Guy and Pauline Part 30

I gathered from your description of Mr. Grey that he was an extremely unpractical man; and his att.i.tude towards your engagement certainly bears me out. I suppose I shall presently get a post-card to say that you are married on your income of 150, which by the way in the present state of affairs is very likely soon to be less.

You invite me to come and stay with you before term begins in order to meet the young lady to whom with extremely bad taste you jocularly allude as my 'future daughter-in-law.' Well, I accept your invitation, but I warn you that I shall give myself the unpleasant task of explaining to your 'future father-in-law,' as I suppose you would not blush to call him, what an utterly unreliable fellow you are and how in every way you have disappointed_

_Your affectionate father

John Hazlewood._

_I shall arrive at two-thirty on the fifth (next Thursday). I wish I could say I was looking forward to seeing this insane house of yours._

There was something in the taste of marmalade very appropriate to an unpleasant letter, and Guy wondered how many of them he had read at breakfast to the accompaniment of the bitter savour and the sound of crackling toast. He also wondered what was the real reason of his father's coming. Was it curiosity, or the prospect of lecturing a certain number of people gathered together to hear his opinion? Was it with the hope of dissuasion, or was it merely because he had settled to come on the fifth of September and could not bear to thwart that finicking pa.s.sion of his for knowing what he was going to do a month beforehand?

Anyhow, whatever the reason, he was coming, and the next problem was to furnish for him a bedroom. How much had he in the bank? 4 16s. and there was a blank counter-foil which Guy vaguely thought represented a cheque for 2. Of course Pauline's ring had lowered his balance rather prematurely this quarter; he ought to be very economical during the next one and, as ill luck would have it, next quarter would have to provide fuel. 2 16s. was not much to spend on furnis.h.i.+ng a bedroom even if the puny balance were not needed for the current expenses of the three weeks to Michaelmas. Could he borrow some bedroom furniture from the Rectory?

No doubt Mrs. Grey would be amused and delighted to lend all he wanted, but it seemed rather an ignominious way of celebrating his engagement.

Could he sleep on the chest in the hall? and as it wobbled to his touch, he decided that not only could he not sleep on it nor in it, but that it would not even serve as a receptacle for his clothes.

"Miss Peasey," he said, when the housekeeper came in to see if he had finished breakfast. "My father is coming to stay here on Thursday."

Miss Peasey smiled encouragingly with the strained look in her eyes that always showed when she was hoping to find out from his next sentence what he had told her. Guy shouted his information over again, when, of course Miss Peasey pretended she had heard him all the time.

"Well, that will make quite a little variety, I'm sure."

"Where will he sleep?" Guy asked.

Miss Peasey jumped and said that there, she'd never thought of that.

"Well, think about it now, Miss Peasey."

Miss Peasey thought hard, but unfruitfully.

"Could you borrow a bed in the town?" Guy shouted.

"Well, wouldn't it seem rather funny? Why don't you send in to Oxford and buy a bed, Mr. Hazlewood?"

Her pathetic trust in the strength of his financial resources, which Guy usually tried to encourage, was now rather irritating.

"It seems hardly worth while to buy a bed for two or three days," he objected.

"Which reminds me," said Miss Peasey, "that you'll really have to give that Bob another good thras.h.i.+ng, for he's eaten all the day's b.u.t.ter."

"Well, we can buy more b.u.t.ter in Wychford, but we can't get a bed," Guy laughed.

"Oh, he didn't touch the bread," said Miss Peasey. "Trust him for that.

I never knew a large dog so dainty before."

Guy decided to postpone the subject of the bed and try Miss Peasey more personally.

"Could you spare your chest of drawers?" he asked at top voice.

Miss Peasey, however, did not answer and from her complete indifference to his question Guy knew that she did not like the idea of such a loan.

It looked as if he would be compelled to borrow the furniture from the Rectory; and then he thought how after all it would be a doubly good plan to do so, inasmuch as it would partially involve his father in the obligations of a guest. Moreover it could scarcely fail to be a slight reproach to him that his son should have to borrow bedroom furniture from the family of his betrothed.

Pauline was of course delighted at the idea of lending the furniture, and she and Guy had the greatest fun together in ama.s.sing enough to equip what would really be a very charming spare room. Deaf and dumb Graves was called in; and Birdwood helped also, under protest at the hindrance to his work, but at the same time revelling, if Birdwood could be said to revel, in the diversion. Mrs. Grey presided over the arrangement and fell so much in love with the new bedroom that she pillaged the Rectory much more ruthlessly than Pauline, and in the end they all decided that Guy's father would have the most attractive bedroom in Wychford. Guy with so much preparation on hand had no time to worry about the conduct of his father's visit, and after lunch on Thursday he got into the trap beside G.o.dbold and drove off equably enough to meet the train at s.h.i.+pcot.

