Guy and Pauline Part 35

Pauline looked back over her shoulder once: then she came across to where he invited her to sit in the window-bay.

"I ought to have brought my diamond pencil," he said. "This is such a window for mottoes. Why, I declare! Somebody has scrawled one. Look, Pauline. Pauline, look! _1770. R.G. P.F._ inside a heart. Oh, what a pity it wasn't _P.G._ for Pauline Grey. Still the _G_ can stand for Guy.

Oh, really, I think it's an extraordinary coincidence! _P.F.?_ We can find out which of the Fentons that was. We'll look up in the history of the family. Darling, I am so glad we came to this little room. Think of those lovers who sat here once like us. Pauline, it makes me cherish, you so."

She sat upon his knee, because the window seat was dusty and because in this place of fled lovers she wanted to be held closely to his heart.

The wind boomed and moaned, and the sun breaking through the clouds lit up the walls with a wild yellow light.

Suddenly Pauline drew away from his arms.

"Shadows went by the window," she cried. "Guy, I feel afraid. I feel afraid. There's a footstep."

She was lily-white, whose cheeks had but now been burning so fiercely.

"Nonsense," he replied half-roughly. "It was that burst of sunshine."

"Guy, there were shadows. Hark!"

She nearly screamed, because footsteps were going down the stairs of the empty house.

"It must have been the caretaker," said Guy.

"I saw a white person. Guy, never never let us come here again."

"You don't seriously think you saw a ghost?" he asked.

"Guy, how do I know? Come away, into the air. We should never have come here. Oh, this room! I feel as if I should faint."

"I'll see who it was," said Guy springing up.

"No, don't leave me. Wait for me. I'll come with you."

They hurried down the stairs and when they reached the pallid lawn they saw Margaret and Monica in their white coats disappearing among the yew trees by the entrance.

"There are your ghosts," said Guy laughing.

Yet, though Guy scoffed at her fears, Pauline was not sure that she would not have preferred a ghost to that disquieting pa.s.sage of her sisters without hail or comment. Yet perhaps after all they had not seen her and Guy in that sinister small parlour.

"Shall we catch them up?" he asked.

And Pauline with a breath of dismay was conscious of an inclination to pretend that they had not been here this afternoon. She discovered herself, as it were, proposing to Guy that they should not overtake Monica and Margaret. A secretiveness she had never known before had seized her soul, and she hoped that their presence in the Abbey was unknown. Guy divined at once that she did not want to overtake her sisters, and he kept her under the trees, where they watched each a.s.sault of the wind tearing at the little foliage that still remained.

He guided her tenderly away from the sight of the house; and they walked along the broad path down through the shrubbery, meeting a rout of brown and red and yellow leaves that swept by them. She clung to Guy's arm as if this urgent and tumultuous wind had the power to sweep her too into the confusion: such an affraying journey was life beginning to seem.

This ghastly elation of the October weather would not allow her breath to examine the perplexity in which she had involved herself. She felt that if the wind blew any louder, she would have to scream out in defiance of its violence or else surrender miserably and be whirled into oblivion. A brown oakleaf had escaped from the perishable host and was palpitating in a fold of her sleeve like a hunted creature; but when Pauline would have rescued it at the same moment a gust came roaring up the walk under the hissing trees, and the driven leaf was torn from its refuge and flung high into the air to join the myriads in their giddy riot of death.

"Come away from here," she cried to Guy. "Come away or I shall go mad in this wind."

He looked at her with a sort of judicial demeanour, as if he were in doubt whether he ought not to reprove such excitement.

"It was really beginning to blow quite fiercely," he said when they had reached the comparative stillness of Abbey Lane.

Behind them Pauline still heard with terror and hatred the moaning of the trees, and she hurried away from the sound.

"Never, never will I go there again. Why did you ask me to go there? I would sooner have met a thousand Brydones than have been in that house."

"Pauline," he protested. "You really do sometimes encourage yourself to be overwrought."

"Guy, don't lecture me," she said, turning upon him fiercely.

