"As if you could fail," she chided gently. "And if you did fail, I would almost be glad, because I would love you all the more."
"Pauline, would you?"
"Ah, no I wouldn"t," she whispered. "Because I could not love you more that I do now."
The dog with a sigh dropped his stick: he was become accustomed to these interludes.
"Bob gives us up as hopeless," Guy laughed.
"I"m not a bit sympathetic, you jealous dog," she said. "Because you have your master all day long."
The next time Guy came to the Rectory, he brought with him the ma.n.u.script, so that Pauline could seal it for luck; and they sat in the nursery, while Guy for the last enumeration turned over the pages one by one.
"It represents so much," he said, "and it looks so little. My father will be rather surprized. I told him I should wait another year. I wonder if I ought to have waited."
"Oh, no," said Pauline. "Everything else is waiting and waiting. It makes me so happy to think of these pages flying away like birds."
"I hope they won"t be like homing pigeons," said Guy. "It will be rather a blow if William Worrall rejects them."
"Oh, but how could he be so foolish."
"I don"t think he will really," said Guy. "After all, a good many people have endorsed the first half, and I"m positive that what I"ve written here is better than that. I rather wish I"d finished the Eclogues though. Do you think perhaps I"d better wait after all?"
"Oh, no, Guy, don"t wait."
So, very solicitously the poems were wrapped up, and when they were tied and sealed and the parcel lay addressed upon the table, Mrs. Grey with Monica and Margaret came in. They were so sympathetic about the possible adventures in sight for that parcel, and Guy was so much his rather self-conscious self that the original relation between him and the family seemed perfectly restored. Pauline was glad to belong to them, and in her pride of Guy"s achievement she basked in their simple affection, thrilling to every word or look or gesture that confirmed her desire of the cherished accord between Guy and the others.
"Now I"m sure you"d both like to go and post Guy"s poems," Mrs. Grey exclaimed. "Yes ... charming ... to go and post them yourselves."
Pauline waited anxiously for a moment, because of late Guy had often seemed impatient of these permissions granted to him by her mother, but this afternoon he was himself and full of the shy grat.i.tude that made her wonder if indeed nearly a year could have flown by since their love had been declared. Dusk was falling when they reached the post-office.
"Will you register it, Mr. Hazlewood?" asked the postmistress.
Guy nodded, and the parcel left their hands: in silence they watched it vanish into the company of other parcels that carried so much less: then back they came through the twilight to tea at the Rectory, both feeling as if the first really important step toward marriage had been taken.
"You see," said Guy, "if only these poems of mine are well received, my father must acknowledge my right to be here, and if he once admits that, what barrier can there be to our wedding?"
Pauline told him how much during the last month the distant prospect of their marriage had begun to weigh upon her, but now since that parcel had been left at the post-office, she said she would always talk of their wedding because that was such a much less remote word than marriage.
"Come out to-night," said Guy suddenly.
She put her hand on his arm.
"Guy, don"t ask me again."
He was penitent at once, and full of promises never to ask her again to do anything that might cause an instant"s remorse. They had reached the hall of the Rectory and in the shadows Pauline held him to her heart, suddenly caught in the flood of tenderness that a wife might have for a husband to whose faults she could be indulgent by the measure of his greater virtues kept, as it might be, for her alone.
_January_
Guy, as soon as he had sent off the poems to a publisher, was much less violently driven by the stress of love, which latterly had urged him along so wayward a course. He began to acquire a perspective and to lose some of that desperately clinging reliance upon present joys. The need of battling against an uncertain future had brought him to the pitch of madness at the thought of the hours of Pauline"s company that must be wasted; but now when to his sanguine hopes marriage presented itself as at last within sight, sometimes even seeming as close as the fall of this new year, he was anxious to set Pauline upon more tranquil waters, lest she too should like himself be the prey of wild imaginations that might destroy utterly one untempered by any except the gentler emotions of a secluded life. Her mother and sisters, whom he had come to regard as hostile interpreters of convention, took on again their old features of kindliness and grace; and he was able to see without jealous torments how reasonable their att.i.tude had been throughout, nay more than reasonable, how unworldly and n.o.ble-hearted it had been in confiding Pauline to the care of one who had so few pretensions to deserve her. He upbraided himself for having by his selfishness involved Pauline in the complexities of regrets for having done something against her judgment: and in this dreary rain of January, free from the burden of uncompleted labour, he now felt a more light-hearted a.s.surance than he had known since the beginning of their love.
