Plashers Mead Part 20

"What is love? 'tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure: In delay there lies no plenty; Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure."

This was the song that Guy felt Shakespeare might have written to suit his journey now, as he paddled higher and higher up the stream that flowed towards Shakespeare's own country.

The banks of the Greenrush were narrower than the banks of the Thames; and all the way they were becoming narrower, and all the way the stream was running more swiftly against him. It was Sunday evening when he reached Plashers Mead; and so ma.s.sively welded was the sago on his Sheraton table that Guy wondered if Miss Peasey, to be ready for his arrival, had not cooked it a week ago. But what did sago matter when in his place there was laid a note from Pauline?

MY DEAREST,--I've had all your letters and I've been very frightened you'd be drowned. To-morrow you've got to come to breakfast because I always have breakfast in the garden on my birthday unless it pours. I'm going to church at eight. I love you a thousand times more and I _will_ tell you so to-morrow and give you twenty kisses.

Your own PAULINE.

Do you like "your own" better than "your loving"?

Guy went to bed very early and resolved to wake at dawn that he might have the hours of the morning for thoughts of Pauline on her birthday.

It was after dawn when Guy woke, for he had fallen asleep very tired after his week on the river; still it was scarcely six when he came down into the orchard, and the birds were singing as Guy thought he had never heard them sing before. The apple-trees were already frilled with a foam of blossom; and on quivering boughs linnets with b.r.e.a.s.t.s rose-burnt by the winds of March throbbed out their carol. Chaffinches with flas.h.i.+ng prelude of silver wings flourished a burst of song that broke as with too intolerable a triumph, then sought another tree and poured forth the triumphant song again. Thrushes, blackbirds, and warblers quired deep-throated melodies against the mult.i.tudinous trebles of those undistinguished myriads that with choric paean saluted May; and on sudden diminuendoes could be heard the rustling canzonets of the goldfinches, rising and falling with reedy cadences.

Guy launched his canoe, which crushed the dewy young gra.s.s in its track and laded the morning with one more fragrance. He paddled down the mill-stream and, landing presently in the Rectory paddock, now in full blow with white and purple irises, he went through the wicket into the garden. When he reached the lily-pond the birds on the lawn flew away and left it green and empty. He stood entranced, for the hush of the morning lay on the house, and in the wistaria Pauline's window dreamed, wide open. Deep in the shrubberies the birds still twittered incessantly. Why was he not one of these birds, that he might light upon her sill? Upon Guy's senses stole the imagination of a new fragrance, that was being shed upon the day by that wide-open window; a fragrance that might be of flowers growing by the walks of her dreams. And surely in those flowery dreams he was beside her, since he had lost all sense of being still on earth. A bee flew out from Pauline's room, an enviable bee which had been booming with indefinite motion for how long round and round the white tulips on her sill. Presently another bee flew in; and Guy's fancy, catching hold of its wings, hovered above Pauline where she lay sleeping. So sharp was the emotion he had of entering with the bee, that he was aware of brus.h.i.+ng back her light-brown hair to lean down and kiss her forehead; and when the belfry clock clanged he was startled to find himself back upon this green and empty lawn. He must not stay here in front of her window, because if she woke and came in her white nightgown to greet the day she would be shy to see him standing here.

Reluctantly Guy turned away and would have gone out again by the wicket in the wall if he had not come face to face with Birdwood.

"I think I'm a bit early," he said in some embarra.s.sment.

"Yes, I think you are a bit early, sir," the gardener agreed.

"Breakfast won't be till about half past eight?" Guy suggested.

"And it's just gone the half of six," said Birdwood.

"Would you like to see my canoe?" Guy asked.

Birdwood looked round the lawn, seeming to imply that, such was Guy's liberty of behavior, he half expected to see it floating on the lily-pond.

"Where is it, then?" he asked.

Guy took him through the paddock to where the canoe lay on the mill-stream.

"Handy little weapon," Birdwood commented.

"Well, I'll see you later, I expect," said Guy, embarking again. "I'm coming to breakfast at the Rectory."

