The windows along the corridors were inky blue, almost turning black, as she stared at them, half frightened in the unlighted dusk; outside, the noise of the rain was increasing every moment. She would sit up in her bedroom till dinner-time and write a long letter to India. By candle-light she wrote to Richard, seated at the small desk that was full of childish things.

WYCHFORD RECTORY, OXON. _Tuesday_.

MY DEAR RICHARD,--Thank you for your last letter, which was very interesting. I should think your bridge was wonderful. Will you come back to England when it's finished? There is not much to tell you except that a man called Guy Hazlewood has taken Plashers Mead. He is very nice, or else I should have hated him to take the house you wanted. He is very tall--not so tall as father, of course--and he is a poet. He has a very nice bobtail and a touching housekeeper who is deaf. Birdwood likes him very much; so I expect you would, too. Birdwood wants to know if it's true that people in India--oh, bother, now I've forgotten what it was, only he's got a bet with G.o.dbold's nephew about it. Guy--you mustn't be jealous that we call him Guy because he really is very nice--has just been in to tea. Margaret is a darling, but I wish you'd take my advice and write more about her when you write. Of course I don't know what you do write, and I'm sure she really is interested in your bridge, but of course you must remember that she's not used to the kind of bridges you're building. But she's a darling and I'm simply longing for you to be married so that I can come and stay with you when I'm an old maid which I've quite made up my mind I'm going to be. Guy has been gardening with Father a good deal. Father says he's _fairly_ intelligent. Isn't Father sweet? He drank your health at dinner the other night without anybody's reminding him it was your birthday. I think Guy likes Monica best. I don't think he cares at all for Margaret except of course he must admire her--Margaret is such a darling! Oh, a merry Christmas because it will be Christmas before you get this letter.

Percy Brydone and Charlie Willsher came to dinner last month. They were so touching and bored.

Lots of love from Your loving PAULINE.

Don't forget about writing to Margaret more about herself.

Pauline put the letter in its crackling envelope with a sigh for the unformed hand in which it was written. Nothing brought home to her so nearly as this handwriting of hers the muddle she was always apt to make of things. How it sprawled across the page, so unlike Monica's that was small and neat and exquisitely formed, or Margaret's that was decorated with fantastic and beautiful affectations of manner. It was obvious, of course, that her sisters must always be the favorites of everybody, but it had been rather unkind of Guy to avoid her so obviously to-day.

Richard had always realized that even if she were impulsive and foolish she was also tremendously sympathetic.

"For I really am sympathetic," she a.s.sured her image in the gla.s.s, as she tried to make the light-brown hair look tidy enough to escape Margaret's remonstrances at dinner. If Guy were hopelessly in love with Margaret, how sympathetic she would be; and she would try to explain to him how interesting an unhappy love-affair always made people. For instance, there was Miss Verney, whom everybody thought was just a cross old maid; but if they had only seen, as she had seen, that cracked miniature, what romance even her cats would possess! She must take Guy to see Miss Verney or bring Miss Verney to see Guy; a meeting must somehow be arranged between these two, who would surely be drawn together by their misfortunes in love. Guy was exactly the person whom an unhappy love-affair would become. It would be so interesting in ten years' time, when she would be nearly thirty and old enough to be Guy's confidante without anybody's interference, to keep back the inquisitive world from Plashers Mead. No doubt by then Guy would be famous; he always spoke with such confidence of fame. Monica and Margaret would both be married, and she would still be living at the Rectory with her father and mother. Pauline, as she pictured the future, saw no change in them, but rather sacrificed to the ravages of time her own appearance and Guy's, so that at thirty she fancied both herself and him as already slightly gray. The gong sounded from the depths of the house, and hastily she s.n.a.t.c.hed from her wardrobe the first frock she found; it happened to be a white one, more suitable to June than to December, with a skirt of many flounces all stiffly starched. After rustling down pa.s.sages and stairs she reached the dining-room just as the others were going in to dinner.

"Pauline, how charming you look in that frock!" her mother exclaimed.

"Why, it's like Summer just to see you!"

Pauline was very happy that night because her mother and sisters petted her with the simple affection for which she was always longing.

The next day seemed fine enough to justify Mrs. Grey, Margaret, and Monica in making an expedition into Oxford to see about Christmas presents; and in the afternoon, while Pauline was sitting alone in the nursery, Guy was shown in by Janet. Pauline felt very shy and blushful when she met him so intimately as this, after all her plans for him on the night before. He, too, seemed ill at ease, and she was sadly positive he missed Margaret. The sense of embarra.s.sment lasted until tea-time, when Janet came in to say that the Rector, hearing of Mr.

Hazlewood's arrival, had decided to have tea in the nursery.

"Oh, what fun!" cried Pauline, clapping her hands. "Janet, do give him the mug with 'A PRESENT FOR A GOOD BOY' on it!"

"Dear me, Miss Pauline, what things you do think of, I do declare. Well, did you ever? Tut-tut! Fancy, for your father, too!"

Nevertheless Janet sedately put the mug on the tray. When she was gone Pauline turned to Guy and said:

"I'm sure Father thinks he ought to come and chaperon us. Isn't he sweet?"

Presently the Rector appeared, looking very tall in the low doorway. He nodded cheerfully to Guy:

"Seen Vartani? You know he's that pale, blue fellow from Nazareth. Very often he's a washy lilac, but this is genuinely blue."

"No, I don't think I noticed it--him, I mean," said Guy, apologetically.

