Plashers Mead Part 31

"Very rarely, I'm afraid, in this world."

"Do they in the next, then?" asked Guy, a little harshly, hating the conventionality of the answer that seemed to crystallize the intellectual dishonesty of a dominie's existence. He knew that the next world was merely an arid postulate which served for a few theorems and problems of education, and that duty and desire must only be kept apart on account of the hierarchical formulas of his craft. He must eternally appear as half inhuman as all the rest of the Pharisees: priests, lawyers, and schoolmasters, they were all alike in relying for their livelihood upon a capacity for depreciating human nature.

"I was merely using a figure of speech," said his father.

Exactly, thought Guy, and how was he ever to justify his love for Pauline to a man whose opinions could never be expressed except in figures of speech? He made up his mind to postpone the visit to the Rectory until to-morrow. Evidently it was not going to be made even moderately easy to broach the subject of Pauline.

"I expect you'd like to have a look at some of my work," he suggested.

"Very much," said Mr. Hazlewood; and in a moment with his dry a.s.sent he had reduced all his son's achievement to the level of a fifth-form composition. Guy took the ma.n.u.scripts out of his desk, and, disengaging from the heap any poems that might be ascribed to the influence of Pauline, he presented the rest to his father. Mr. Hazlewood settled himself as comfortably as he could ever seem to be comfortable and solemnly began to read without comment. Guy would have liked to get up and leave him alone, for though he a.s.sured himself that the opinion, whether favorable or unfavorable, did not matter, his suspense was sharp and the inexpression of his father's demeanor, that a.s.sumption of tutorial impartiality, kept him puzzling and unable to do anything but watch the critic's face and toy mechanically with the hair of Bob's sentimental head upon his knee.

At last the ma.n.u.scripts were finished, and Guy sat back for the verdict.

"Oh yes, I like some very much," said Mr. Hazlewood. "But I can't help thinking that all of them could have been written as well in recreation after the arduousness of a decent profession. However, you've burned your boats as far as Fox Hall is concerned, and I shall certainly be the first to congratulate you if you bring your ambition to a successful issue."

"You mean monetarily?" Guy asked.

His father did not answer.

"You wouldn't count as a successful issue recognition from the people who care for poetry?" Guy went on.

"I'm not particularly impressed by contemporary taste," said Mr.

Hazlewood. "We seem to me to be living in a time when all the great men have gone, and the new generation does not appear likely to fill very adequately the gap they have left."

"I wonder if there has ever been a time when people have not said just what you're saying? Do you seriously think you'd recognize a great man if you saw him?"

"I hope I should," said his father, looking perfectly convinced that he would.

"Well, I don't believe you would," said Guy. "How do you know I'm not a great man?"

His father laughed dryly.

"I don't know, my dear Guy, of course, and nothing would gratify me more than to find out that you were. But, at least, you'll allow me to observe that _great_ men are generally remarkable for their modesty."

"Yes, after they've been accorded the homage of the world," Guy argued.

"They can afford to be modest then. I fancy that most of them were self-confident in their youth. I hope they were, poor devils. It must have been miserable for most of them, if they weren't."

"However," said Mr. Hazlewood, "all these theories of juvenile grandeur, interesting though they may be, do not take us far along the road of practical politics. I'm to understand, am I, that you are quite determined to remain here?"

"For another year, at any rate," Guy said. "That is, until I have a volume of poems ready."

"And your engagement?" asked his father.

Guy smiled to himself. It was a minor triumph, but it was definitely a triumph to have made his father be the first to mention the subject that had stood at the back of their minds ever since they met on the Shipcot platform.

"Look here, before we discuss that I want you to see Pauline. I think you'll understand my point of view more clearly after you've seen her.

Now wouldn't you like to take a stroll round Wychford? The architecture...."

Guy and his father wandered about until dusk, and in the evening after dinner they played piquet.

"I suppose you wouldn't enjoy a walk in the moonlight?" Guy suggested, after the third hand.

"I have my health to think about. Term begins in a fortnight, you know,"

said Mr. Hazlewood.

Guy had pulled back the curtains and was watching the full moon. This, though ten days short of the actual anniversary, was the lunary festival of the night when he first saw Pauline. Might it be accepted as a propitious omen? Who could say? They talked of dull subjects until it was time to go to bed.

