Guy smiled to himself. It was a minor triumph, but it was definitely a triumph to have made his father be the first to mention the subject that had stood at the back of their minds ever since they met on the Shipcot platform.
"Look here, before we discuss that I want you to see Pauline. I think you"ll understand my point of view more clearly after you"ve seen her.
Now, wouldn"t you like to take a stroll round Wychford? The architecture...."
Guy and his father wandered about until dusk, and in the evening after dinner they played piquet.
"I suppose you wouldn"t enjoy a walk in the moonlight?" Guy suggested after the third hand.
"I have my health to think about. Term begins in a fortnight you know,"
said Mr. Hazlewood.
Guy had pulled back the curtains and was watching the full moon. This, though ten days short of the actual anniversary, was the lunary festival of the night when he first saw Pauline. Might it be accepted as a propitious omen? Who could say? They talked of dull subjects until it was time to go to bed.
Guy had sent a note to Mrs. Grey, suggesting that he should bring his father to tea next day; and so about four o"clock they set out to the Rectory, the lover in great trepidation of spirit. His father was seeming much more than ever parched and inhuman, and Guy foresaw that his effect upon Pauline would be disastrous. Nor did he feel that the strain upon his own nerves was going to be the best thing for the situation. On the way to the Rectory they met young Brydone, and Guy very nearly invited him to accompany them, in a desperate impulse to evoke a crowd in which he could lose this disturbing consciousness of his father"s presence. However, he managed to avoid such a subversion of his att.i.tude; and in a few minutes they were in the hall of the Rectory, where Mrs. Grey, as nervously agitated as she could be, was welcoming them. Luckily Margaret had arrived on the scene before Pauline, and Guy managed to place his father next to her, while he took up the task of trying to compose Mrs. Grey. At last Pauline came in, and Guy seemed to be only aware of a tremendous increase in the noise of the conversation.
He realized that it was due to himself"s talking nonsense at the top of his voice and that Pauline was vainly trying to get on with his father.
Monica had gone to look for the Rector, and Mrs. Grey was displaying the kind of treasures she would produce at a mother"s meeting, treasures to which his father paid but the most scant attention. The whole room seemed to revolve round his father who for Guy had become the only person in focus, as he stood there parched and inhuman and perhaps himself a little shy of what he was evidently supposing to be a very mad family. Guy, so miserable was he feeling at his father"s coldness of manner toward the Greys, wished pa.s.sionately that his mother were alive, because he knew how much she would have appreciated them. Monica had now come back with information that the Rector was undiscoverable, so Mrs.
Grey volunteered to show Mr. Hazlewood the garden.
"She"ll tell you all the flowers wrong," Pauline warned him.
Mr. Hazlewood bowed.
"I"m afraid I know nothing about flowers."
"Guy has learnt a lot from Father," said Pauline. "Haven"t you, Guy?"
She was making the bravest effort, but it was hopeless, utterly hopeless, Guy thought.
How the promenade round these gardens that were haunted with his and her delights was banishing them one by one. How endless it was, and how complete was the failure to incorporate his father in a life which his advent had so detestably disturbed. Guy acknowledged that the meeting between him and Pauline had served no purpose, and as he looked forward to the final battle between their wills this evening, he set his teeth with rage to defeat his father, at the moment caring not at all if he never saw him again.
Guy knew, as they were walking back to Plashers Mead, how little worth while it was to ask what his father had thought of the Greys; but nevertheless he could not resist the direct enquiry.
"They seem a very happy-go-lucky family," was the reply. "I thought it extremely strange that Mr. Grey did not take the trouble to be at home for my visit. I should have thought that in regard to his daughter"s future I might be considered sufficiently ... however, it"s all of a piece."
Guy hated the mock-modest lacuna in the characterization, and he thought of the many schoolmasters he had known whose consciousness of external opinion never allowed them to claim a virtue for themselves, although their least action always contained an implication of merit.
Guy made some excuse for the Rector"s absence and rather moodily walked on beside his father. The battle should be to-night; and after dinner he came directly to the point.
"I hope you liked Pauline?"
"My dear Guy, your impulsiveness extends too far. How can I after a few minutes" conversation p.r.o.nounce an opinion?"
"But she"s not a pathological case," cried Guy in exasperation.
"Precisely," retorted his father. "And therefore I pay her the compliment of not rushing into headstrong approval, or disapproval.
Certainly she seemed to me superficially a very charming girl, but I should be inclined to think somewhat excitable."
"Of course, she was shy."
"Naturally. These sudden immersions in new relationships do not make for ease. I was myself a little embarra.s.sed. But, after all, the question is not whether I like--er--Pauline, but whether I am justified on her account as well as on yours in giving my countenance to this ridiculous engagement. Please don"t interrupt me. My time is short, and I must as your father fulfil my obligations to you by saying what I have to say."