"Oh, Father, of course he didn't! It's a tiny iris," she explained to Guy, "and Father puts in new roots every year...."

"Bulbs, my dear, bulbs," corrected Mr. Grey. "It's one of the Histrio lot."

"Well, bulbs. And every year one flower comes out in the middle of the Winter rain and lasts about ten minutes, and then all the Summer Birdwood and Father grub about looking for the bulb, which they never find, and then Father gets six new ones."

They talked on, the three of them, about flowery subjects while the Rector drank his tea from the mug without a word of comment on the inscription. Then he went off to write a letter, and Guy, with a regretful glance at the room, supposed he ought to go.

"Oh no! Stay a little while," said Pauline. "Look, it's raining again."

It was only a shower through which the declining sun was lancing silver rays. As they watched it from the window without speaking, Pauline wondered if she ought to have given so frank an invitation to stay longer. Would Margaret have frowned? And how odd Guy was this afternoon.

Why did he keep looking at her so intently as if about to speak, and then turn away with a sigh and nothing said?

"I do love this room," said Guy at last.

"I love it, too," Pauline agreed.

"May I ask you something?"

"Yes, of course."

"You spoke to Margaret the other day about some one called Richard. Do you like him very much?"

"Yes, of course. Only you mustn't ask me about him. Please don't. I've promised Margaret I wouldn't talk about him. Please, please, don't ask me any more."

"But leaving Margaret out of it, do you like him ... well ... very much better than me, for instance?"

Guy used himself for comparison with such an a.s.sumption of carelessness as might give the impression that only by accident did he mention himself instead of the leg of the table, or the kitten.

"Oh, I couldn't tell you that. Because if I said I liked you even as much, I should feel disloyal to Richard, and he's the best friend I've got. Oh, do let's talk about something else. Please do, Mr. Hazlewood."

"Oh, look here, I'm going!" exclaimed Guy; and he went instantly.

Pauline felt unhappy to think she had hurt his feelings; but he should not expect her to like him better than Richard. If Richard were married to Margaret, it might be different; but suppose that Margaret fell in love with Guy? Pauline felt her heart almost stop beating at the notion, and she made up her mind that if such a calamity befell it would be entirely her fault. The idea that she should so betray Richard's confidence made her miserable for the rest of the evening. Yet, though she was unhappy about Richard, it was always the picture of Guy hurrying from the nursery and his reproachful backward look that was visibly before her mind. And in the morning, when she woke up, it was with a strange unsatisfactory feeling such as she had never known before.

Yesterday came back to her remembrance with a great emptiness, seeming to her a day which had somehow never been properly finished. Here was the rain again raining, raining; and the old prospect of dreary weather that would not change for months.

A week went by without any sign of Guy. There were no amusing evenings now when he stayed to dinner; there were no delightful days of planting bulbs in the garden; there was nothing indeed to do but visit bedridden old ladies to whom fine or bad weather no longer mattered. Yet n.o.body else except herself seemed at all unhappy about it. Actually not one of the family commented upon Guy's absence.

"I really am afraid that Margaret _is_ heartless," said Pauline to her image in the gla.s.s. "She doesn't seem to care a bit whether he is here or not."

Then suddenly the weather changed. The country sparkled with h.o.a.r-frost, and everybody forgot about the rain, asking if ever before such weather had been known for Christmas. Guy was invited to dinner at the Rectory, and Pauline forgot about her problems in the pleasure that the jolly afternoon brought. Self-consciousness under the critical glances of Monica and Margaret vanished in the atmosphere of intimacy shed by the occasion. She could laugh and make a great noise without being reproved, and Guy himself was obviously more at home than he had ever been. There seemed a likelihood that now, once again the progress of simple friendship would advance undisturbed by the complications of love, and Pauline was glad to be able to a.s.sure herself that Guy did not that afternoon display the slightest sign of a hopeless pa.s.sion for Margaret.

He was more in his mood and demeanor of last month, and diverted them greatly with an account of struggling to explain to Graves, the deaf-and-dumb gardener, what he wanted done in the garden.

"But didn't Birdwood help you?" they asked, laughing.

"Well, Birdwood showed me what I ought to do," said Guy. "But it seemed such a rough method of information that I hadn't the heart to adopt it.

You see, as far as I could make out, it consisted of pulling up a cabbage by the root, hitting Graves on the head with it, and then nodding violently. That meant 'clear away these cabbages,' Or if Birdwood wanted to say, 'Plant broccoli here,' he dug Graves in the ribs with the dibbler and rubbed his nose in the unthinned seedlings."

"What does Miss Peasey say?" asked Pauline, who was in a state of the highest amus.e.m.e.nt, because deaf-and-dumb Graves was one of the villagers who lived under her particular patronage.

"Well, at first Miss Peasey was rather huffed, because she thought Graves was mocking her by pretending to be deaf. Now, however, she comes out and watches him at work and hopes that next Spring there'll be a little more variety in the garden."

The sunny, sparkling weather lasted for a few days after Christmas; and one morning Pauline, walking by herself on Wychford down, met Guy.

"I wondered if I should see you," he said.

"Did you expect to see me, then?"

"Well, I knew you often came here, and this morning I couldn't resist coming here myself."

Pauline felt a sudden impulse to run away; and yet most unaccountably the impulse led her into walking along with Guy at a brisk pace over the close-cropped glittering turf. Round them trotted Bob in eddies of endless motion.