy," said Margaret.

"Is it necessary that you should settle my affairs?"

"Oh, don't speak so unkindly to me, Margaret. I'm not trying to interfere. And anyway you do criticize Guy and me. Both you and Monica criticize us."

"Only when you tell us we don't understand about love."

"Well, you don't."

"All of us don't want to be in love quite so obviously as you," said Margaret. "And Monica agrees with me."

Monica nodded.

"Well, it's my character," said Pauline. "I always knew that when I did fall in love, I should fall dreadfully deep in love. I don't want to be thinking all the while about my personal dignity. I adore Guy. Why shouldn't I show it? Margaret loves Richard, but simply because she's so self-conscious she can't bear to show it. You call me morbid, Margaret, but I call you much more morbid than me."

Yet, though she resented them at the time, Margaret and Monica's continual demands for Pauline to be vigilant over her impulsiveness had an effect; and during all the month before they were engaged she tried when she was with Guy to acquire a little of the att.i.tude her sisters desired. Circ.u.mstances by keeping them for a good deal of the time at the Rectory made this easy; and Guy exalted by the notion of the formal troth never made it difficult.

Pauline tried to recapture more of the old interests of life at Wychford, and she was particularly attentive to Miss Verney, going often to see her in the little house at the top of the hill and sitting with her in the oblong garden whenever the August sun showed itself.

"I'm sure I'm sorry it's going to be a protracted engagement," said Miss Verney. "They are apt to place a great strain upon people. I'm sure when I read in The Times all about people's wills, though I always feel a trifle vulgar and inquisitive when I do so, I often say to myself 'Well, really, it seems a pity that some people should have so much more money than is quite necessary.' Only yesterday evening I read of a gentleman called Somethingheim who left 507,106 14s. and some odd pence, and really, I thought to myself, how much nicer it would have looked without the seven thousand one hundred and six pounds fourteen s.h.i.+llings and odd pence. And really I had quite a fanciful time imagining that I received a letter presenting it to me on account of some services my father rendered at Sebastopol, which at the time were overlooked. Seven thousand pounds I thought I would present to you and Mr. Guy Hazlewood, if you would allow me; a hundred pounds to the church; six pounds I had the idea of devoting to the garden; and the fourteen s.h.i.+llings and sevenpence, I remember now it was sevenpence, I thought would make such a pleasant surprize for my servant Mabel, who is really a most good-hearted girl, tactful with the cats and not too fond of young men."

"How sweet of you, Miss Verney, to think of such a nice present," said Pauline, who as she watched the old maid's grave air of patronage began almost to believe that the money had been given to her.

"No, indeed, don't thank me at all, for I cannot imagine anything that would give me such true pleasure. Let me see. Seven thousand pounds at four per cent, which I think is as much as you could expect to get safely. That's seventy times four--280 a year."

"And Guy has some money--150 or 115 or it may be only 50."

"Let us call it a hundred pounds," said Miss Verney. "For it would be more prudent not to exaggerate. 380 a year. And I've no doubt the Rector on his side would be able to manage twenty pounds. 400 a year.

Surely a very nice little sum on which to marry. Oh, certainly quite a pleasant little sum."

"Only the gentleman hasn't given you the seven thousand pounds," said Pauline.

"No, exactly, he has not. That's just where it is," Miss Verney agreed.

"But even if he hasn't," said Pauline, springing up and kissing her, "that doesn't prevent your being my dear Miss Verney; and so, thank you seven times for every pound you were going to give me."

