"I hope this sort of intolerable gossip isn't still going on," said Guy, savagely.

"Oh, well, you see, sir, Wychford is a middling place for gossip. And if it wasn't one of the Miss Greys it would be some other young miss roundhereabouts. Human nature, like pigeons, is set on mating."

"I hope you'll contradict this ridiculous rumor," said Guy.

"Oh, I have done already. In fact, I may say that one of my principles, Mr. Hazlewood, is to contradict everything. As I said to them, when they was talking about it in the post-office the other night, and that post-office is a rare place of gossip! Perhaps you've noticed that the nosiest man in a town always gets made postmaster? Where had I got to?--ah, yes, I said to them, 'You know a great lot about other people's business,' I said, 'but when I tell you that old Mrs. Mathers who lives in the last cottage but one in Rectory Lane says she's taken particular note as Mr. Hazlewood has never been near the Rectory for the last fortnight unless it was once when she heard footsteps and hadn't time to get to the window to see who it was on account of the kettle being on the boil at that moment, where's your Holy Matrimony?' I said. With that up speaks Miss Burge from the back of The shop whose father used to keep the King's Head before he dropped dead of the apoplexy on Shipcot platform. 'That doesn't say he hasn't gone round by the field the same as Mr. Burrows's servant used to when she was being courted by We'll-mention-no-names.' 'No, and that he hasn't, either,' said I, smacking the counter, for I was feeling a bit angry by now at all this poking about in other people's business, 'that he hasn't,' I said, 'because the Rectory cook asked me most particular if there was anything the matter down at Plashers Mead, seeing as Mr. Hazlewood hadn't been near the Rectory for a fortnight. That doesn't look like Holy Matrimony,' I said, and with that I walked out of the post-office. Mr.

Hazlewood," G.o.dbold concluded, very earnestly, "the gossip of Wychford is something as no one would believe, if they hadn't heard it, as I have, every mortal day of my life."

Guy could have laughed on his own account, but the notion of Pauline's being dragged into the chatter made him furious. Yet what could he do?

If he went frequently to the Greys' house he must be engaged, according to Wychford. And if he did not go....

"I suppose they'll be saying next that the engagement has been broken off," he inquired, with cold sarcasm.

"Oh, they have said it. Depend upon it, Mr. Hazlewood, it undoubtedly has been said."

It began to appeal to Guy as extremely undignified--the way in which he had let G.o.dbold chatter on like this.

"I'm afraid I must be getting back to my work," he said, curtly.

"That's right. Work's the best answer to talk. Did you feel it much here in that rainy spell?"

"The meadows were a bit splashy, of course, but the water never got anywhere near the house."

"But it will. Don't you make any mistake. It will. Only, of course, we've had a dry Autumn. Why, last June year Miss Peasey could have been fishing for minnows in her kitchen. Now that seems a nice upstanding sort of woman. A Wesleen, they tell me? I haven't seen her in church that I can remember, and which would account for it. But I never talk to the chapel folk, they being that uncivilized. She's rather deaf, isn't she?"

"Yes, and therefore cannot gossip," Guy snapped.

"Well, I don't know," said G.o.dbold, doubtfully. "Some of the most unnatural scandals I ever heard were made by deaf women. Though that doesn't mean I'm saying Miss Peasey is a talker."

"I'm sure she isn't," Guy agreed. "Good night, Mr. G.o.dbold."

"Good night, Mr. Hazlewood. Don't you be discouraged by the gossip in Wychford. I always say, if you believe nothing you hear, next to nothing of what you read, and only half of what you see, no one can touch you.

Good night once more, sir. And don't you fret over what people say. I remember they once said I tried to work a horse which had the blind staggers, and Mrs. G.o.dbold was that aggravated she went and washed a shirt of mine twice over, worrying herself. Good night, Mr. Hazlewood."

This time the red-bearded carrier of Wychford (not an inappropriate profession for him) really departed, leaving Guy in a state of considerable resentment at the thought of the Wychford commentary.

That night the raw drizzle turned to snow; and when he looked out of his window next morning it was lying thick over the country and was making his bedroom seem as gray as the loaded clouds above. That exhilaration of a new landscape which comes with snow drove away some of Guy's depression, and after breakfast he went out, curious to contemplate its effect upon the Abbey. In the black frost the great pile had seemed to possess scarcely more substance than a shredded leaf; and when it lay sodden beneath the dripping trees, a manifest decay had made extinction infamous with the ooze of a rotting fungus. The weather now had brought a strange restoration to the abandoned house, and so completely had the covering of snow hidden most of the signs of dissolution that Wychford Abbey seemed no longer dead, but asleep in the quiet of a Winter morning. The lawn in front stretched before it in decent whiteness, and the veiling of the ragged, unhealthy gra.s.s took away from the front of the house that air of wan caducity, endowing the stones by contrast with tinted warmth and richness. The decrepit roof was hidden, and Wychford Abbey dreamed under its weight of snow with all the placid romance of a house on a Christmas card. The dark plantation was deprived of its gloom, and what was usually a kind of haunted stillness was now aspectful peace. Guy went over the crinching ground and strolled down the broad walk through the shrubbery. Everywhere the snow glistened with the footprints of many birds, but not a single call broke a silence which was cold and absolute except for the powdery whisper of the snow where it was sliding from the holly leaves.

