Plashers Mead Part 43

MARCH

When the poems were returned by three publishers within the first fortnight of March, Guy was inclined to surrender his vocation and to think about such regular work as would banish the reproach he began to fancy was now perceptible at the back of everybody's eyes. The weather was abominably cold, and even Plashers Mead itself was no longer the embodiment of the old enthusiasm. Already in order to pay current expenses he was drawing upon the next quarter, and the combination of tradesmen's books with icy draughts curling through the house produced an atmosphere of perpetual exasperation. It always seemed to be coldest on Monday morning, and Miss Peasey _would_ breathe over his shoulder while he was adding up the bills.

"We apparently live on b.u.t.ter," he grumbled.

"Oh no, it was really lamb you had yesterday," the housekeeper maintained, irrelevantly.

"I said we apparently live on b.u.t.ter," Guy shouted.

Then, of course Miss Peasey _would_ poke her veiny nose right down into the book, while the draught blew her hair about and unpleasantly tickled his cheek.

"It's the best b.u.t.ter," she said, sorrowfully, at last.

"But my watch is quite all right."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I made an allusion to _Alice in Wonderland_," he shouted.

Miss Peasey retired from the room in dudgeon, and Guy wasted ten minutes in examining various theories on what his housekeeper could have thought he meant by his last remark. Finally he wrote off to a friend of his, an ardent young Radical peer with whom he had shared rooms at Oxford.

PLASHERS MEAD, WYCHFORD, OXON, _March 15th_.

DEAR COM,--Why the d.i.c.kens haven't you written to me for such ages? I'm going to chuck this place. Haven't you got any scheme on hand for teaching the democracy to find out the uselessness of your order? Why not a new critical weekly with me as bondslave-in-chief? Or doesn't one of your National Liberals want a bright young fellow to dot his i's and pick up his h's? For 250 a year I'll serve any of them, write his speeches, interview his const.i.tuents or even teach his cubs to prey on the body politic like Father Lion himself. Seriously, though, if you hear of anything, do think of me.

Yours ever, G. H.

Comeragh wrote back at once:

420 BROOK STREET, W., _March 16th_.

DEAR OLD GUY,--If you will bury yourself like a misanthropic badger, you can't expect to be written to by every post. Oddly enough there has been some talk of starting a new paper; at least it isn't really very odd because the subject is mooted three times a day in the advanced political circles round which I revolve.

However, just at present the scheme is in abeyance. Never mind, I'll fetch you out of your earth at the first excuse that offers itself. Do you ever go in and see the Balliol people? My young brother's up now, you know. Ask him over to lunch some day. He's a shining light of Tory Democracy and is going to preserve, or I suppose I ought to say conserve, the honor of our family. When are your poems coming out? I heard from Tom Anstruther the other day.

He seems rather hurt that an attache at Madrid is not given an opportunity of adjusting or upsetting the balance of power in Europe. I'll try to get down for a week-end, but I'm betraying my order by voting against an obscurantist majority whenever I can, and plotting hard against the liberties of landowners when I'm not voting. However, when the House flies away to search for Summer I'll drop out of the flock and perch a while on your roof.

One thing I will promise, which is that when I'm Prime Minister you shall be offered the Laurel at 200 a year.

Yours ever, COM.

It was jolly to hear from Comeragh like this, and the letter opened for Guy a prospect of something that, when he came to think about it, appeared very much like a retreat. He realized abruptly that the strain of the last two months had been playing upon his nerves to such an extent that the notion of leaving Wychiford was no longer very distasteful. The realization of his potential apostasy came with rather a shock, and he felt that he ought somehow to atone to Pauline for the disloyalty towards her his att.i.tude seemed to involve. He began to go to church again in a desperate endeavor to pursue the phantom that she called faith, but this very endeavor only made more apparent the vital difference in their relations with life. She always had for his attempts to capture something worth while for himself in religion a kind of questioning anxiety which was faintly irritating; and though he always pushed the problem hastily out of sight, the fact that he could now be irritated by her was dolefully significant.