Bills came in by every post, but their ability to vex him had vanished in the promise his ma.n.u.script gave of a speedy defeat of all material difficulties. The reaction from the strain of decking his poems with the final touches that were to precede the trial of public judgment gave place to dreams. A dozen times Guy followed the ma.n.u.script step by step of its journey from the moment the insentient mailcart carried it away from Wychford to the moment when Mr. William Worrall threw a first casual glance to where it lay waiting for his perusal on the desk in the Covent Garden office. Guy saw the office-boy send off the formal postcard of acknowledgment that he had already received; and in his dream he rather pitied the youth for his unconsciousness of what a treasure he was acknowledging merely in the ordinary routine of a morning"s work. Perhaps the packet would lie unopened for two or three days--in fact probably Mr. Worrall might not yet have resumed work, as they say, after a short Christmas vacation. Moreover when he came back to business, although at Guy"s request for sponsors the poems had been vouched for by one or two reputed friends of the publisher with whom he was acquainted, he would no doubt still be inclined to postpone their examination. Then one morning he would almost inadvertently cut the string and glance idly at a page, and then....
At this point the author"s mental visions varied. Sometimes Worrall would be so deeply transfixed by the revelation of a new planet swimming into ken that he would sit spellbound at his own good fortune, not emerging from a trance of delight until he sent a telegram inviting the poet to come post haste to town and discuss terms. In other dreams the publisher would distrust his own judgment and take the ma.n.u.script under his arm to a critic of taste, anxiously watching his face and as an expression of admiration gradually diffused itself knowing that his own wild surmize had been true. There were many other variations of the first reception of the poems, but they all ended in the expenditure of sixpence on a telegram. Here the dream would amplify itself; and proofs, binding, paper, danced before Guy"s vision; while soon afterward the first reviews were coming in. At this stage the poet"s triumph a.s.sumed a hundred shapes and diversities, and ultimately he could never decide between a leader on his work in The Times headed A NEW GENIUS or an eulogy on the princ.i.p.al page of The Daily Mail that galloped neck and neck for a column alongside one of The Letters of an Englishman. The former would bestow the greater honour: the latter would be more profitable: therefore in moments of unbridled optimism he was apt to allot both proclamations to his fortune. With such an inauguration of fame the rest was easy dreaming. His father would take a train to Shipcot on the same morning: if he read The Times at breakfast he would catch the eleven o"clock from Galton and, travelling by way of Basingstoke, reach Shipcot by half-past-two. Practically one might dream that before tea he would have settled 300 a year on his son, so that the pleasant news could be announced to the Rectory that very afternoon.
In that case he and Pauline could be married in April; and actually on her twenty-first birthday she would be his wife. They would not go to the Campagna this year, because these bills must be paid, unless his father, in an access of pride due to his having bought several more eulogies at bookstalls along the line, offered to pay all debts up to the day of his wedding; in which case they could go to the Campagna:
_I wonder do you feel to-day_ _As I have felt since, hand in hand,_ _We sat down on the gra.s.s, to stray_ _In spirit better through the land,_ _This morn of Rome and May?_
They would drive out from the city along the Appian Way and turn aside to sit among the ghostliness of innumerable gra.s.ses in those primal fields, the air of which would be full of the feathery seeds and the dry scents of that onrushing summer. There would be no thought of time and no need for words: there would merely be the two of them on a morn of Rome and May. And later in the warm afternoon they would drive home, coming back to the city"s heart to eat their dinner within sound of the Roman fountains. Then all the night-time she would be his, not his in frightened gasps as when wintry England was forbidding all joy to their youth, but his endlessly, utterly, gloriously. They would travel farther south and perhaps come to that Parthenopean sh.o.r.e calling to him still now from the few days he had spent upon its silver heights and beside its azure waters. In his dream Pauline was leaning on his shoulder beneath an Aleppo pine, at the cliff"s edge, Pauline whose alien freshness would bring a thought of England to sigh through its boughs, and a cooler world to the aromatic drouth. Theirs should be sirenian moons and dawns, and life would be this dream"s perfect fulfilment. In what loggia, firefly-haunted, would he hold her? The desire with which the picture flamed upon his imagination was almost intolerable, and here he always brought her back to Plashers Mead on a June dusk. Then she could be conjured in this house, summoned in spirit here to this very room; and if they had loved Italy, how they would love England, as they walked across their meadows, husband and wife. With such visions Guy set on fire each January night that floated frorely into his bedroom, until one morning a letter arrived from Mr. William Worrall, that made his fingers tremble, as he broke the envelope and read the news:
217 COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
_January 6th._
_Dear Sir,_
_I have looked at the poems you were kind enough to send for my consideration, and I shall be happy to hand them to a reader for his opinion. The reader"s fee is one guinea. Should his opinion be favourable, I shall be glad to discuss terms with you._
_Yours faithfully,
William Worrall._
Guy threw the letter down in a rage. He would almost have preferred a flat refusal to this request for money to enable some jaded hack to read his poems. The proposal appeared merely insolent, and he wrote curtly to Mr. William Worrall to demand the immediate return of his ma.n.u.script.
