Plashers Mead Part 32

Why, even if you were an American you couldn't live by poetry. Now please let me finish. My common sense 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-by 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 favorite."

"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 behavior, 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 dead-lock.

"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 towards 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."

Mr. Hazlewood sniffed.

"Destiny is the weak man's canonization of his own vices.

"Well, then I _will_ succeed," retorted Guy. "Moreover, I will succeed in my own way. It seems a pity that we should argue acrimoniously. I shall say no more. I accept the responsibility. For what you've done for me I'm very much obliged. Would you care for a hand at piquet?"

"Oh, certainly," said his father.

Guy hugged himself with another minor triumph. At least it was he who had determined when the discussion should be closed.

The next day, as Guy stood on the s.h.i.+pcot platform and watched the slow train puffing away into the unadventurous country, he had a brief sentiment of regret for the failure of his father's visit, and made up his mind to write to him a letter to-morrow, which would sweeten a little of the bitterness between them. The bees buzzing round the wine-dark dahlias along the platform were once again audible; and close at hand was the hum of a reaper-and-binder. But as he drove back to Wychford his father pa.s.sed from his mind, and mostly Guy thought of walking with Pauline under the pale and ardent blue of this September sky that was reflected in the chicory flowers along the spa.r.s.e and dusty hedgerow.

OCTOBER

"My dears, he frightened me to death," Pauline declared to her family when Mr. Hazlewood had left the Rectory. "Only I expect, you know, that really he's rather sweet."

"I don't think he approved of us very much," said Margaret.

"I didn't approve of him very much," said Monica.

"And where was Francis?" asked Mrs. Grey.

"Francis was a naughty boy," said Pauline.

Since they were sitting in the nursery, her mother allowed the christian name to pa.s.s without reproof.

"He was so exactly like Guy," said Margaret.

"Like Guy?" Pauline echoed, incredulously.

"Yes, of course. Didn't you notice that?" Margaret laughed.

"You're quite right, Margaret," said Mrs. Grey. "How clever of you to see. Now, of course, I realize how much alike they were ... how clever you are!"

"Without Pauline," Margaret went on, "Guy might easily become his father all over again."

"But, my dears," said Pauline, "that would be terrible. I remember how frightened I was of Guy the first day he came to the Rectory, and if he grows more like his father, I don't think I shall ever be anything else but frightened of him, even if we live for ever. For, though I'm sure he's really very sweet, I don't believe one would ever get _quite_ used to Mr. Hazlewood."

Yet when Pauline was alone and had an opportunity to look back upon the visit, its effect was rather encouraging than otherwise. For one thing, it curiously made Guy more actual, because until the personality of his father projected itself upon the scene of their love he had always possessed for Pauline a kind of romantic unreality. In the Spring days and Summer days which had seemed to dedicate themselves to the service of intimacy, Guy had talked a great deal of his life before they met, but the more he had told her, the more was she in the state of being unable to realize that the central figure of these old tales was not a dream. When he was with her, she was often in a daze of wonder at the credibility of being loved like this; and there was never an occasion of seeing him even after the briefest absence that did not hold in the heart of its pleasure a surprise at his return. The appearance of Mr.

Hazlewood was a phenomenon that gave the pledge of prosaic authority to her love, like a statement in print that, however absurd or uncomfortable, has a value so far beyond mere talk. She had often been made rather miserable by Guy's tales of the ladies he had loved with airy heedlessness, but these heroines had all faded out in the unreality of his life apart from her, and they took their place with days of adventure described in Macedonia or with the old diversions of Oxford.

The visit of Mr. Hazlewood with the chilly disapproval it had shed was more authentic than, for instance, the idea of Guy's dark-eyed mother, who had seemed in his narrations almost to threaten Pauline with her son's fairy ancestry, as if from the grave she might at any moment summon him away. Mr. Hazlewood had carried with him a wonderful a.s.surance of ordinariness. The merely external resemblance between him and his son proved that Guy could grow old; and the sense of his opposition was a trifling discomfort in comparison with the a.s.surance he offered of an imaginable future. She remembered that her first idea of Guy had been that of some one dry and cynical; and no doubt this first impression of his father was equally wrong. She who had been so shy and speechless was no doubt much to blame, and the family had done nothing to help out the situation. It had been unkind of her father to hide himself, since to Mr. Hazlewood, who could not have understood that it was the sort of thing her father would be sure to do, such behavior must have presented itself very oddly.

The Rector, on Pauline's remonstrating with him, was not at all penitent.

"When your marriage, my dear, comes on the horizon--I don't mind how faint a horizon--of the probable, then it will be time to discuss matters in the practical way I suppose Mr. Hazlewood would like them to be discussed. Moreover, in any case, I forgot that the worthy gentleman was coming."

Pauline was anxious to make excuses for the Rector to Guy, but Guy, when he came round next day, was only apologetic for his own father's behavior; and he and she came to a conclusion in the end that parents must be forgiven on account of their age.

"At the same time," Guy added, "I blame my father for his conventional outlook. He doesn't seem able to realize the extraordinary help that you are to my work. In fact, he doesn't realize that my work is work. He's been teaching for so many years that now he can no longer learn anything. Your father's behavior is reasonable. He doesn't take us quite seriously, but he leaves the situation to our disentanglement. Well, we shall convince him that nothing in the world is so simple as a love like ours; but the worst of my father is that even if he were convinced he would be more annoying than ever."

"You must make allowances, Guy. For one thing, how few people, even when they're young, understand about love. Besides, he's anxious about your career."

"What right has he to be anxious?" Guy burst out. "If I fail, I pay the penalty, not he."