Plashers Mead Part 29

In the dusty room among the ghosts of dead seasons and the moldering store ama.s.sed by the suns of other years, they stood locked, heart to heart.

Before Guy went home that night, when they were lingering in the hall, he told Pauline that the next thing to be done was to write to his own father.

"Guy, do you think he'll like me?"

"Why, how could he help it? But he may grumble at the idea of my being engaged."

"When do you think he'll write?"

"I expect he'll come down here to see me. In the Spring he wrote and said he would."

"Guy, I'm sure he's going to make it difficult for you."

Guy shook his head.

"I know how to manage him," he proclaimed, confidently.

Then he opened the door; along the drive the wind moaned, getting up for a gusty Bartlemy-tide.

Pauline stood in the lighted doorway, letting the light shine upon him until he was lost in the shadows of the tall trees, sending, as he vanished, one more kiss down the wind to her.

"Are you happy to-night?" asked her mother, bending over Pauline when she was in bed.

"Oh, Mother darling, I'm so happy that I can't tell you how happy I am."

In the candle-light her new ring sparkled; and when her mother was gone she put beside it the crystal ring, and it seemed to sparkle still more.

Pauline was in such a mood of tenderness to everything that she petted even her pillow with a kind of affection, and she had the contentment of knowing she was going to meet sleep as if it were a great benignant figure that was bending to hear her tale of happy love.

ANOTHER AUTUMN

SEPTEMBER

Guy became much occupied with the best way of breaking to his father the news of his engagement. He wished it were his marriage of which he had to inform him; for there was about marriage such a beautiful finality of spilled milk that the briefest letter would have settled everything. If now he wrote to announce an engagement, he ran the risk of his father's refusal to come and pay him that visit on which he was building such hopes from the combined effect of Pauline and Plashers Mead in restoring to the schoolmaster the bright mirror of his own youth. It would scarcely be fair to the Greys to introduce him while he was still ignorant of the relation in which he was supposed to stand to them, for they could scarcely be expected to regard him as a man to be humored up to such a point. After all, it was not as if he in his heart looked to his father for practical help; in reality he knew already that the engagement would meet with his opposition, notwithstanding Pauline ...

notwithstanding Plashers Mead. Perhaps it would be better to write and tell him about it; if he came it would obviate an awkward explanation and there could be no question of false pretenses; if he declined to come, no doubt he would write such a letter as would justify his son in holding him up to the Greys as naturally intractable. Indeed, if it were not that he knew how sensitive Pauline was to the paternal benediction, he would have made no attempt to present him at all.

His father kept him waiting over a week before he replied to the announcement Guy had ultimately decided to send him; and when it came, the letter did not promise the most favorable prospect.

FOX HALL, GALTON, HANTS, _September 1st_.

DEAR GUY,--I have taken a few days to think over the extraordinary news you have seen fit to communicate. I hope I am not so far removed from sympathy with your aspirations as not to be able to understand almost anything you might have to tell me about yourself. But this I confess defeats my best intentions, setting as it does a crown on all the rest of your acts of folly. I tried to believe that your desire to write poetry was merely a pa.s.sing whim. I tried to think that your tenancy of this house was not the behavior of a thoughtless and wilful young man. I was most anxious, as I clearly showed (i) by my gift of 150, (ii) by my offer of a post at Fox Hall, to put myself in accord with your ambition; and now you write and tell me after a year's unprofitable idling that you are engaged to be married! I admit as a minute point in your favor you do not suggest that I should help you to tie yourself for life to the fancy of a young man of just twenty-three. Little did I think when I wrote to wish you many happy returns of the 20th of August, although you had previously disappointed me by your refusal to help me out of a nasty difficulty, little did I think that my answer was going to be this piece of reckless folly. May I ask what her parents are thinking of, or are they so blinded by your charms as to be willing to allow this daughter of theirs to wait until the income you make by selling your poetry enables you to get married? 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 savor 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? Four pounds sixteen shillings, and there was a blank counterfoil which Guy vaguely thought represented a cheque for two pounds. 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. Two pounds sixteen shillings was not much to spend on furnishing 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 wabbled 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 thrashing, 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 reveling, 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 Shipcot.

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.