Mr. Hazlewood was in appearance a dried-up likeness of his son, and Guy often wondered if he would ever present to the world this desiccated exterior. Yet after all it was not so much his father's features as his cold eyes that gave this effect of a chilly force: he himself had his mother's eyes and, thinking of hers burning darkly from the glooms of her sick bed, Guy fancied that he would never wither to quite the inanimate and discouraging personality on the platform in front of him.

"The train's quite punctual," said Mr. Hazlewood in rather an aggrieved tone of voice, such as he might have adopted if he had been shown a correct Latin exercise by a boy whom he was anxious to reprove.

"Yes, this train is usually pretty punctual," Guy answered, and for a minute or two after a self-conscious handshake they talked about trains, each, as it seemed, trying to throw upon the other the responsibility of any conversation that might have promoted their ease.

Guy introduced his father to G.o.dbold, who greeted him with a kind of congratulatory respect and a.s.sumed toward Guy a manner that gave the impression of sharing with Mr. Hazlewood in his paternity.

"Hope you're going to pay us a good long visit," said G.o.dbold hospitably flicking the pony.

Mr. Hazlewood, who squashed as he was between Guy and fat G.o.dbold looked more sapless than ever, said he proposed to stay until the day after to-morrow.

"Then you won't see us play s.h.i.+pcot on Sat.u.r.day, the last match of the season?" said G.o.dbold in disappointed benevolence.

"No, I shan't, I'm afraid. You see, my son is not so busy as I am."

"Ah, but he's been very busy lately. Isn't that right, Mr. Hazlewood?"

G.o.dbold chuckled with a wink across at Guy. "Well, we've all been expecting it for some time past and he has our good wishes. That he has.

As sweetly pretty a young lady as you'll see in a month of Sundays."

His father shrank perceptibly from a dominical prevision so foreign to his nature, and Guy changed the conversation by pointing out features in the landscape.

"Extraordinarily inspiring sort of country," he affirmed.

"So I should imagine," said his father. "Though precisely what that epithet implies I don't quite know."

Guy was determined not to be put out of humour and, surrendering the epithet at once, he subst.i.tuted 'bracing'.

"So is Hamps.h.i.+re," his father snapped.

"I hope Wilkinson's successor has turned out well," Guy ventured, in the hope that such a direct challenge would force a discharge of grievances.

Surprizingly, however, his father talked without covert reproaches of the successor's virtues, of the field-club he had started, of his popularity with the boys and of the luck which had brought him along at such short notice. At any rate, thought Guy, he could not be blamed for having caused any inconvenience to the school by his refusal to take up office at Fox Hall. The constraint of the long drive came to an end with the first view of Plashers Mead, at which his father gazed with the sort of mixture of resentment, interest and alarm he might have displayed at the approach of a novel insect.

"It looks as if it would be very damp," was his only comment.

Here G.o.dbold, who had perhaps for some time been conscious that all was not perfectly well between his pa.s.sengers, interposed with a defence of Plashers Mead.

"Lot of people seeing it from here think it's damp. But it isn't. In fact it's the driest house in Wychford. And do you know for why, sir?

Because it's so near running water. Running water keeps off the damp.

Doctor Brydone told me that. 'Running water,' he says to me, 'keeps off the damp.' Those were his words."

Mr. Hazlewood eyed G.o.dbold distastefully, that is so far as without turning his head he could eye him at all. Then the trap pulled up by the gate of Plashers Mead, Guy took his father's bag, and they pa.s.sed in together. The noise of wheels died away, and here in the sound of the swift Greenrush Guy felt that hostility must surely be renounced at the balm of this September afternoon shedding serene sunlight. He began to display his possessions with the confidence their beauty always gave him.

"Pretty good old apple-trees, eh? Ribston pippins nearly all of them.

The blossom was rather spoilt by that wet May, but there's not such a bad crop considering. I like this salmon-coloured phlox. General something or other beginning with an H it's called. Mr. Grey gave me a good deal. The garden of course was full of vegetables, when I had it first. I must send you some clumps of this phlox to Galton. Of course, I got rid of the vegetables."

"Yes, of course," agreed Mr. Hazlewood dryly.