Plashers Mead Part 6

"If you don't like them now, why do you have them? Why not plain white for the walls and no curtains at all, until you can get ones you really do like?"

Pauline was afraid his feelings would be hurt and declared with such transparent dishonesty how greatly she loved everything in the room that Guy, grateful though he was to her intended sweetness, was more discouraged than ever. Monica objected to his having Our Lady on the mantelshelf, and would not admit her as Saint Rose of Lima; but Guy was enough in awe of Monica not to justify the identification with Saint Rose by his desire for a poetic apostrophe. As for Mrs. Grey, she behaved as she always did when Monica and Margaret were being critical--that is, by firing off "charmings!" in a sort of benevolent musketry; but if Guy was not convinced by her "charmings!" he could not resist her when she said:

"I think Guy's room is charming ... charming!"

He felt his room could be an absolute failure if from the ashes of its reputation he were alluded to actually for the first time as "Guy." Gone then was Mr. Hazlewood; fled were those odious "misses." He turned to Pauline and said, momentously, boldly:

"I say, Pauline, you haven't seen my new kitten."

She blushed, and Guy stood breathless with the attainment of the first peak. Then triumphantly he turned to Mrs. Grey:

"Monica and Margaret are very severe, aren't they?"

How easy it was, after all, and he wished he had addressed them directly by their christian names instead of taking refuge in a timid reference.

Now all that was wanting for his pleasure was that Monica, Margaret, or Pauline should call him Guy. He wondered which would be the first. And vaguely he asked himself which he wanted to be the first.

Pauline was talking to Margaret in the bay window.

"Do you remember," she was saying, "when Richard came to look at Plashers Mead and we pretended he was going to take it?"

Margaret frowned at her for answer; but for Guy the afternoon so lately perfected was spoiled again; and when they were gone, all the evening he glowered at phantom Richards who, whether Adonises or Calibans, were all equally obnoxious and more than obnoxious, positively minatory. Next day he felt he had no heart to make an excuse to visit the Rectory; and he was drearily eating some of the cakes of the tea-party when Mr. Brydone and Mr. Willsher paid him their first call. Guy did not think they would appreciate the empty rooms, however eloquently he narrated their future glories; so he led his visitors forthwith to the cakes, listening to the talk of trout and jack. After a while he asked with an elaborate indifference if either of them had lately been round to the Rectory.

"Too clever for me," said Brydone, shaking his head. "Besides, Pauline kicked up a fuss a fortnight ago because we asked if we could have the otter-meet in their paddock."

"They were never sporting, those Rectory kids," said Willsher, gloomily.

"Never," his friend agreed, shaking his head. "Do you remember when Margaret egged on young Richard Ford to punch your head because your old terrier chivied the Greys' cat round the churchyard?"

"I punched _his_ head, I remember," said Willsher in wrathful reminiscence.

"Does Richard Ford live here?" Guy asked.

"His father's the Vicar of Little Fairfield, the next parish, you know.

Richard's gone to India. He's an engineer, awfully nice chap and head over heels in love with the fair Margaret. I believe there's a sort of engagement."

In that moment by the lightening of his heart Guy knew that he was in love with Pauline.

Outside the November night hung humid and oppressive.

"I thought we should get it soon," said Willsher, and as the two friends vanished in the mazy garden Guy, looking up, felt rain falling softly yet with gathering intensity. He stood for a while in his doorway, held by the whispering blackness. Then suddenly in a rapture of realization he slammed the door and, singing at the top of his voice, marched about the hall. Once upon a time "to-morrow" had been wont to drowse him; now the word sounded upon his imagination like a golden trumpet.

WINTER

DECEMBER

The rain which began the day after the Greys' visit to Plashers Mead went on almost without a break for a whole week. December with what it could bring of deadness, gloom, and moisture came drearily down on Wychford, and Pauline, as she sat high in her window-seat, lamented the interminable soak.

"I can't think why Guy hasn't been near the Rectory lately," she grumbled.

"I expect he's tired of us," said Margaret.

"You don't really think so," Pauline contradicted. "You're much, much, _much_ too conceited to think so really."

Margaret laughed.

"You don't mind a bit when I call you conceited," Pauline went on, challenging her sister. "I believe you're so conceited that you're proud even of being conceited. Why doesn't Guy come and see us, I wonder?"