All through this month of maddening east wind Guy felt that he stood upon the verge of a catastrophe, and the despatch of the poems which at first had done so much to help matters along was now only another source of vexation. Formerly he had always possessed the refuge of work, but in this perpetual uncertainty he could not settle down to anything fresh, and the expectation every morning of his poems being once again rejected was a handicap to the whole day. Partly to plunge himself into a reaction and partly to avoid and even to crush their spiritual divergence, Guy always made love pa.s.sionately to Pauline during these days. He was aware that she was terribly tried by this, but the knowledge made him more selfishly pa.s.sionate. A sort of brutality had entered into their relation which Guy hated, but to which in these circ.u.mstances that made him feverishly glad to wound her he allowed more liberty every day. The merely physical side of this struggle between them was, of course, accentuated by the gag placed upon discussion. He would not give her the chance of saying why she feared his kisses, and he took an unfair advantage of the conviction that Pauline would never declare a reason until he demanded one. He was horribly conscious of abusing her love for him, and the more he was aware of that the more brutal he showed himself until sometimes he used to wonder in dismay if at the back of his mind the impulse to destroy his love altogether had not been born.

Easter was approaching, and Pauline went to Oxford for a week to get Summer clothes. When she came back, Guy found her att.i.tude changed. She was remote, almost evasive, and at the back of her tenderest glance was now a wistful appeal that perplexed his ardor.

"I feel you don't want me to kiss you," he said, reproachfully. "What has happened? Why have you come back from Oxford so cold? What has happened to you, Pauline?"

Her eyes took fire, melted into tenderness, flamed once more, and then were quenched in rising tears.

The voice in which she answered him seemed to come from another world.

"Guy, I am not cold.... I'm not cold enough...."

She flung herself away from his gesture of endearment and buried her cheeks in the cushion of the faded old settee. A wild calm had fallen upon the room, as if like the atmosphere before a thunder-storm it could register a warning of the emotional tempest at hand. The books, the furniture, the very pattern of birds and daisies upon the wall stood out sharply, almost luridly it seemed; the cuckoo from the pa.s.sage called the hour in notes of alarm, as if a storm-c.o.c.k were sweeping up to cover from dangerous open country.

"What do you mean?" Guy asked. He knew that he was carrying the situation between Pauline and himself farther along than he had ever taken it since the night they met. Yet nothing could have stopped his course at this moment and, if the end should ruin his life, he would persist.

"What do you mean?" he repeated.

"Don't ask me," she sobbed. "It's cruel to ask me."

"You mean your mother...." he began.

"No, no, it's myself, myself."

"My dearest, if it's only yourself, you need not be afraid. Why, you're so adorable...."

Pauline seemed to cry out at the wound he had given her, and Guy started back, afraid for an instant of what he was provoking.

"Don't treat me like a stupid little girl that petting can cure. I'm not adorable, I'm bad.... I'm ... oh, Guy, I am so unhappy!"

"What do you mean by 'bad'?" he asked. "You talk as if we were....

Really, darling, you don't grasp life at all."

"Guy," she said, turning to him with fierce earnestness, "don't persuade me I've done nothing. I have. I ought not. I've known that all the time.

If you don't want me to be miserable for the rest of my life, you mustn't persuade me. I've been so weak...."

He was annoyed at the exaggeration in her words and perplexed by her violence.

"Anybody would think, you know," he told her, "that we have behaved terribly."

"We have. We have."

Her mouth was drawn with pain; her eyes were wild.

"But we've not," Guy contradicted, mustering desperately all the forces of normality to allay Pauline's over-strained ideas. "We've not," he repeated. "You don't understand, darling Pauline, that when you talk like that you give the impression of something that is unimaginable of you. It's dreadful to have to talk about this, but it's better that we should discuss it than that you should torture yourself needlessly like this."

"It's not what we've done so much," she said. "It's what you've made me think about you."

Guy laughed rather miserably.

"That seems a very trifling reason for so much ... well, you know, it's very nearly hysteria."

"To you, perhaps," she retorted, bitterly. "To me it's like madness."

"I can't understand these morbid fancies of yours. What have you been doing in Oxford? Ah, I know," he shouted, in a rage of sudden divination. "You've been talking to a priest.... Oh, if I could burn every interfering scoundrel who...." The scene swept over him, choking the words in his throat with indignant impotent jealousy. "You've been to Confession. And what good have you got from it, but lies, lies?"