"My dear child, it would be, as I believe I remarked, a pleasure. I have the greatest dread of long engagements. My own, you know, lasted five years; and at the end of the time a misunderstanding arose with my father, who being a sailor had a hasty temper. This very misunderstanding arose over money. I'm sure the person who invented money was a great curse to the world, and deserved to be pecked at by that uncomfortable eagle much more than that poor fellow Prometheus of whom I was reading in a mythology book that was given to me as a prize for spelling and which I came across last night in an old trunk. My father declared that William ... his name, I believe I've never told you his name, his name was William Bankes spelt with an E. Now, my own being Daisy after the s.h.i.+p which my father commanded at the moment when my poor mother ... when in fact I was born, my own name being Daisy, I was always a little doubtful as to whether people would laugh at the conjunction with Bankes, but being spelt with an E, I daresay it wouldn't have been uncomfortably remarked upon. My father said that William had deceived him about some money. Well, whatever it was, William broke off our engagement; and though all his presents were returned to him and all his letters, the miniature fell out of my hand when I was wrapping it up. I think I must have been a little upset at the moment, for I am not usually careless with any kind of ornament. And when I picked it up, it was so cracked that I could scarcely bring myself to return it, feeling in a way ashamed of my carelessness and also wis.h.i.+ng to keep something of William's by me. I have often blamed myself for doing this, and no doubt if the incident had occurred now when I am older, I should have acted more properly. However, at the time I was only twenty-four: so possibly there was a little excuse for what I did."

Miss Verney stopped and stared out of her window: all about the room the cats were purring in the sunbeams: Pauline had a dozen plans racing through her mind for finding William and bringing him back like Peter in Mrs. Gaskell's book. She was just half-way up the hill with fluttering heart, longing to see Miss Verney's joy at the return of her William ...

when tea tinkled in and the dream vanished.

When Pauline told Guy about Miss Verney's seven thousand pounds he was rather annoyed and said he was sorry that he and she were already an object of charity in Wychford.

"Oh, Guy," she protested, "you mustn't take poor Miss Verney too seriously; but it was so sweet of her to want to set us up with an income."

"Besides I _have_ got a hundred and fifty," said Guy.

"Oh, Guy dear, don't look so cross. Please don't be cross and dreadfully in earnest about anything so stupid as money."

"I feel everybody will be pitying you for becoming engaged to a penniless pretender like me," he sighed.

"Don't be so stupid, Guy. If they pity anybody, they'll pity you for having a wife so utterly vague about practical things as I am. But I won't be, Guy, when we're married."

"Oh, my own, I wish we were married now. G.o.d! I wish, I wish we were!"

He had clasped her to him, and she drew away. Guy begged her pardon for swearing: but really she had drawn away because his eyes were so bright and wild that she was momentarily afraid of him.

August kept wet and stormy; but on the nineteenth, the day before Guy's birthday and the vigil of their betrothal, the sun came out with the fierceness of late Summer. Pauline went with Margaret and Monica for a walk in the cornfields, because she and Guy, although it was one of their trysting days, had each resolved to keep it strictly empty of the other's company, so that after a kind of fast they should meet on the great day itself with a deeper welcome. Pauline made a wreath of poppies for Margaret and for Monica a wreath of cornflowers; but her sisters could find no flower that became Pauline on this vigil, nor did she mind, for to-morrow was beckoning to her across the wheat and she gladly went ungarlanded.

"I wonder why I feel as if this were our last walk together," said Margaret.

"Oh, Margaret, how can you say a horrid thing like that," Pauline exclaimed; and to-morrow drooped before her in the dusty path.

"No, darling, it's not horrid. But, oh, you don't know how much I mind that in a way the Rectory as it always has been will no longer be the Rectory."

Pauline vowed she would go home, not caring on whose wheat she trampled, if Margaret talked any more like that.

"I can't think why you want to make me sad," she protested. "What difference after all will this announcement of our engagement bring? I shall wear a ring, that's all!"

"But everybody will know you belong to Guy," said Margaret, "instead of to all of us."

"Oh, my dears, my dears," Pauline vowed. "I shall always belong to you as well. Don't make me feel unhappy."

"You don't really feel unhappy," said Monica in her wise way. "Because every morning I can hear you singing to yourself long before you ought to be awake."

Then her sisters kissed her, and through the golden cornfields they walked silently home.

When Pauline was in bed that night her mother lingered after Margaret and Monica had left her room.