When Guy reached the bottom of the shrubbery he sat down on a fallen trunk by a backwater, which dried up here in the drift of dead leaves; and he watched the surface of it glazing perceptibly, yet not so fast but that the faint motion of the freezing air could write upon the smoothness a tremulous reticulation. He had not been resting long when he saw Margaret coming towards him down the walk, and with so light a tread that in her white coat she might have been a figment created for his fancy by the snow. He wondered if a sense of the added beauty her presence gave the scene were in her mind. Probably it was, for Margaret had a discreet vanity that would never gratify itself so well as when she was alone; and plainly she must suppose herself alone, since here on this snowy morning she would not have expected to meet anybody. Guy thought it would be considerate to draw aside without spoiling her dream, whatever the subject of the meditation. However, as he rose from the log to take the narrow path along the backwater and so turn homeward across the fields by the river, Margaret saw him and waved with a feathery gesture. As Guy went up the path to greet her he was thinking how much her hair was like a dark leaf that had shaken off the snow, so easily might her blanched attire have fallen upon her from the clouds; then, as he came close, every charming fancy was suddenly spoiled by a remembrance of Wychford gossip, and he turned hastily round to see if there were prying glances in the laurels.

"What are you looking at?" she asked.

"A squirrel," said Guy, quickly. He would not have had his absence from the Rectory ascribed to any fear of gossip; moreover, since a meeting with Margaret did not make his conscience the thrall of public opinion, he would not have her discreet vanity at all impaired. Therefore it was a squirrel he saw.

"We've been wondering what has become of you," she said.

"Well, I've been working rather hard; and as a matter of fact I was going to the Rectory this afternoon. Isn't the snow jolly after the rain? Especially here, don't you think?"

She nodded.

"I've got to go and visit an old woman who lives almost in Little Fairfield, and I thought I'd avoid as much as I could of the highroad."

"Shall I come with you?" asked Guy, but in so doubtful a voice that Margaret laughingly declared she was sure he was in a state of being offended with the Rectory.

"Oh, Margaret, don't be absurd. Offended?"

"Over the curtains?" she asked.

"Why, if it wouldn't betray a gross insensibility to your opinion, I should tell you I thought no more about what you said. Besides, we've had reconciling Christmas since then."

"Ah, but you see, Pauline is always impressing on Monica and me our cruelty to you, and by this time Mother has been talked into believing in our hard and impenitent hearts."

"Pauline is...." Guy broke off and saw another squirrel. He could not trust himself to speak of Pauline, for in this stillness of snow he felt that the lightest remark would reveal his love; and there was in nature this morning a sort of suspense that seemed to rebuke unuttered secrets.

"Well, as you're walking with me to Fairfield--or nearly to Fairfield--your neglect of us shall be forgiven," Margaret promised.

"Here we are out of the warm trees already. I'm glad I came this way, though I think it was rather foolish. Look how deep the snow seems on that field we've got to cross."

"It isn't really," said Guy, vaulting over the fence that ran round the confines of the Abbey wood.

"Ah, now you've spoiled it," she exclaimed. But Margaret did not pause a moment to regret the ruffling of that sheeted expanse, and they walked on silently, watching the toes of their boots juggle with the snow.

"It generally is a pity," said Guy, after a while.

"What?"

"Impressing one's existence on so lovely and inviolate a thing as this."

He indicated the untrodden field in front of them.

"But look behind you," said Margaret. "Don't you think our footprints look very interesting?"

"Interesting, perhaps," Guy admitted. "Yet footprints in snow never seem to be going anywhere."

"Now I know quite well what you're doing," Margaret protested. "You're making that poor little wabbly track of ours try to bear all sorts of mysterious and symbolic intensities of meaning. Just because you're feeling annoyed with a sonnet, footprints in the snow mustn't lead anywhere. Why, Guy, if I told you what sentimental import my 'cello sometimes gives to a simple walk before lunch.... I mean, of course, when I've been playing badly."

She sighed, and Guy wondered if the violoncello had been used with as little reference as a sonnet to the real cause of the mood.

"Why did you sigh just now?" he asked after another minute or two of silent progress.

"I wonder whether I'll tell you. No, I don't think I will. And yet...."

"And yet perhaps, after all, you will," said Guy, eagerly. "And if you do, I'll tell you something in turn."

"That's no bribe," said Margaret, laughing. "You foolish creature, don't you think I know what you'll tell me?"

Guy shook his head.

"I don't think you do. You may suspect. But for that matter, so may I.

Isn't what you might have told me something that might most suitably be told on the way to Fairfield?"