Plashers Mead Part 8

"Listen," said Guy. "I'm sure I heard a lark singing."

They stopped, and Pauline thought that never was there so sweet a silence as here upon the summit of this green down. Guy's lark could not be heard. There was not even the faint wind that sighs across high country. There was nothing but gorse and turf and a turquoise sky floating on silver deeps and distances above the Winter landscape.

"When the gorse is out of bloom, kissing's out of fashion," he said, pointing to a golden spray.

Pauline had heard the jingle often enough, but spoken solemnly like this by Guy on Wychford down, it flooded her cheeks with blushes, and in a sort of dear alarm the truth of it declared itself. She was startlingly aware of a new life, as it were demanding all sorts of questions of her.

She felt a shyness that nearly drove her to run away from her companion, and yet at the same moment brought a complete incapacity for movement of any kind, an incapacity too that was full of rapture. She longed for him to say something of such convincing ordinariness as would break the spell and prove to her that she was still Pauline Grey; while with all her desire for the spell to be broken, she was wondering if every moment she were not deliberately offering herself to enchantment.

"Have you ever felt," Guy was asking, "a long time after you've met somebody, as if you had suddenly met that person again for the first time?"

Pauline shook her head vaguely. Then with an effort she recaptured her old self and said, laughing:

"But then, you see, I never think about anything."

"Sleeping beauty, sleeping beauty," said Guy.

And with an abrupt change of manner he began to throw sticks for Bob, so that the lucid air was soon loud with continuous barking.

"I wonder if we shall ever meet again on Wychford down?" said Guy, as together they swung along the rolling highroad towards the village.

A horse and trap caught them up before Pauline could answer the speculation, and Mr. G.o.dbold, as he pa.s.sed, wished them both a very good morning.

"G.o.dbold seems extraordinarily interested in us," Guy remarked, when for the third time before he turned the corner Mr. G.o.dbold looked back at them.

"Oh, I wonder...." Pauline began, expressing with her lips sudden apprehension.

"You mean he thought it strange to see us together?"

"People in the country...." she began again.

"Why don't you hurry on alone?" Guy asked. "And I'll come in to Wychford later."

"Don't be stupid. What do the Wychford people matter? Besides, I should hate to do anything like that."

She was half angry with Guy for the suggestion. It seemed to cast a shadow on the morning.

When Pauline got back home she told them all about her meeting with Guy; n.o.body had a word of disapproval, not even Margaret, and the faint malaise of uncertainty vanished.

After tea, however, Mrs. Grey came in, looking rather agitated.

"Pauline," she began at once, "you must not meet Guy alone like that again."

"Oh, darling Mother, you _are_ looking so pink and fl.u.s.tered," said Pauline.

"No, there's nothing to laugh at. Nothing at all. I was most annoyed.

Four of the people I visited actually had the impertinence to ask me if you and Guy were engaged."

Pauline went off into peals of laughter and danced about the room; but when she was alone and thought again of what the gossips were saying, she suddenly realized it was not altogether for Richard's sake that she had dreaded the idea of Guy's falling in love with Margaret.

JANUARY

Plashers Mead and the Rectory were not the only romantic houses in Wychford. Indeed, the little town as a whole had preserved by reason of its remoteness from railways and important highroads the character given to it during the many years of prosperity which lasted until the reign of Charles the First. From that time it had slowly declined; and now with a stagnation that every year was more deeply accentuated by modern conditions it was still declining. New houses were never built, and even the King's Head, a pledge of commercial confidence in the Hanoverian succession, seemed to flaunt with an inappropriate modernity its red bricks mellowed by the pa.s.sage of two centuries. Apart from this rival to the Stag Inn the fabric of Wychford was uniformly gray, to which, notwithstanding Miss Peasey's declaration of sameness, variety was amply secured by the character of the architecture. Gables and mullions; oaken eaves and corbels carefully ornamented; latticed oriels and sashed bows; roofs of steep unequal pitch to which age had often added strange undulations; chimney stacks of stone and Gothic entries--all these gave variety enough; and if the whole effect was too sober for Miss Peasey's taste, the little town on the hillside was now safe for ever from the brightening of the dolls-house spirit.

