Plashers Mead Part 14

"Always be happy," she said.

Even Monica whispered to him that he was lucky, and Guy was so deeply impressed at being whispered to by Monica that it gave him a little courage for his interview. He joined the Rector in the garden punctually at two, and worked hard with labels and cla.s.sifications.

"_A7_," the Rector read out. "_A lavender twice as big as Lady Grizel Hamilton. D21. An orange that will not burn._ Humph! I don't believe it.

Do you believe that, Birdwood?"

The gardener shook his head.

"There never was an orange as didn't burn like a house on fire the moment the sun set eyes on it."

"Of course it'll burn, and, anyhow, there's no such thing as an orange sweet-pea. If there is, it's Henry Eckford."

"Henry isn't orange," said Birdwood. "Leastways not an orange like you get at Christmas."

"More buff?"

"Buff as he can be," said Birdwood. "What do you think, Mr. Hazlenut?"

he went on, turning to Guy and winking very hard.

"I really don't know him ... it...." said Guy.

"_O5_," the Rector began again. "_A cream and rose picotee Spenser._ Yes, I dare say," he commented. "And with about as much smell as distilled water."

So the business went on, with Guy on tenterhooks all the while for his own summing-up by the Rector. He thought the moment was arrived when Birdwood was sent off on an errand and when the Rector, getting up from his kneeler, began to shake the trowel at him impressively. But all he said was:

"Tingitana's plumping up magnificently. And we'll have some flowers in three weeks--the first I shall have had since the Diamond Jubilee. Sun!

Sun!"

Guy jumped at the apostrophe, so nearly did it approximate to "son-in-law." But of this relation nothing was said, and now Pauline was calling out that tea was ready.

"Go in, my dear fellow," said the Rector. "I've still a few things to do in the garden. By the way, was your father at Trinity, Oxford?"

"No, he was at Exeter."

"Ah, then I didn't know him. I knew a Hazlewood at Trinity."

The Rector turned away to business elsewhere, and Guy was left to puzzle over his casual allusion. Perhaps he ought to have raised the subject of being in love with Pauline, for which purpose the Rector may have given him an opening. Or did this inquiry about his father portend a letter to him from the Rector about his son's prospects? He certainly ought to have said something to make the Rector realize how much tact would be necessary in approaching his father. Pauline called again from the nursery window, and Guy hurried off to join the rest of the family at tea.

In the drawing-room Mrs. Grey, Monica, and Margaret all seemed anxious to show their pleasure in Pauline's happiness; and Guy in the a.s.surance this old house gave him of a smooth course for his love ceased to worry any longer about parental problems and was content to live in the merry and intimate present. He realized how far he was advanced in his relation to the family when Brydone, the doctor's son, came in to call.

Guy took a malicious delight in his stilted talk, as for half an hour he tried to explain to Monica, a grave and abstracted listener, how the pike would in March go up the ditches and the shallow backwaters, and what great sport it was to snare them with a copper noose suspended from a long pole. There was, too, that triumphant moment he had long desired, when Brydone, rising to take his leave, asked if Guy were coming and when he was able to reply casually that he was not coming just yet.

After tea Guy and Pauline, as if by an impulse that occurred to both of them simultaneously, begged Margaret to come and talk in the nursery.

She seemed pleased that they wanted her; and the three of them spent the time till dinner in looking at the old familiar things of childhood--at photographs of Monica and Margaret and Pauline in short frocks; at tattered volumes scrawled in by the fingers of little girls.

"I wish I'd known you when you were small," sighed Guy. "How wasted all these years seem."

The gong went suddenly, and Margaret said that of course to-night he would stay to dinner.

So once again he was staying to dinner, and now on such terms as would make this an occasion difficult to forget. As he waited alone in the lamplit nursery, while Margaret and Pauline were dressing, he kissed Pauline in each faded picture stuck in those gay sc.r.a.p-books of Varese.

Nor did he feel the least ashamed of himself, although at Oxford his cynicism had been the admiration even of Balliol, where there had been no one like him for tearing sentiment into dishonored rags. When the Rector came in to dinner, carrying with him a dusty botanical folio that swept all the gla.s.s and silver from his end of the table to huddle in the center, Guy tried to make out if he were very much depressed by his not having yet gone home.

"Dear me," said the Rector, "I was sure I had seen it in here."

"Seen what, Francis?" asked his wife.

"A plant you wouldn't know. A Cilician crocus.

"Isn't Father sweet?" said Pauline. "Because, of course, Mother never knows any plant."

"What nonsense, Pauline! Of course I know a crocus."

Towards the end of dinner Mrs. Grey said, rather nervously:

"Francis dear, wouldn't you like to drink Pauline's health?"

"Why, with pleasure," said the Rector. "Though she looks very well."

Pauline jumped in her chair with delight at this, but Mrs. Grey waved her into silence and said:

"And Guy's health, too?"

The Rector courteously saluted him; but the guest feared there was an undernote of irony in the bow.

After dinner when Monica, Margaret, and Pauline were preparing for a trio, Mrs. Grey said confidentially to Guy:

"You mustn't expect Francis--the Rector to realize at once that you and Pauline are engaged. And, of course, it isn't exactly an engagement yet.

You mustn't see her too often. You're both so young. Indeed, as Francis said, children really."

Then the trio began, and Guy in the tall Caroline chair lived every note that Pauline played on her violin, demanding of himself what he had done to deserve her love. He looked round once at Mrs. Grey in the other chair, and marked her beating time while like his own her thoughts were all for Pauline. In the heart of that music Guy was able to say anything, and he could not resist leaning over and whispering to Mrs.

Grey:

"I adore her."

"So do I," said the mother, breaking not a bar in her beat and gazing with soft eyes at that beloved player.

When the music stopped Guy felt a little embarra.s.sed by the remembrance of his unreserved avowal; yet evidently it had seemed natural to Mrs.

Grey, for when he was saying good-by in the hall she whispered to Pauline that she could walk with Guy a short way along the drive. His heart leaped to the knowledge that here at last was the final sanction of his love for her. Pauline flung round her shoulders that white frieze coat in which he had first beheld her under the moon, misty, autumnal, a dream within a dream; and now they were actually walking together. He touched her arm half-timidly, as if even so light a gesture could destroy this moment.

"Pauline, Pauline!"

He saw her clear eyes in the February starshine, and, folding her close, he kissed her mouth. When he woke he was home; and for hours he sat entranced, knowing that never again for as long as he lived would he feel upon his lips as now the freshness of Pauline's first kiss.

The rest of that February went by with lengthening eyes that died on the dusky riot of blackbirds in the rhododendrons. Here and there in mossy corners primroses were come too soon, seeming all aghast and wan to behold themselves out of the cloistral earth, while the buds of the daffodils were still upright and would not hang their heads till driven by the wooing of the windy March sun.

The gray-eyed virginal month, that is of no season and must as often bear the malice of Winter's retreat as the ruffianly onset of Spring, had now that very seriousness which suited Guy's troth.

Rules had been made with which neither he nor Pauline were discontented, and so through all that February Guy went twice a week to the Rectory and counted himself rich in Mrs. Grey's promise that he and Pauline should sometimes be allowed, when the season was full-fledged, to go for walks together. At present, however, the Rectory garden must be a territory large enough for their love.

These first encounters were endowed with perhaps not much more than the excitement of what were in a way superficial observations, since neither of them was yet attempting to sound any deeps in the other's character.