"Father, you do realize, don"t you, because you are being so naughty, but you do realize that from to-day we are really engaged?"
"Only from to-day?" the Rector asked, a twinkle in his eye.
"Well, of course," Pauline explained. "We"ve been in love for very nearly a year."
"And when have you decided to get married?"
Pauline looked at Guy.
"We thought in about two years, Sir," said Guy. "That is, of course, as soon as I"ve published my first book. Perhaps in a year really."
"Just when you find it convenient in fact," said the Rector still twinkling.
"Well, Father," Pauline interrupted, "have we got your permission?
Because that"s what we"ve come up to ask."
"You surprize me," said the Rector, starting back with an exaggerated look of astonishment such as one might use with children.
"Father, if you won"t be serious about it, I shall be very much hurt."
"I am very serious indeed about it," said the Rector. "And supposing I said I wouldn"t hear of any such thing as an engagement between you two young creatures, what would you say then?"
"Oh, I should never forgive you," Pauline declared. "Besides we"re not young. Guy is twenty-three."
"Now I thought he was at least fifty," said the Rector.
"Father, we shall have to go away if you won"t be serious. Mother told us to explain to you and I think it"s really unkind of you to laugh at us."
The Rector rose and knocked his pipe out.
"I must finish off the perennials. Well, well, Pauline, my dear, you"re twenty-one...."
Pauline would have liked to let him go on thinking she was of age, but she could not on this solemn occasion, and so she told him that she was still only twenty.
"Ah, that makes a difference," said the Rector pretending to look very fierce. And when Pauline"s face fell, he added with a chuckle, "of one year. Well, well, I fancy you"ve both arranged everything. What is there left for me to say? You mustn"t forget to show Guy those Nerines. G.o.d bless you, pretty babies, be happy."
Then the Rector walked quickly away, and left them together in his dusty library where the botanical folios and quartos displaying tropic blooms sprawled open about the floor, where along the mantelpiece the rhizomes of Oncocyclus irises were being dried; and where seeds were strewn plenteously on his desk, rattling among the papers whenever the wind blew.
"Guy, we are really engaged."
"Pauline, Pauline!"
In the dusty room among the ghosts of dead seasons and the mouldering 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 candlelight 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 spilt 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 humoured 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 pretences: 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 favourable 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 behaviour 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 favour 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?