Wychford could still be called a town, for it possessed a few side-streets, along the gra.s.s-grown cobbles of which there still existed many houses of considerable beauty and dignity. These had lapsed into a more apparent decay, because a dwindling population had avoided their direct exposure to the bleak country and had left them empty. In the High Street this melancholy of bygone fame was less noticeable, and here scarcely a house was unoccupied. Some buildings, indeed, had been degraded to unworthy usages; and it was sad to see Perpendicular fireplaces filled with cheap lines in drapery, or to find an ancient chantry trodden by pigs and fowls. Generally, however, the High Street to the summit of its steep ascent had an air of sedate prosperity that did not reflect the reality of a slow depopulation.

About half-way up the hill on the other side of the town from Plashers Mead and the Rectory was a side-street called Abbey Lane that, instead of leading to open country, was bounded by a high stone wall. This blocked the thoroughfare except so far as to allow a narrow path to skirt its base and give egress along some untidy cottage gardens to a cross-road farther up the hill.

In the middle of the wall confronting the street two columns surmounted with huge round finials showed where there had once been a gate wide enough to admit a coach. Above the wall a belt of high trees obscured the view and gave a dank shadow to the road beneath. At one corner a small wooden wicket with a half-obliterated proclamation of privacy enabled any one to pa.s.s through the wall and enter the grounds of Wychford Abbey. This wicket opened directly on a path that wound through a plantation of yews interspersed with tall beeches and elms, whose overarching tops intensified even in Wintry leaflessness the prevalent gloom. The silence of this plantation made Wychford High Street seem in remembrance a noisy, cheerful place, and the mere crackling of twigs and beech-mast induced the visitor to walk more quietly, fearful of profaning the mysteriousness even by so slight an indication of human presence. The plantation continued in tiers of trees down the hill to the Greenrush, which had been deepened by a dam to support this gloom of overhanging branches with slow and solemn stream. The path, however, kept to the level ground and emerged presently upon a large square of pallescent gra.s.s the farther side of which was bounded by a deserted house.

There were no ruins of the ecclesiastical foundation to fret a Gothic moonlight, but Wychford Abbey did not require these to justify the foreboding approach; and the great Jacobean pile, whose stones the encroaching trees had robbed of warmth and vitality, brooded in the silence with a monstrous ghostliness that was scarcely heightened by the signs of material decay. Nevertheless, the cas.e.m.e.nts whose gla.s.s was filmy like the eyes of blind men or sometimes diced with sinister gaps; the cracks and fissures in the external fabric; the headless supporters of the family coat; and the roof slowly being torn tile from tile by ivy--did consummate the initial impression. Within, the desolation was more marked. A few rotten planks had been nailed across the front door, but these had been kicked down by inquisitive explorers, and the hall remained perpetually open to the weather. In some of the rooms the floors had jagged pits, and there was not one which was not defiled by jackdaws, owls, and bats. Strands of sickly ivy, which had forced an entrance through the windows, clawed the dusty air. A leprosy had infected the plaster ceilings so that the original splendor of their moldings had become meaningless and scarcely any longer discernible; and the marble of the florid mantelpieces was streaked with abominable damp.

The back of the house seemed to go beyond the rest in the expression of utter abandonment. Crumbling walls with manes of ivy inclosed a series of gardens rank with docks and nettles and almost impenetrable on account of the matted briers. As if to add the final touch of melancholy the caretaker (for somewhere in the depths of the house existed ironically a caretaker) had cultivated in this wilderness some dreary patches of potatoes. Beyond the forsaken parterres stretched a great unkempt shrubbery where laurels, peterswort, and hollies struggled in disorderly and overgrown profusion for the pleasure of numberless birds, and where a wide path still maintained its slow diagonal down the hillside to the river's edge.

Such were the surroundings Guy chose to embower the doubts and hesitations that followed close upon the morning when on Wychford down he had been so nearly telling Pauline he loved her. Perhaps the almost savage gloom of this place helped to confirm his profound hopelessness.

