Guy and Pauline Part 26

"If only this young Thames flowed on for ever," said Guy.

He and Pauline were leaning over the rail of the barge, and Guy felt a sudden impulse to s.n.a.t.c.h at the bank rich in that moment with yellow loosestrife, and by his action arrest for ever the progress of the barge, so that for ever they would stay like the lovers on a Grecian urn.

"And really," Guy went on, as already the banks of yellow loosestrife were become banks of long-purples, "there is no reason why for us in a way this river should not flow on for ever. Dear, everything had seemed so perishable before I found you. Pauline, you don't think I ought to surrender my intention, do you? I mean, you don't think I ought to go away from Plashers Mead?"

Guy went on to tell her about the decision he had taken on the day the visit to Ladingford was arranged.

"But it would have been dreadful to miss this time," Pauline declared.

"Oh, I felt it would be impossible," he agreed. "But even if our marriage is postponed for another year, you do think I ought to stick it out here, don't you? And really, you know, few lovers can have such wonderful hours as the hours we do have."

Easily she rea.s.sured him with her confidence in the rightness of his decision: easily she a.s.suaged the ache of any lingering doubt with the proclamation of that inevitable triumph in the end.

"But we must be engaged openly," said Guy. "You know, I shall be twenty-three next month. Do you think we can be engaged properly in August?"

"Mother promised in Spring," said Pauline. "Why don't you talk to her about it? Why don't you talk to her about it now? She loves you to talk to her."

He looked round to where Mrs. Grey was sitting in a deck-chair; evidently by the rhythmic motion of her fingers she was restating to herself a tune which had formerly pleased her, as the barge glided on past a scene that changed perceptibly only in details of flowers and trees, while the great sky and the green hollow land and the blue distances rested immutable. Guy came and sat beside her.

"I've never enjoyed a fortnight so much in my life," he said.

She smiled at him, but did not speak, for whatever quartet she was restating had to be finished first. Soon the last noiseless bars played themselves and she turned round to his conversation.

"Mrs. Grey, do you think that Pauline and I can be engaged openly next month? It won't mean, if we are, that I shall be worrying to see her more often. In fact I'm sure I shall worry less. But I want to tell my father, so that when he comes here he'll be able to see Pauline. He's a conventional sort of man, and I don't think he'd grasp an engagement such as ours is at present. Besides, I want to talk to the Rector, because I feel that now he regards the whole thing as a childish game.

So can it be formal next month?"

Mrs. Grey sat back, so silent that Guy wondered if she had listened to a word he had been saying. He paused for a moment, and then as she did not reply, he went on:

"I also want to say how sorry I am that I asked Pauline to come into Plashers Mead to say good-night to me last month. I didn't realize, until she told me you were angry about it, what a foolish thing I'd done. I don't want you to think that, if we are formally engaged, I shall be doing stupid things like that all the time. Really, Mrs. Grey, I would always be very thoughtful."

"Oh, yes," she answered in her nervous way. "Oh, yes. I understood it to have been a kind of carelessness. But I had to speak to Pauline about it, because she is so very impulsive. It's the sort of thing I might have done myself when I was a girl. At least of course I shouldn't because the Rector ... yes ... charming ... charming ... yes.... I really think you might be engaged next month. It's your birthday next month, isn't it?"

"Thank you more than I can thank you," said Guy.

Mrs. Grey waved to Pauline, who drew close.

"Pauline darling, I've thought of such a nice birthday present for Guy ... yes ... charming, charming birthday present ... yes ... for you two to be engaged."

Pauline threw her arms round her mother's neck; and Guy in his happiness noticed at that moment how Margaret was sitting by herself on the p.o.o.p in the stern. He was wrenched by a sudden compunction, and asked Pauline if he should not go and tell Margaret.

"Charming of Guy ... yes ... charming," Mrs. Grey enthusiastically exclaimed. "Now I call that really charming, and Pauline stays with me."

Guy went up the companion and asked Margaret if she were particularly anxious to be alone. She seemed to pull herself from a day-dream, as she turned to a.s.sure him she did not at all particularly want to be alone.