"Why should he come?" Monica asked, rather severely. "Perhaps he's doing some work for a change."

"I believe he's hurt," Pauline declared.

"Hurt?" repeated her sisters.

"Yes, because you were both so frightfully critical of his room. Oh, I _am_ glad that Mother and I aren't critical."

"Well, if he's hurt because I said he oughtn't to have an image of Our Lady on his mantelshelf," said Monica, "I really don't think we need bother any more about him. Was I to encourage him in such stupid little Gothic affectations?"

"Oh, oh!" cried Pauline. "I think he's frightened of you, Monica dear, and of your long sentences, for I'm sure I am."

"He wasn't at all frightened of me," Monica a.s.serted. "Didn't you hear him call me Monica?"

"And surely," Margaret put in, "you didn't really like those stupid mock medieval curtains. No design, just a lot of meaningless fleurs-de-lys looking like spots. It's because I think Guy has got a glimmering of taste that I gave him my honest opinion. Otherwise I shouldn't have bothered."

"No, I didn't like the curtains," Pauline admitted. "But I thought they were rather touching. And, oh, my dears, I can't tell you how touching I think the whole house is, with that poor woman squeezing her way about that enormous kitchen furniture!"

Pauline looked out of the window as she spoke, and there at last was Guy, standing on the lawn with her father, who was explaining something about a root which he held in his hand. On the two of them the rain poured steadily down. Pauline threw up the sash and called out that they were to come in at once.

"I am glad he's.... Why, what's the matter, Margaret?" she asked, as she saw her sister looking at her with an expression of rather emphatic surprise.

"Really," commented Margaret. "I shouldn't have thought it was necessary to soothe his ruffled feelings by giving him the idea that you've been watching at the window all the week for his visit."

"Oh, Margaret, you are unkind," and, since words would all too soon have melted into tears, Pauline rushed from the nursery away to her own white fastness at the top of the house. She did not pause in her headlong flight to greet her mother in the pa.s.sage; nor even when she entangled herself in Janet's ap.r.o.n could she say a word.

"Good gracious, Miss Pauline!" gasped Janet. "And only just now the cat went and run between my legs in the hall."

Pauline's bedroom was immediately over the nursery; but so roundabout was the construction of the Rectory that, to reach the one from the other, all sorts of corridors and twisting stairways had to be pa.s.sed; and when finally she flung herself down in her small arm-chair she was breathless. Soon, however, the tranquillity of the room restored her.

The faded blue linen, so cool to her cheeks, quieted all the pa.s.sionate indignation. On the wall Saint Ursula, asleep in her bed, seemed inconsistent with a proud rage; nor did Tobit, laughing in the angel's company, encourage her to sulk. Therefore, almost before Guy had taken off his wet overcoat, Pauline had rushed down-stairs again, had kissed Margaret, and had put three st.i.tches in the tail of the scarlet bird that occupied her tambour-frame. Certainly when he came into the drawing-room she was as serene as her two sisters, and much more serene than Mrs. Grey, who had just discovered that she had carefully made the tea without a spoonful in the pot, besides mislaying a bottle of embrocation she had spent the afternoon in finding for an old parishioner's rheumatism.

Pauline, however, soon began to worry herself again because Guy was surely avoiding her most deliberately, and not merely avoiding her, but paying a great deal of attention to Margaret. Of course she was glad for him to like Margaret, but Richard out in India must be considered. She could not forget that promise she had made to Richard last June, when they were paddling up-stream into the sunset. Guy was charming; in a way she could be almost as fond of him as of Richard, but what would she say to Richard if she let Guy carry off Margaret? Besides, it was unkind not to have a word for her when she was always such a good listener to his tales of Miss Peasey, and when they could always laugh together at the same absurdities of daily life. Perhaps he had felt that Margaret, who had been so critical over his curtains, must be propitiated--and yet now he was already going without a word to herself; he was shaking hands with her so formally that, though she longed to tease him for wearing silk socks with those heavy brogues, she could not. He seemed to be angry with her ... surely he was not angry because she had Hailed him from the window?

"What was the matter with Guy?" she asked when he was gone, and, when everybody looked at her sharply, Pauline felt herself on fire with blushes, made a wild st.i.tch in the tail of the scarlet bird, and then rushed away to look for the lost embrocation, refusing to hear when they called after her that Mother had been sitting on it all the afternoon.