"Yes, sir," the gardener answered, cheerfully. "In about another hour and a half I shall be looking for the eggs."

Guy waved his hand and shot out into midstream, where he drifted idly.

Should he go to church this morning? Pauline must have wanted him to come, or she would not have told him in her note that she was going.

They had never discussed the question of religion. Tacitly he had let it be supposed he believed in her simple creed, and he knew his appearance of faith had given pleasure to the family as well as to Pauline herself. Was he being very honest with her or with them? Certainly when he knelt at the back of the church and saw Pauline as he had seen her on Easter Day, it was not hard to believe in divinity. But he did not carry away Pauline's faith to cheer his own secret hours. The thought of herself was always with him, but her faith remained as a kind of vision upon which he was privileged to gaze on those occasions when, as it were, she made of it a public confession. Had he really any right to intrude upon such sanct.i.ties as hers would be to-day? No doubt every birthday morning she went to church, and the strangeness of his presence seemed almost an unhallowing of such rites. Even to attend her birthday breakfast began to appear unjustifiable, as he thought of all the birthday breakfasts that for so many years had pa.s.sed by without him and without any idea of there ever being any necessity for him. No doubt this morning he, miserable and unworthy skeptic, would be dowered with the half of her prayers, and in that consciousness could he bear to accept them, kneeling at the back of the church, unless he believed utterly they were sanctified by something more than her own maidenhood?

Yet if he did not go to church Pauline would be disappointed, because she would surely expect him. She would be like the blessed damozel leaning out from the gold bar of Heaven and weeping because he did not come. There was no gain from honesty, if she were made miserable by it.

It were better a thousand times he should kneel humbly at the back of the church and pray for the faith that was hers. And why could he not believe as she believed? If her faith were true, he suffered from injustice by having no grace accorded to him. Or did there indeed lie between him and her the impa.s.sable golden bar of Heaven? A cloud swept across the morning sun, and Guy s.h.i.+vered. Then the church-bell began to clang and, urging his canoe towards the churchyard, he jumped ash.o.r.e and knelt at the back of the church.

Guy had been aware during the service of the saintly pageant along the windows of the clerestory slowly dimming, and he was not surprised, when he came out, to see that clouds were dusking the first brilliance of the day. Mrs. Grey, Monica, and Margaret had prayed each in a different part of the church; but now in the porch they fluttered about Pauline with an intimate and happy awareness of her birthday, almost seeming to wrap her in it, so that she in flushed responsiveness wore all her twenty years like a bunch of roses. Guy was sensitive to the faint reluctance with which her mother and sisters resigned her to him on this birthday morning; but yet to follow them back from church with Pauline beside him in a trepidation of blushes and sparkles was too dear a joy for him in turn to resign. Half-way to the house Pauline remembered that her father had been left alone. This was too wide a breach in her birthday's accustomed ceremony, and, much dismayed, she begged Guy to go back with her. At that moment the rest of the family had disappeared round a curve in the walk, and Guy caught Pauline to him, complaining she had not kissed him since he was home.

"Oh, but Father!" she said, breathlessly, tugging. "He'll be so hurt if we've gone on without him."

Guy felt a stab of jealousy that even a father should intrude upon his birthday kiss for her.

"Oh, very well," he said, half coldly. "If to see me again after a fortnight means so little...."

"Guy," said Pauline, "you're not cross with me? And Father was so sweet about you. He said, 'Is Guy coming to breakfast?' Guy, you mustn't mind if I think a lot about everybody to-day. You see, this is my first birthday when there has been you."

"Oh, don't remind me of the years before we met," said Guy. "I hate them all. No, I don't," he exclaimed in swift penitence. "I love them all.

Hurry, darling girl, or we shall miss him."

Pauline's eyes were troubled by a question, behind which lurked a fleeting alarm.

"Kiss me," she murmured. "I was horrid."

A kind of austerity informed their kiss of reconciliation, an austerity that suited the sky of impending rain under which they were standing in the light of the last wan sunbeam. Then they hurried to the churchyard, where in the porch the Rector was looking vaguely round for company he expected.