"Well, don't let the whole of Wychford see that you're in a temper," he retorted. "People haven't yet got over the idea of us two as a natural curiosity of the neighbourhood. I don't want ... and I don't suppose you're very anxious for these yokels to discuss our quarrels in the post-office to-night."

"I don't mind what anybody does," said Pauline desperately. "I only want to be out of this wind--this wind."

She was rather glad that Guy, perhaps to punish her for the loss of control, said he must go and work instead of coming back to tea at the Rectory. It strangely gave her the ability to smile at him and be in their parting herself again, whereas had he come back with her she knew that she would still have felt irritated. Her smile may have abashed his ill-humour, for he seemed inclined to change his mind about the need for work; but she would not let him and hurried towards home at the back of the west wind. Should she ask her sisters if they had seen her in the Abbey? It would be better to wait until they said something first. It would really be best to say nothing about this afternoon. Tea was in the nursery that day, for the Rector was holding some sort of colloquy in the drawing-room which he always used for parochial business, because he dreaded having his seeds scattered by the awkward fingers of the flock.

Tea had not come in yet, and Pauline took her familiar seat in the window, glad to be out of the wind but pondering a little mournfully the lawn mottled with leaves, and the lily-pond that was being seamed and crinkled by every gust that skated across the surface. When the others arrived, Pauline knew that she turned round to greet them defiantly, although she would have given much not to feel excuseful like this.

"You didn't see Monica and me?" Margaret asked.

"Only after you'd gone too far for us to call to you," Pauline answered, nervously a.s.suring herself that Margaret had not tried to 'catch her out,' as Janet would have said.

"We had taken the short cut through the Abbey," Monica explained.

Pauline felt that what Monica meant to say had been: 'we did not spy upon you deliberately.' And that she should have had this instinct of putting her sisters in the wrong prepared her for something unpleasant, that and the fuss her mother was making over the tea-tray. Pauline was more than ever grateful to the impulse which had not allowed Guy to change his mind and come back with her. As soon as tea was over, Margaret and Monica went away to practise a duet; and in the manner of their going from the room Pauline felt the louring of the atmosphere.

Her mother began at once:

"Pauline, I'm surprized at your going into the Abbey with Guy."

"Well, it was really an accident. I mean it was because we wanted not to meet any of the Brydones, who were rushing at us from every side."

Pauline tried to laugh, but her mother looked down at the milk jug and flushed nearly to crimson in the embarra.s.sment of something she was forcing herself to say.

"It's not merely going into the Abbey ... no ... not merely that ... no, not merely going into the Abbey ... but to let Guy make love to you like that is so vulgar. Pauline, it's the sort of way that servants behave when they're in love."

She sprang from the window-seat.

"Mother, what do you mean?"

"Margaret and Monica saw you sitting on Guy's knee. In any case I would rather you never did that. In any case ... yes ... but in a place where people pa.s.sing might have seen ... yes, would have seen ... oh, it was inexcusable.... I shall have to make much stricter rules...."

"Are you going to speak to Guy about this?" Pauline asked. The house seemed to be whirling away like a leaf, such a shattering of her love were these words of her mother.

"How can I speak to Guy about it?" Mrs. Grey demanded irritably. "How can I, Pauline? It has nearly choked me to speak to you."

"I think Monica and Margaret are almost wicked," Pauline cried in flames. "They are trying to destroy everything. They are, they are. No, Mother, you shan't defend them. I knew they felt guilty when they went out of the room like that. How dare they put horrible thoughts in your mind? How dare they? They're cruel to me. And you're cruel to me. I don't understand what's happening to everybody. You'll make me hate you all, if you speak like that."

She rushed from the nursery and went first to the music-room where Margaret was sounding deep notes, hanging over her violoncello, and where Monica was playing one of those contained, somewhat frigid accompaniments.

"Margaret and Monica," said Pauline standing in the doorway. "You're never to dare to speak about me to Mother as you must have spoken this afternoon. Because neither of you have any emotion but conceit and selfishness, you shall not be jealous of Guy and me. Margaret, you can have no heart. I shall write to Richard and tell him you're heartless.