Guy had sent a note to Mrs. Grey, suggesting that he should bring his father to tea next day; and so about four o'clock they set out to the Rectory, the lover in great trepidation of spirit. His father was seeming much more than ever parched and inhuman, and Guy foresaw that his effect upon Pauline would be disastrous. Nor did he feel that the strain upon his own nerves was going to be the best thing for the situation. On the way to the Rectory they met young Brydone, and Guy very nearly invited him to accompany them, in a desperate impulse to evoke a crowd in which he could lose this disturbing consciousness of his father's presence. However, he managed to avoid such a subversion of his att.i.tude; and in a few minutes they were in the hall of the Rectory, where Mrs. Grey, as nervously agitated as she could be, was welcoming them. Luckily Margaret had arrived on the scene before Pauline, and Guy managed to place his father next to her, while he took up the task of trying to compose Mrs. Grey. At last Pauline came in, and Guy seemed to be only aware of a tremendous increase in the noise of the conversation.

He realized that it was due to himself's talking nonsense at the top of his voice and that Pauline was vainly trying to get on with his father.

Monica had gone to look for the Rector, and Mrs. Grey was displaying the kind of treasures she would produce at a mothers' meeting--treasures to which his father paid but the most scant attention. The whole room seemed to revolve round his father, who for Guy had become the only person in focus, as he stood there parched and inhuman, and perhaps himself a little shy of what he was evidently supposing to be a very mad family. Guy, so miserable was he feeling at his father's coldness of manner towards the Greys, wished pa.s.sionately that his mother were alive, because he knew how much she would have appreciated them. Monica had now come back with information that the Rector was undiscoverable, so Mrs. Grey volunteered to show Mr. Hazlewood the garden.

"She'll tell you all the flowers wrong," Pauline warned him.

Mr. Hazlewood bowed.

"I'm afraid I know nothing about flowers."

"Guy has learned a lot from Father," said Pauline. "Haven't you, Guy?"

She was making the bravest effort, but it was hopeless, utterly hopeless, Guy thought.

How the promenade round these gardens that were haunted with his and her delights was banishing them one by one! How endless it was, and how complete was the failure to incorporate his father in a life which his advent had so detestably disturbed! Guy acknowledged that the meeting between him and Pauline had served no purpose, and as he looked forward to the final battle between their wills this evening, he set his teeth with rage to defeat his father, at the moment caring not at all if he never saw him again.

Guy knew, as they were walking back to Plashers Mead, how little worth while it was to ask what his father had thought of the Greys; but, nevertheless, he could not resist the direct inquiry.

"They seem a very happy-go-lucky family," was the reply. "I thought it extremely strange that Mr. Grey did not take the trouble to be at home for my visit. I should have thought that in regard to his daughter's future I might be considered sufficiently.... However, it's all of a piece."

Guy hated the mock-modest lacuna in the characterization, and he thought of the many schoolmasters he had known whose consciousness of external opinion never allowed them to claim a virtue for themselves, although their least action always contained an implication of merit.

Guy made some excuse for the Rector's absence and rather moodily walked on beside his father. The battle should be to-night; and after dinner he came directly to the point.

"I hope you like Pauline?"

"My dear Guy, your impulsiveness extends too far. How can I, after a few minutes' conversation, p.r.o.nounce an opinion?"

"But she's not a pathological case," cried Guy in exasperation.

"Precisely," retorted his father. "And therefore I pay her the compliment of not rushing into headstrong approval or disapproval.

Certainly she seemed to me superficially a very charming girl, but I should be inclined to think somewhat excitable."

"Of course she was shy."

"Naturally. These sudden immersions in new relationships do not make for ease. I was myself a little embarra.s.sed. But, after all, the question is not whether I like--er--Pauline, but whether I am justified on her account as well as on yours in giving my countenance to this ridiculous engagement. Please don't interrupt me. My time is short, and I must, as your father, fulfil my obligations to you by saying what I have to say."

Even in his speech he was epistolary, and while he spoke Guy was all the time, as it were, tearing him into small pieces and dropping him deliberately into the waste-paper basket.

"Had I been given an opportunity," his father went on, "of speaking privately with Mr. Grey, I should have let him plainly understand how much I deplored your unjustifiable embarkation upon this engagement. You have, frankly, no right to engage yourself to a girl when you are without the means to bring the pledge to fruition. You possess, it is true, an income of 150 a year--too little to make you really independent, too much to compel you to relinquish your own mad scheme of livelihood.

"I have had the privilege of reading your verse," he continued, protesting against an interruption with upraised hand. "Well, I am glad enough to say that it seems to me promising; but what is promising verse? A few seedlings in a flower-pot that even if they come to perfection will serve no purpose but of decoration. It is folly or mere wanton self-deception for you to pretend that you can live by poetry.