Guy announced his good news, and Margaret offered him her slim hand with a kind of pathetic grace that moved him very much.

"I think you deserve it," she said. "For you've both been so sweet to me all this fortnight. I expect you think I don't notice, but I do ...

always."

"Margaret," said Guy. "If this summer Pauline and I have seemed to run away from people...."

"Oh, but you have," Margaret interrupted. "I don't think I should find excuses, if I were you, for perhaps it's natural."

"I've fancied very often," he said, "that you've thought we were behaving selfishly."

"I think all lovers are selfish," she answered. "Only in your case you began in such an idyllic way that I thought you were going to be a wonderful exception. Guy, I do most dreadfully want you not to spoil in any way the perfectly beautiful thing that Pauline and you in love is.

You won't, will you?"

"Have I yet?" asked Guy in rather a dismayed voice.

"Do you want me to be frank? Yes, of course you do, and anyway I must be frank," said Margaret. "Well, sometimes you have--I don't mean in wanting always to be alone or in asking her in to Plashers Mead to say good-night. No, I don't mean in those ways so much. Of course they make me feel a little sad, but smaller things than that make me more uneasy."

"You mean," said Guy as she paused, "my staying on here and apparently doing nothing? But, Margaret, really I can't leave Pauline to be a schoolmaster, and surely you of all people can understand that?"

"Oh, no, I wasn't thinking of that," said Margaret. "I think in fact you're right to stay here and keep at what you're trying to do. If it was ever worth doing, it must be doubly worth doing now. Oh, no, the only criticism I shall make is of something so small that you'll wonder how I can think it even worth mentioning. Guy, you know the photograph of Pauline which Mother used to have and which she gave you?"

Guy nodded.

"Well, I happened to see it on the table by your bunk, and I wonder why you've taken it out of its simple little wooden frame and put it in a silver one?"

Guy was taken aback, and when he asked himself why he had done this, he could not find a reason. Now that Margaret had spoken of it, the consciousness of the exchange flooded him with shame as for an unforgivable piece of vandalism. Why indeed had he bought that silver frame and put the old wooden frame away, and where was the old wooden frame? In one of the drawers in his desk, he thought; resolving this very night to restore it to the photograph and fling the usurper into the river.

"I can't think why I did," he stammered to Margaret.

"You've no idea how much this has worried me," she said. "I never had any doubts about your appreciation of Pauline."

"And now you have," said Guy, biting his lip with mortification.

The landscape fading from the stern of the barge oppressed him with the sadness of irreparable acts that are committed heedlessly, but after which nothing is ever quite the same. He wished he could tear to pieces that silver frame.

"No, I won't have any doubts," said Margaret, offering him her hand again and smiling. "You've taken my criticism so sweetly that the change can't symbolize so much as I feared."

It was very well to be forgiven like this, Guy thought, but the memory of his blunder was still hot upon his cheek and he felt a deep humiliation at the treachery of his taste. He had meant, when he came here to talk to Margaret, to ask her about herself and Richard, to display a captivating sympathy and restore to their pristine affection her relations with him, which latterly had seemed to diverge somewhat from one another. Now haunted by that silver frame, which with every moment of thought appeared more and more insistently the vile stationer's gewgaw that it was, Guy did not dare to approach Margaret in the security of an old intimacy.

It was she, however, with her grace who healed the wound.

"You're not hurt with me for speaking about that little thing?" she asked. "You see, you are in a way my brother."

"Margaret, you are a dear!"

And then recurred to him as if from Ladingford Manor the lines of Christina Rossetti, which he half whispered to her:

_For there is no friend like a sister_ _In calm or stormy weather;_ _To cheer one if one goes astray,_ _To lift one if one totters down,_ _To strengthen whilst one stands._

They had the sharper emotion for Guy because he had neither brothers nor sisters of his own; and that this lovely girl beside him on this dreaming barge should be his sister gave to the landscape one more incommunicable beauty.

And so all day they glided down the young Thames; and when Guy had sat long enough with Margaret in the stern, he sat with Pauline at the prow; and about twilight they reached Oxford, whence they came to Shipcot by train and drove through five miles of moonlight back to Wychford.