"Are you glad, darling, you are going to give Guy such a charming birthday present to-morrow?" she asked.
"It"s your present," said Pauline. "Because I couldn"t possibly give myself unless you wanted me to. You know that, don"t you, Mother? You do know that, don"t you?"
"I want you to be my happy Pauline," her mother whispered. "And I think that with Guy you will be my happy Pauline."
"Oh, Mother, I shall, I shall. I love him so. Mother, what about Father?
He simply won"t say anything to me. To-day I helped him with transplanting, and I"ve been helping a lot lately ... with the daffodil bulbs when we came back from Ladingford, and all sorts of things. But he simply won"t say a word."
"Francis is always like that," her mother replied. "Even when he first was in love with me. Really, he never proposed ... we somehow got married. I think the best thing will be for you and Guy to go up to his room after lunch to-morrow, before he goes out in the garden; then you can show him your ring."
"Oh, Mother, tell me what ring it is that Guy has found for me."
"It"s charming ... charming ... charming," said her mother enthusiastically.
"Oh, I won"t ask, but I"m longing to see it. Mother, what do you think it will be? Oh, but you know, so I mustn"t ask you to guess. Oh, I do hope Margaret and Monica will like it."
"It"s charming ... charming ... and now go to sleep."
Her mother kissed her good-night and when she was gone, Pauline took from under her pillow the crystal ring.
"However nice the new one is," she said, "I shall always love you best, you secret ring."
Then she got out of bed and took from her desk the ma.n.u.script book bound with a Siennese end-paper of shepherds and shepherdesses and rosy bowers, that was to be her birthday present to him.
"What poetry will he write in you about me, you funny empty book?" she asked, and inscribed it:
_For Guy with all of his Pauline"s love._
The book was left open for the roaming letters to dry themselves without a smudge, because there was never any blotting-paper in this desk that was littered with childish things. Then Pauline went to the window; but a gusty wind of late Summer was rustling the leaves and she could not stay dreaming on the night as in May she had dreamed. There was something faintly disquieting about this hollow wind which was like an envoy threatening the trees with the furious winter to come, and Pauline shivered.
"Summer will soon be gone," she whispered, "but nowadays it doesn"t matter, because all days will be happy."
On this thought she fell asleep, and woke to a sunny morning, though the sky was a turbid blue across which swollen clouds were steadily moving.
She lay watchful, wondering if this quiet time of six o"clock would hold the best of Guy"s birthday and if by eight o"clock the sky would not be quite grey. It was a pity she and Guy had not arranged to meet early, so that before the day was spoiled they should have possessed themselves of its prime. Pauline could no longer stay in bed with this sunlight, the lucid shadows of which caught from the wistaria leaves were flickering all about the room. She must go to the window and salute his birthday.
Suddenly she recalled something Guy had once said of how he pictured her always moving round her room in the morning like a small white cloud.
Blushful at the intimacy of the thought she looked at herself in the gla.s.s.
"You"re his. You"re his," she whispered to her image. "Are you a white goose as Margaret said you were? Or are you the least bit like a cloud?"
Guy came and knelt by her in church that morning, and she took his action as the sign he offered to the world of holding her now openly. In the great church they were kneeling; rose-fired both of them by the crimson gowns of the high saints along the clerestory; and then Guy slipped upon her finger the new ring he had bought for their engagement, a pink topaz set in the old fashion, which burned there like the heart of the rosy fire in which they knelt suffused.
Breakfast was to be in the garden, as all Rectory birthdays were except Monica"s which fell in January; and since the day had ripened to a kind of sweet sultriness as of a pear that has hung too long upon a wall, it was grateful to sit in the shade of the weeping-willow by the side of the lily-pond. To each floating cup, tawny or damasked white or deepest cramoisy, the Rector called their attention. Nymphaeas they were to him, fountain divinities that one after the other he flattered with courteous praise. When Guy had been given all his presents, Pauline saw her father put a hand in his coat and pull out a small book.
"Father has remembered Guy"s birthday," she cried clapping her hands.
"Now I do call that wonderful. Francis, you"re wonderful. You"re really wonderful."
"Pauline, Pauline, don"t get too excited," her mother begged. "And please don"t call your father Francis in the garden."
"Propertius," Guy murmured, shyly opening the book; but when he was going to say something about that Roman lover to the Rector, the Rector had vanished.
After breakfast Pauline and Guy walked in the inner wall-garden that was now brilliant with ten thousand deep-throated gladioli.
"Pauline," said Guy, "this morning I learnt Milton"s sonnet on his twenty-third birthday, and I feel rather worried. Listen,
_How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,_ _Stol"n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!_ _My hasting days fly on with full career,_ _But my late Spring no bud or blossom shew"th._
Well, now, if Milton felt like that," he sighed, "what about me?
Pauline, tell me again that you believe in me."
"Of course I believe in you," she vowed.
"And I am right to stay here?" he asked eagerly.
"Oh, Guy, of course, of course."
"You see, I shall be writing to my father to-night to tell him of our engagement, and I don"t want to feel you have the least doubt of me. You haven"t, have you? Never? Never? There must never have been the slightest doubt, or I shall doubt."
"Dearest Guy," she said, "if you changed anything for me, our love wouldn"t be the best thing for you, and I only want my love to be my love, if it is the love you want, Guy. I"m not clever; you know. I"m really stupid, but I can love. Oh, I can love you more than anyone, I think. I know, I know I can. Guy, I do adore you. But if I felt you were thinking you ought to go away on account of me, I would have to give you up."
"You couldn"t give me up," he proclaimed, holding her straight before him with looks that were hungry for one word or one gesture that could help him to tell her what he wanted to say.
"Does my love worry you?" she whispered, faint with all the responsibility she felt for the future of this lover of hers.
"Pauline, my love for you is my life."
But quickly they glided away from pa.s.sion to discuss projects of simple happiness; and walking together a long while under the trees beyond the wall-garden, they were surprized to hear the gong sound for lunch before they had finished the decoration of Plashers Mead as it should be for their wedding-tide. Back in the sunlight, they were dazzled by the savage colour of the gladioli in the hot August noon and found them rather gaudy after the fronded half-light where nothing had disturbed the outspread vision of a future triumphantly attainable.
After lunch her mother called Pauline aside and told her that now was the moment to impress the Rector with the fact of her engagement. The tradition was that her father went up to his library for half-an-hour every day in order to rest after lunch before he sallied out into the garden or the parish. As usual his rest was consisting of standing on a chair and dragging down old numbers of The Botanical Magazine or heavy volumes of The Garden in order to search out a fact in connection with some plant. When Pauline and Guy presented themselves the Rector gave them a cordial invitation to enter, and Pauline fancied that he was being quite exceptionally kindly in his tone toward Guy.
"Well, and what can I do for you two?" he asked, as he lit his long clay pipe and sat upright in his old leather armchair to regard them.
"Father," said Pauline coming straight to the heart of her subject.
"Have you seen my engagement ring?"
She offered him the pink topaz to admire, and he bowed his head, conveying that faint mockery with which he treated anything that was not a flower.
"Very fine. Very fine, my dear."
"Well, aren"t you going to congratulate me?" Pauline asked.
"On what?"
"Oh, Father, you are naughty. On Guy of course."
"Bless my heart," said the Rector. "And on what am I to congratulate him?"
"On me of course," said Pauline.
"Now, I wonder if I can honestly do that," said the Rector very seriously.