_February_
Pauline had been looking forward to the entrance of February with joyful remembrance of what last February had brought her; and that the anniversary of Guy"s declaration of his love should be heralded by such a discomfiture of their plans was a shock. The renewal of his uncertainty about the fate of the poems destroyed the progress of a love that seemed to have come back to its old calm course, and brought back with all the added sharpness of absence the heartache and the apprehension. Pauline sat in the nursery window-seat and pondered dolefully the obstacles to happiness from which her mind, however hard it tried, could not escape. Most insistently of these obstacles Guy"s debts haunted her, hara.s.sing and material responsibilities that in great uncouth battalions swept endlessly past. Even in the middle of the night she would wake gasping in an effort to escape from being stifled by their vastness pressing down upon her brain. The small presents Guy had given her burned through the darkness to reproach her: even the two rings goaded her for the extravagance they represented. It was useless for Guy to explain that his debts were a trifle, because the statement of a sum so large as 200 appalled her as much as if he had said 2000.
She longed for a confidante whose sympathy she could exact for the incubus that possessed her lover; and fancying a disloyalty to him if she discussed his money affairs with her family, she could think of no one but Miss Verney to whom the burdensome secret might be entrusted.
"William had the same difficulty," sighed the old maid. "Really it seems as if money _is_ the root of all evil. 200, you say? Oh, dear, how uncomfortable he must feel, poor young man."
"If only I could make some money, dear Miss Verney. But how could I?"
"I used to ask myself that very question," said the old maid. "I used to ask myself just that very identical question. But there was never any satisfactory answer."
"It seems so dreadful that he should have sold nearly all his books and still have debts," moaned Pauline. "It seems so cruel. Ought I to give him up?"
"Give him up," repeated Miss Verney, her cheeks becoming dead white at the question. "Oh, my dear, I don"t think it could be right for you to give him up on account of debts. Patience seems to me the only remedy for your troubles, patience and constancy."
"No, you"ve misunderstood me," cried Pauline. "I"m afraid that I hamper him, that I spoil his work. If I gave him up, he would go away from Wychford and be free. Besides perhaps then his father would pay his debts. Miss Verney, Mr. Hazlewood didn"t like me, and I think Guy has quarrelled with him over me. Oh, I"m the most miserable girl in England, and such a little time ago I was the happiest."
"Money," said Miss Verney slowly and seeming to address her cats rather than Pauline. "The root of all evil! Yes, yes, it is. It"s the root of all evil."
Pauline was a little heartened by Miss Verney"s readiness to consider so seriously the monster that oppressed her thoughts; yet it was disquieting to regard the old maid, whose life had been ruined by money and who all alone with cats stayed here in this small house at the top of Wychford town, the very image of unhappy love. It was disquieting to hear her reflections on the calamity of gold uttered like this to cats, and in a sudden dread of the future Pauline beheld herself talking in the same way a long time hence. She shivered and bade Miss Verney farewell; and now to all the other woes that stood behind her in the shadows was added the vision of herself mumbling to cats in February dusks of the dim years ahead.
The idea of herself as the figure of an unhappy tale of love grew continuously more definite, and once she spoke of her dread to Guy, who was very angry.
"How can you encourage such morbid notions?" he protested. "You really must cultivate the power to resist them. People go mad by indulging their depression as you"re doing."
"Perhaps I shall go mad," she whispered.
"Oh, for G.o.d"s sake don"t talk like that," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in angry alarm; and Pauline, realizing how she had frightened him was sorry and went to the other extreme of high spirits.
"I thought we had agreed to wait ten years or twenty years, if necessary," said Guy. "And now after one year you are finding the strain too much. Why won"t you have confidence in me? It"s unfortunate about Worrall, I admit. But there are plenty of other publishers."
He mentioned names one after another, but to Pauline they were the names of stone idols that stared unresponsively at her lover"s poems.
"If we had only done what Mother wanted and not seen so much of each other," she lamented.
Guy"s disposal of her vain fears was without effect, for his eloquence could not contend with these deepening regrets; and as fast as he threw down the material obstacles to their happiness Pauline saw them maddeningly rise again in the path before them, visible shapes of ill omen, grotesquely irrepressible. Guy used to a.s.severate that when Spring was really come she would lose all these morbid fancies, and with his perpetual ascription to wintry gloom of all the presentiments of woe that flocked round their intercourse, Pauline did begin to fancy that, when the trees were green, he and she would rejoice as of old in their love. The knowledge that Spring could not linger always was the only consoling certainty she now possessed, and from the window-seat she greeted with a pa.s.sionate welcome each dusky azure minute that on these lengthening eves was robbed from night. The blackbirds sang to her now more personally, these sombre-suited heralds who had never before seemed to proclaim so audaciously masterful Spring; and when the young moon cowered among the ragged clouds of a rainy golden sky and the last bird slipped like a shadow into the rhododendrons, such airs and whispers of April would steal through the open window. Every day too there were flowery tokens of hope and in sheltered corners of the garden the primroses came out one by one, an imperceptible a.s.semblage like the birth of stars in the luminous green West. This grey-eyed virginal month had now such memories of the last progress it made through her life that Pauline could not help imputing to the season a sentimental partic.i.p.ation in her life: there was a poignancy in the reopening of those blue Greek anemones which Guy, a year ago, had likened to her eyes, a poignancy that might have been present if the flowers had been consciously reminding her of vanished delights. Yet it was unreasonable to encourage such an emotion, or did she indeed, as sometimes was half whispered to her inmost soul, regret the slightest bit everything since that day of the anemones?