But after all, if Worrall did not accept his work, who would? Money was an ulterior consideration when the great object was to receive such unanimous approval as would justify the apparent waste of time in which he had been indulging. The moment his father acknowledged the right he had to be confident, he in turn would try to show by following his father"s advice that he was not the wrong-headed idler of his reputation. Perhaps he would send the guinea to Worrall. He tore up his first letter and wrote another in which a cheque was enclosed. Then he began to add up the counterfoils of his cheque book, a depressing operation that displayed an imminent financial crisis. He had overdrawn 5 last quarter. That left 32 10s. of the money paid in on December 21.
The quarter"s rent was 4 10s. That left 28. Miss Peasey"s wages were in arrears, and he must pay her 4 10s. on the fifteenth of this month.
That would leave 23 10s. and he must knock off 7s. 6d. for Bob"s licence. About 3 had gone at Christmas and there were the books still to pay. 20 was not much for current expenses until next Lady Day.
However, he decided that he could manage in Wychford, if he did not have to pay out money for Oxford debts, the creditors of which were pressing him harder each week.
s. d.
_Lampard._ Books. 39 15 0 _Harker._ Furniture. 17 18 0 _Faucett._ Books. 22 16 6 _Williamson._ Books. 13 19 0 _Ambrose._ Books. 4 7 0 _Brough._ Tobacco. 9 19 0 _Clary._ Clothes. 44 4 0 _Miscellaneous._ Books, Clothes, Stationery, Chemist, etc., etc. about 50
A total of 202 18s. 6d. Practically he might say that 200 would clear everything. Yet was 50 enough to allow for those miscellaneous accounts? Here for instance was a bill of 11 for boots and another of 14 for hats apparently, though how the deuce he could have spent all that on hats he did not know. It would be wiser to say that 250 was required to free himself from debt. Guy read through the tradesmen"s letters and detected an universal impatience, for they all reminded him that not merely for fifteen months had they received nothing on account of large outstanding bills, but also they made it clear that behind reiterated demands and politeness strained to breaking-point stood darkly the law. That brute Ambrose, to whom after all he only owed 4 7s., was the most threatening. In fact he would obviously have to pay the ruffian in full. That left only 15 13s. for current expenses to Lady Day, or rather 14 12s., for by the way Worrall"s guinea had been left out of the reckoning.
Guy wondered if he ought to get rid of Miss Peasey and manage for himself in future. Yet the housekeeper probably earned her wages by what she saved him, and if he relied on a woman who "came in" every morning, that meant feeding a family. It would be better to sell a few books. He might raise 50 that way. Ten pounds to both Lampard and Clary, and six fivers among the rest would postpone any violent pressure for a while.
Guy at once began to choose the books with which he could most easily part. It was difficult to put aside as many as might be expected to raise 50, for his collection did not contain rarities, and it would be a sheer quant.i.ty of volumes, the extraction of which would horribly deplete his shelves, upon which he must rely.
The January rain dripped monotonously on the window-sills, while Guy dragged book after book from the shelves that for only fifteen months had known their company. They were a melancholy sight, when he had stacked on the floor as many books as he could bear to lose, each shelf looking as disreputable as a row of teeth after a fight. A hundred volumes were gone, scarcely a dozen of which had he sacrificed without a pang. But a hundred volumes in order to raise 50 must sell at an average of ten shillings apiece, and in the light of such a test of value he regarded dismayfully the victims. Precious though they were to him, he could not fairly estimate the price they would fetch at more than five shillings each. That meant the loss of at least a hundred more books. Guy felt sick at the prospect and looked miserably along the rows for the farther tribute of martyrs they must be forced to yield. With intense difficulty he gathered together another fifty, and then with a final effort came again for still another fifty. Here was the first edition of Swinburne"s Essays and Studies. That must go, for it might count as ten shillings and therefore save a weaker brother. Rossetti"s Poems in this edition of 1871 must go in order to save the complete works, for he could copy out the sonnet which was not reprinted in the later edition. Here was Payne"s translation of Villon which could certainly go, for it would fetch at least fifteen shillings, and he still possessed that tattered little French edition at two francs. The collected Verlaine might as well go, and the Mallarme with the Rops frontispiece: the six volumes would save others better loved. Besides, he was sick of French poetry, wretched stuff most of it. Yet, here was Heredia and the Pleiad and de Vigny, all of whom were beloved exceptions. He must preserve too the Italians, (what a solace Leopardi had been), though here were a couple of Infernos, one of which could surely be sacrificed. He opened the first:
_Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona,_ _Mi prese del costui piacer si forte,_ _Che, come vedi, ancor non m"abbandona._
The words were stained with the blue anemone to which he had likened Pauline"s eyes that first day of their love"s declaration. He opened the other:
_Ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse,_ _Quando leggemmo il disiato riso_ _Esser baciato da cotanto amante,_ _Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,_ _La bocca mi baci tutto tremante:_