A black frost had succeeded the sparkle of Christmastide. The banks of the river in such weather were impossible, for the wind came biting across the water-meadows and piped in the withered reeds and rushes with an intolerable melancholy. Here in the grounds of Wychford Abbey there was comparative warmth, and the desolation suited the unfortunate end he was predicting for his hopes. To begin with, it was extremely improbable that Pauline cared about him. His a.s.say with regard to Richard had not been encouraging, and his worst fears of being too late for real inclusion within the charm of the Rectory were surely justified. He had known all along how much exaggerated were his ambitions, and he wished now that in the first moment of their springing he had ruthlessly strangled them. Moreover, even if Pauline did ultimately come to care for him, how much farther was he advanced upon the road of a happy issue? It were presumptuous and absurd with only 150 a year to propose marriage, and if he gave up living here and became a schoolmaster at home, he knew that the post would be made conditional upon a willingness to wait as many years for marriage as the wisdom of age decreed.

Besides, he could not take Pauline from Wychford and imprison her at Fox Hall to dose little boys with Gregory's Powder or check the schedule of their underclothing. The only justification for taking Pauline away from the Rectory would be to make her immortal in poetry. Yet encouraging as lately one or two epithets had certainly been, he was still far from having written enough to fill even a very thin book; and really as he came to review the past three months he could not say that he had done much more or much better than in the days when Plashers Mead was undiscovered. Time had lately gone by very fast, not merely on account of the jolly days at the Rectory, but also because weeks that were terminated by weekly bills seemed to be endowed with a double swiftness.

"I really must eat less meat," said Guy to himself. "It's ridiculous to spend eleven shillings and sixpence every week on meat ... that's roughly 30 a year. Why, it's absurd! And I don't eat it. Bother Miss Peasey! What an appet.i.te she has got."

He wondered if he could break through the barrier of his housekeeper's deafness so far as to impress upon her the fact that she ate too much meat. She spent too much, also, on small things like pepper and salt.

This reckless buying of pepper and salt made the grocer's bill an eternal irritation, for it really seemed absurd to be spending all one's money on pepper and salt. Yet people did live on 150 a year. Coleridge had married with less than that and apparently had got on perfectly well, or would have if he had not been foolish in other ways. How on earth was it done? He really must try and find out how much, for instance, Birdwood spent every week on the necessities of life. That was the worst of Oxford ... one came down without the slightest idea of the elementary facts of domestic economy. There had been a lot of soda bought last week. He remembered seeing it in one of those horrid little slippery tradesmen's books. Soda? What was it for? Vaguely Guy thought it was used to soften water, but there were plenty of rain-tubs at Plashers Mead, and soda must be an unjustifiable extravagance. Then Miss Peasey herself was getting 18 a year. It seemed very little--so little, indeed, that when he paid her every month he felt inclined to apologize for the smallness of the amount, but little as it was it only left him with 132. Knock off 30 for meat and he had 102; 18 must go in rent, and there was left 84. Then there was milk and bread and taxes and the subscription to the cricket-club and the subscription to all the other vice-presidencies to which the town had elected him. There was also Graves, his deaf-and-dumb gardener, and a new bucket for the well. Books and clothes, of course, could be obtained on credit, but even so some time or other bills came in. Guy made a number of mental calculations, but by no device was he able to make the amount required come to less than 82. That left 2 for Pauline, and then, by the way, there was the dog-license which he had forgotten. Thirty-two and sixpence for Pauline!

Guy roamed through the sad arbors of Wychford Abbey in the depths of depression, and watched with a cynical amus.e.m.e.nt the birds searching for grubs in the iron ground. He began to feel a positive sense of injury against love which had descended with proverbial wantonness to complicate mortal affairs. He tried to imagine the Rectory without Pauline, and when he did so all the attraction was gone. Yet distinctly when he had first met the Greys he had not thought more often of Pauline than of her sisters. What perversity of circ.u.mstance had introduced love?

"It's being alone," said Guy. "I feed myself upon dreams. Michael was perfectly right. Wychford is a place of dreams."