"Lucky my friend _Lorteti_ came out yesterday. This rain will ruin him.

You must take Guy to see that iris, my dear. Fancy! twenty-one to-day!

Dear me! dear me! Most remarkable!"

Pauline danced with delight behind the Rector's back.

"He thinks I'm twenty-one," she whispered. "Oh, Guy, isn't he sweet? And he called you Guy. Oh, Francis," she cried, "do let me kiss you!"

There was a short debate on the probability of the rain's coming before breakfast was done, but it was decided, thanks to Birdwood's optimism, to accept the risk of interruption by sitting down outside. The table was on the lawn, Pauline's presents lying in a heap at the head. As one by one she opened the packets, everybody stood round her, not merely her mother and father and sisters and Guy, but also Birdwood and elderly Janet and Mrs. Unger the cook and Polly who helped Mrs. Unger.

"Oh, I'm so excited!" said Pauline. "Oh, I do hope it won't rain! Oh, thank you, Mrs. Unger! What a beautiful frame!"

"I hope yaw'll find some one to put in it, miss," said Mrs. Unger with a glance of stately admiration towards her present and a triumphant side look at Janet, who after many years' superintendence of Pauline's white fastness had brought her bunches of lavender and woodruff tied up with ribbons. All the presents were now undone, among them Guy's green volume, a paste buckle from Margaret, a piece of old embroidery from Monica, and from Richard in India a pair of carved bellows, at the prodigal ingenuity of whose pattern Margaret looked a little peevish.

When all the other presents had been examined, Birdwood stepped forward and with the air of a conjuror produced from under his coat a pot of rose-colored sweet-peas that exactly matched the frail hue of Pauline's cheeks.

Breakfast was eaten, with everybody's eyes watching the now completely gray sky. How many such birthday breakfasts had been eaten on this cool lawn by these people, who in their simplicity were akin to the birds in their shrubberies and the flowers in their borders; and Guy thought of an old photograph taken by an uncle of Pauline's tenth birthday breakfast, when the table was heaped high with dolls and toys and Pauline in the middle of them, while Monica and Margaret, with legs as thin as thrushes', stood shy and graceful in the background. He sighed to himself with amazement at the fortune which like a genie had whisked him into this dear a.s.semblage.

Breakfast was over just as the rain began to fall with the tinkling whisper that forebodes determination. There was not a leaf in the garden that was not ringing like an elfin bell to these silver drops; but, alas! the unrelenting windless rain gave no hope to Guy and Pauline of that long walk together they had expected all a fortnight. There was nothing to do but sit in the nursery and wonder if it would ever stop.

"I used to love rain when it kept me here," said Guy. "Now it has become our enemy."

Worse was to come, for it rained every day faster and faster, and there were no journeys for Guy's new canoe. He and Pauline scarcely had ten minutes to themselves, since when they were kept in the house all the family treated them with that old proprietary manner. The unending rain began to fret them more sharply because Spring's greenery was in such weather of the vividest hue and was reproaching them perpetually for the waste of this lovely month of May.

The river was rising. Already Guy's garden was sheened with standing moisture, and the apple-blossoms lay ruined. People vowed there had never been such rain in May, and still it rained. The river was running swiftly, level with the top of its banks, and many of the meadows were become gla.s.sy firmaments. Very beautiful was this green and silver landscape, but, oh, the rain was endless. Guy grew much depressed and Miss Peasey got rheumatism in her ankles. Then in the middle of the month, when Guy was feeling desperate and when even Pauline seemed sad for the hours that were being robbed from them, it cleared up.

Guy had been to tea, and after tea he and Pauline had sat watching the weather. Margaret had stayed with them all the afternoon, but had left them alone now, when it was half past six and nearly time for Guy to go.

The clouds, which all day had spread their pearly despair over the world, suddenly melted in a wild transplendency of gold.

"Oh, do let's go for a walk before dinner," said Guy. "Don't let's tell anybody, but let's escape."

"Where shall we go?"

"Anywhere. Anywhere. Out in the meadows by the edge of the water. Let's get sopping wet. Dearest, do come. We're never free. We're never alone."