It was one evening toward the end of the month that Monica joined her and walked up and down the edge of the lawn where in the gra.s.s a drift of purple crocuses had lately been flaming for her solitary adoration.
"In a way," said Pauline, "they are my favourite flowers of all. I don"t think there is any thrill quite like the first crocus bud. It seems to me that as far as I can look back, oh, Monica, ever so far, that always the moment I"ve seen my crocuses budding winter seems to fly away."
"I remember your looking for them when you were tiny," Monica agreed. "I can see you now kneeling down, and the mud on your knees, and your eyes screwed up when you told me about your discovery."
They talked for a while of childish days, each capping the other"s evocation of those hours that now in retrospect appeared like the gay pictures of an old book long ago lost, and found again on an idle afternoon. They talked too of Margaret and whether she would marry Richard; and presently, without the obvious transition that would have made her silent, Pauline found that they were discussing Guy and herself.
"I notice he doesn"t come to church now so much as he did," said Monica.
Pauline was startled by an abrupt statement of something which among all the other worries she had never defined to herself, but which now that Monica revealed its shape she knew had occupied a dark corner at the back of her mind more threatening than any of the rest. Of course she began at once to make excuses for Guy, but her sister, who brought to religion the same scrupulous temperament she gave to her music, would not admit their validity.
"Don"t you ever ask him why he hasn"t been?" she persisted.
"Oh, of course not. Why, I couldn"t, Monica. I should never feel ... oh, no, Monica, it would really be impossible for me to talk to Guy about his faith."
"His faith seems rather to have frozen lately," said Monica.
"He"s been upset and disappointed."
"All the more reason for going to church," Monica argued.
"Yes, for you, darling, or for me; but Guy may be different."
"There"s no room for moods in one"s religious duties. The artistic temperament is not provided for."
That serene and nun-like conviction of tone made Pauline feel a little rebellious, and yet in its corroboration of her own uneasiness she could not laugh it aside.
"Well, even if there"s no excuse for him and even supposing it made me dreadfully anxious," she affirmed, "I still wouldn"t say a word to him."
"Does he know you go to Confession?"
Pauline blushed. Monica was like a Roman Catholic in the matter-of-fact way in which she alluded to something that for Pauline pierced such sanct.i.ties as could scarcely even be mentioned by herself to her own soul.
"Monica, you don"t really think that I ought to speak of that," she stammered. Not even to her sister could she bring herself to utter the sacramental word.
"I certainly think you should," said Monica. "When you and Guy are married it would be terrible if your duties were to be the cause of a disagreement. Why, he might even persuade you to give up going to Confession."
"Darling Monica," said Pauline nervously, "I"d rather you didn"t talk about this any more. You see, you"re so much better than I and you"ve thought so much more deeply than I have about religion. I don"t think I shall ever be able to make my faith so narrow a ... so strict a rule as yours is. No, please, Monica, don"t let us talk about this subject any more."
"I only mentioned it because I"m afraid that with your beautiful nature you will be too merciful to that Guy of yours."
"Oh, and I"d really rather you didn"t say my nature was beautiful,"
Pauline protested. "Truthfully, Monica, darling, it"s a very ugly nature indeed, and I"m afraid it"s getting uglier every day."
Her sister"s cloistral smile flickered upon the scene like the wan February sunlight.
"I do hope Guy really appreciates you," was what she said.
"See how the sparrows have pulled the crocuses into ribbons," Pauline exclaimed. And so that Monica could not talk to her any more, she hailed her father, who was wandering along toward the house on the other side of the lawn. When he sauntered across to them she pointed out the destructiveness of the sparrows.
"Ah, well, my dear," he chuckled, "most florists are worse."
"Perhaps _I"m_ a florist," Monica whispered, "and Guy may be only a mischievous sparrow."
Pauline smiled at Monica and took her arm gratefully and affectionately.
"We shall have all the daffs gone before we know where we are," said the Rector. "Maximus is out under the oaks. And King Alfred is just going to turn down his buds."
"Dear King Alfred," said Pauline. "How glad I shall be to say good-morning to him again."
Yes, all the daffodils would soon be here and then gone; and beyond this austere afternoon already she could fancy a smell of March winds.