He would cure this love-sickness. That was an idea for a sonnet. d.a.m.n!

"_I attempt from love's sickness to fly._" It need not be said again. At the same time, poem or not, he would avoid the Rectory and shut himself close in that green room which Margaret and Monica had thought so crude with undergraduate taste. If this cold went on, there would be skating; and he began to picture Pauline upon the ice. The vision flashed like a diamond through these gloomy groves, and with the soughing of the skates in his ears and the thought of Pauline's hands crisscross in his own, Guy's first attack on love ended in complete surrender. Skating meant long talks with never a curious eye to cast dismay; and in long talks and rhythmic motion possibly she might come to love him. Guy's footsteps began to ring out upon the iron-bound walk, and of all the sad ghosts that should have haunted his path there was not one who walked now beside him; for, as he dreamed upon the vision of Pauline, the melancholy of that forsaken place was lightened with a sort of April exultation and the promise of new life to gladden the once populous gardens where lovers might have been merry in the past.

However, when he was back in his house, Guy's earlier mood returned, and he made up his mind anew not to go to the Rectory. Nothing would do for him but the metaphysics and pa.s.sion of Dr. John Donne; and on the dreary evening when the frost yielded to rain before there had been one day's skating, Guy was as near as any one may ever have been to conversing with that old lover's ghost who died before the G.o.d of Love was born.

All his plans wore mourning, and the bills that week rose two-and-sixpence-halfpenny higher than their highest total so far. Guy moped in his green library and, as he read through the ma.n.u.scripts of poetry that with the progress of the night seemed to him worse and worse, he wished he could recapture some of that self-confidence which had carried him so serenely through Oxford; and he asked himself if Pauline's love would endow him once more with that conviction of ultimate fame, to the former safe tenure of which he now looked back as from a disillusioned old age.

Another week pa.s.sed, and Guy wondered what they were thinking of him at the Rectory for his neglect of all they might justly suppose had been offered him. Absence from Pauline did not seem to have effected much so far except a complete paralysis of his power to work with that diligence he had always preached as the true threshold of art. Perhaps he had been always a little too insistent upon the merit of academic industry, too conscious of a deliberate embarkation upon a well-built career, too careful of mere equipment in his exploration of Parna.s.sus. So long as he had been exercising his technical accomplishment, everything had seemed to be advancing securely towards the moment when inspiration should vitalize the promise of his craftsmanship. Now inspiration was at hand, and accomplishment had betrayed him. These effusions of restless love which he had lately produced were surely the most wretched cripples ever sent to climb the Heliconian slope. Guy looked at his note-book and marked how many apostrophes, the impulses to declaim which had seemed to scorch his imagination with bright ardors, had, alas, failed to kindle his uninflammable pencil. He derived a transient consolation from Browning's "Pauline," which was surely as inadequate as his own verse to celebrate the name. "_Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me._" That opening half-line was the only one which moved him. But, after all, Browning did not esteem his own Pauline, and had written it when he was twenty.

Himself was twenty-two, and could not declare his pa.s.sion in one lyric.

A graceful sonnet for his father's birthday would not compensate for this dismaying failure. Moreover, in rhymes, thought Guy, Pauline was no n.i.g.g.ard; and with a flicker of sardonic humor he recalled how many Swinburne had found for Faustine.

It was G.o.dbold who fed the vexations and torments of untried love with the bitterest medicine of all. He had come down to see Guy about an old chair that had to be fetched from a neighboring village, and, when his business was over, seemed inclined to chat for a while.

"Have you ever noticed, Mr. Hazlewood," he began, "as there's a lot of people in this world who know more than a man knows himself?"

Guy indicated that the fact had struck him.

"Well, now, just because I happen to see you with Miss Pauline the other morning, there's half a dozen wise gabies in Wychford who've almost married you to her out of hand."

Guy tried not to look annoyed.

"Oh, you may well frown, Mr. Hazlewood, for, as I said to them, it's nothing more than nonsense to tie up a young man and a young woman just because they happen to take a walk together on a fine morning."