Even in his speech he was epistolary, and while he spoke Guy was all the time, as it were, tearing him into small pieces and dropping him deliberately into the waste-paper-basket.
"Had I been given an opportunity," his father went on, "of speaking privately with Mr. Grey, I should have let him plainly understand how much I deplored your unjustifiable embarkation upon this engagement. You have, frankly, no right to engage yourself to a girl when you are without the means to bring the pledge to fruition. You possess, it is true, an income of 150 a year--too little to make you really independent, too much to compel you to relinquish your own mad scheme of livelihood."
"I have had the privilege of reading your verse," he continued, protesting against an interruption with upraised hand. "Well, I am glad enough to say that it seems to me promising: but what is promising verse? A few seedlings in a flower-pot that even if they come to perfection will serve no purpose but of decoration. It is folly or mere wanton self-deception for you to pretend that you can live by poetry.
Why, even if you were an American you couldn"t live by poetry. Now please let me finish. My commonsense no doubt strikes you as brutal, but if, when it is your turn to speak, you can produce the shadow of a probability that you will ever earn your own living, I shall be only too willing to be convinced. I am not so much enamoured of my schoolmaster"s life as to wish to bind you down to that; but between being a schoolmaster and being what the world would call an idle young poseur lies a big gulf. Why did not you stick to your Macedonian idea? Surely that was romantic enough to please even you. No, the whole manner of your present life spells self-indulgence and I warn you it will inevitably bring in its train the results of self-indulgence. My dear Guy, _do_ something. Don"t stay here talking of what you are going to do. Say good-bye for the present to Pauline and do something. If she is fond of you, she will be prouder of you when she sees that you are determined to fight to win her. My boy, I speak to you very seriously and I warn you that this is the last protest I shall make. You are behaving wrongly: her parents are behaving wrongly. If you must write, get some regular work. Why not try for the staff of some reputable paper like The Spectator?"
"Good heavens!" Guy e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.
"Well, there may be other reputable papers, though I confess The Spectator is my favourite."
"Yes, I know. It probably would be."
"It"s this terrible inaction," his father went on. "I don"t know how you can tolerate the ignominious position in which you find yourself. To me it would be unendurable."
Mr. Hazlewood sighed with the satisfaction of unburdening himself and waited for his son to reply, who with a tremendous effort not to spoil the force of his argument by losing his temper began calmly enough:
"I have never contended that I should earn my living by poetry. What I have hoped is that when my first book appears it would be sufficiently remarkable to restore your confidence in me."
"In other words," his father interrupted, "to tempt me to support you--or rather as it now turns out to help you to get married."
"Well, why not?" said Guy. "I"m your only son. You can spare the money.
Why shouldn"t you help me? I"m not asking you to do anything before I"ve justified myself. I"m only asking you to wait a year. If my book is a failure, it will be I who pay the penalty, not you. My confidence will be severely damaged whereas in your case only your conceit will be faintly ruffled."
"Were I really a conceited man, I should resent your last remark," said his father. "But let it pa.s.s, and finish what you were going to say."
Guy got up and went to the window, seeking to find from the moonlight a coolness that would keep his temper in hand.
"Would you have preferred that I did not ask Pauline to marry, that I made love to her without any intention of marriage?"
"Not at all," his father replied. "I imagine that you still possess some self-restraint, that when you began to feel attracted to her you could have wrestled with yourself against what in the circ.u.mstances was a purely selfish emotion."
"But why, why? What really good reason can you bring forward against my behaviour, except reasons based on a cowardly fear of not being prosperous? You have always impressed on me so deeply the ident.i.ty of your youthful ambitions with mine that I don"t suppose I"m a.s.suming too much when I ask what you would have done, if you had met Mother when you were not in a position to marry her immediately? Would you have said nothing?"
"I hope I should have had sufficient restraint not to want to marry anybody until I was able to offer material support as well as a higher devotion."
"But if ... oh, love is not a matter of the will."
"Excuse me," his father contradicted obstinately. "Everything is a matter of will. That is precisely the point I am trying to make."
Guy marched over to the fireplace and, balancing himself on the fender, proclaimed the attainment of a deadlock.
"You and I, my dear Father, differ in fundamentals. Supposing I admit for a moment that I may be wrong, aren"t you just as wrong in not trying to see my point of view? Supposing for instance Tennyson had paid attention to criticism--I don"t mean of his work, but of his manner of life--what would have happened?"
"I can"t afford to run the risk of being considered the fond parent by announcing you to the world as a second Tennyson. Thirty-five years of a schoolmaster"s life have at least taught me that parents as parents have a natural propensity toward the worst excesses of human folly."
"Then in other words," Guy responded, "I"m to mess up my life to preserve your dignity. That"s what it amounts to. I tell you I believe in myself. I"m convinced that beside will, there is destiny."