Guy and Pauline Part 49

"And what can I do for you, Sir?" he asked.

"I thought you'd like to see the proofs of my poems," said Guy.

He laid the duplicates on the dusty table and tried to thank his patron for what he had done. The Rector waved a clay pipe deprecatingly.

"You must thank Constance ... you must thank my wife, if you thank anybody. But if I were you I shouldn't thank anybody till you find out for certain that she's done you a service," he recommended with a twinkle.

Guy laughed.

"Worrall doesn't want to publish until the Autumn."

The Rector made a face.

"All that time to wait for the verdict?"

"Time seems particularly hostile to me," Guy said.

"You'll have to tweak his forelock pretty hard."

"That's what I've come to consult you about. Do you think I ought to go to Persia with Sir George Gascony? Mrs. Grey thought I oughtn't to take so drastic a step until I had first tested my poems in public. But I've been reading them through, and they don't somehow look quite as important in print as they did in ma.n.u.script. I can't help feeling that I ought to have a regular occupation. What do you really advise me to do, Mr. Grey?"

The Rector held up his arms in mock dismay.

"Gracious goodness me, don't implicate a poor country parson in such affairs! I can give you advice about flowers and I can pretend to give you advice about your soul, but about the world, no, no."

"I think perhaps I'll get some journalistic work in town," Guy suggested.

"Persia or journalism!" commented the Rector. "Well, well, they're both famous for fairy tales. I recommend journalism as being nearer at hand."

"Then I'll take your advice."

"Oh, dear me, you must not involve me in such a responsibility. Now, if you were a nice rational iris I would talk to you, but for a talented young man with his life before him I shouldn't even be a good quack.

Come along, let's go out and look at the tulips."

"You _will_ glance through my poems?" Guy asked diffidently.

The Rector stood up and put his hand on the poet's shoulder.

"Of course I will, my dear boy, and you mustn't be deceived by the manner of that shy old boor, the Rector of Wychford. Do what you think you ought to do, and make my youngest daughter happy. We shall be having her birthday before we know where we are."

"It's to-morrow!"

"Is it indeed? May Day. Of course. I remember last year I managed to bloom Iris Lorteti. But this year, no! That wet May destroyed Iris Lorteti. A delicate creature. Rose and brown. A delicate lovely creature."

Guy and the Rector pored over the tulips a while where in serried borders they displayed their sombre sheen of amaranth and amethyst: then Guy strolled off to hear what was the news of Margaret and Richard.

Pauline came flying to meet him down one of the long straight garden-paths.

"Darling, they are to be married early in August," she cried.

He caught her to him and kissed her, lest in the first poignant realization of other people's joy she might seem to be escaping from him utterly.

Guy had a few minutes with Margaret before he went home that evening, and they walked beside the tulip borders, she tall and dark and self-contained in the fading light being strangely suited by a.s.sociation with such flowers.

"Dear Margaret," he said, "I want to tell you how tremendously I like Richard. Now that sounds patronizing. But I'm speaking quite humbly.

These sort of Englishmen have been celebrated enough perhaps, and lately there's been a tendency to laugh at them, but, my G.o.d, what is there on earth like the Richards of England? Margaret, you once very rightly reproved me for putting Pauline in a silver frame, do let me risk your anger and beg you never to put yourself in a silver frame from which to look out at Richard."

"You do rather understand me, don't you?" she said offering him her hand.

"Help Pauline and me," he begged.

"Haven't I always helped you?"

"Not always, but you will now that you yourself are no longer uncertain about your future. The moment you find yourself perfectly happy you'll be longing for everyone else to be the same."

"But how haven't I helped you?" she persisted.

"It would be difficult to explain in definite words. But I don't think my idea of your att.i.tude toward us could have been entirely invented by my fancy."

"What att.i.tude? What do you mean, Guy?"

He shook his head.

"My dear, if you aren't conscious of it, I'm certainly not going to attempt to put it into words and involve myself in such a net."

"How tantalizing you are!"

"No, I'm not. If you have the least inclination to think I may be right, then you know what I mean and you can do what I ask. If you haven't the least notion of what I mean, then it was all my fancy and I'm certainly not going to give my baseless fancies away."

"This is all too cryptic," she murmured.

"Then let it remain undeciphered," he said smiling; and he led the conversation more directly toward their marriage and the strangeness of the Rectory without Margaret.

Richard spent the night at Plashers Mead, and Guy heard the halting account of two years' uncertainty, of the bungalow that had been taken and embowered against Margaret's coming, and of the way in which his bridge had spanned not merely the river, but the very ocean, and even time itself.

Pauline's birthday morning was cloudless, and Guy, though to himself he was inclined to blame the action as weak, went to church and knelt beside her. Then afterward there was the scene of breakfast on the lawn that already with only this first repet.i.tion wore for him an immemorial air, so that he could no longer imagine a May Day that was not thus inaugurated. The presentation of his poems in proof had not a bit less wonderful an effect than he had hoped, for Pauline could never finish turning over the pages and loving the ludicrously tumbledown binding.

"Oh, it's so touching! I wish they could all be bound like this. And how I adore Richard's paper-knife."

The four lovers disappeared after breakfast to enjoy the flas.h.i.+ng May Day, and Monica left alone with her mother looked a little sad, she, the only one of those three lovely daughters of the Rectory still undisturbed by the demands of the invading world.

May that year was like the fabled Spring of poets; and Guy and Pauline were left free to enjoy the pa.s.sionate and merry month as perhaps never before had they enjoyed any season, not even that dreamed away fortnight at Ladingford last year. They had ceased for a while with the engagement of Richard and Margaret to be the central figures of the Rectory whether for blame or commendation, and desiring nothing better than to be left without interference they were lost in apple-blossom to every-day existence. Guy with the prospect of his poems' appearing in the Autumn felt that he was justified in forgetting responsibilities and, having weathered the financial crisis of the March quarter, he had now nothing to worry him until Midsummer. That was the date he had fixed upon in his mind as suitable for making a determined attempt upon London. He had planned to shut up Plashers Mead and to take a small room in Chelsea whence he would conquer in a few months the material obstacles that prevented their marriage. The poems now that they were in print seemed a less certain talisman to fame; but they would serve their purpose, indeed they had served their purpose already, for this long secluded time would surely counterbalance the too easy victories of journalism.

He would surely by now have lost that spruce Oxford cleverness and might fairly expect to earn his living with dignity. The least success would justify his getting married, and Pauline would enjoy two years spent high in some London attic within the sound of chirping sparrows and the distant whispers of humanity. They would perhaps be able to afford to fly for magic weeks to Plashers Mead, pastoral interludes in that crowded life which lay ahead. How everything had resolved itself latterly, and how this gift of glorious May should be accepted as the intimate and dearest benefaction to their love. He and Pauline were together from earliest morn to the last minute of these rich and shadowy eves. They wreathed their boat with boughs of apple-blossom and went farther up the river than they had ever gone. The cuckoo was still in tune, and still the kingcups gilded all that hollow land: there was not yet the lush growth of weeds and reeds that indolent June would use to delay their dreaming progress: and still all the trees and all the hedges danced with that first sharp green of Spring, that cold and careless green of Spring.

Then when the hawthorn came into prodigal bloom, and all the rolling country broke in endless waves of blossom, Pauline in her muslin dress seemed like an airy joy sustained by all these mult.i.tudinous petals, dancing upon this flowery tide, this sweet foam of May.

"My flower, my sweet, are you indeed mortal?" he whispered.

The texture of her sleeve against his was less tangible than the light breeze that puffed idly from the South to where they sat enraptured upon the damasked English gra.s.s. Apple-blossom powdered her lap and starred her light brown hair, and around them like a Circean perfume drowning the actual world hung the odorous thickets of hawthorn.