GUY had been conscious ever since that rose-gold evening of the ragged robins of new elements having entered into his and Pauline's love for each other. All this month, however, June creeping upon them with verdurous and muffled steps had plotted to foil the least attempt on Guy's part to face the situation. Now the casual indiscretion of yesterday brought him sharply against it, and, as in the melancholy of the long Summer evening he contemplated the prospect, it appeared disquieting enough. In nine months he had done nothing: no quibbling could circumvent that deadly fact. For nine months he had lived in a house of his own, had accepted paternal help, had betrothed himself; and with every passing month he had done less to justify any single one of the steps. What were the remedies? The house might be sub-let: at any rate his father's bounty came to an end this quarter: engaging himself formally to Pauline, he could throttle the Muse and become a schoolmaster, and in two years perhaps they could be married. It would be a wrench to abandon poetry and the hope of fame, indeed it would stagger the very foundations of his pride; but rather than lose Pauline he would be content to remain the obscurest creature on earth. Literature might blazon his name: but her love blazoned his soul. Poetry was only the flame of life made visible, and if he were to sacrifice Pauline what gasping and ignoble rushlight of his own would he offer to the world?
Yet could he bear to leave Pauline herself? The truth was he should have gone in March when she was in a way still remote and when like a star she would have shone as brightly upon him absent or present. Now that star was burning in his heart with passionate fires and fevers and with quenchless ardours. It would be like death to leave her now; were she absent from him her very name would be as a draught of liquid fire. More implacable, too, than his own torment of love might be hers. If he had gone in March, she would have been gently sad, but in those first months she still had other interests; now if he parted from her she would merely all the time be growing older and they would have between them and their separation the intolerable wastage of their youth. Pauline had surrendered to love all the simple joys which had hitherto occupied her daily life; and if she were divided from him, he feared for the fire that might consume her. It was he who had kindled it upon that rosaureate evening of mid-May, and it was he who was charged with her ultimate happiness. The accident of yesterday had reminded him sharply how far this was so, and a sense of the tremendous responsibility created by his love for her lay heavily upon Guy. He must never again give her family an occasion to remonstrate with her: he had been the one to blame, and he wished Mrs. Grey had spoken to him without saying anything to Pauline. How sad this long evening was, with reluctant day even now at half-past-nine o'clock still luminous in the West.
Next morning there was a letter for Guy from his father.
FOX HALL,
GALTON,
HANTS.
June 25.
My dear Guy,
I enclose the balance of the sum I gave you, and I hope it will have been enough to pay all the debts at which you hinted in your last letter. I do not think it would be fair to you to hamper you with any more money. In fact, I trust you have already made up your mind not to ask for any.
You'll be sorry to hear that Wilkinson has fallen ill and must go abroad at once. This makes it imperative for me to know at once if you are coming to help me next September. If you are, I'm afraid I must ask you to come here immediately and take Wilkinson's place this term. I'm sorry to drag you away from your country estate, but I cannot go to the bother of getting a temporary master and then begin again with you in September. It unsettles the boys too much. So if you want to come in September, you must come now. You will only miss a month of your house and I hope that during the seven weeks of the summer holidays you will be able to transfer yourself comfortably and abandon it for ever.
Take a day to think over my proposal and telegraph your answer to-morrow.
Your affectionate father,
John Hazlewood.
It seemed fateful, the arrival of this letter on top of the doubts of last night. A day was not long in which to make up his mind. And yet, after all, a moment was enough. He ought to go: he ought to telegraph immediately before he could vacillate: he must not see Pauline first: he ought to accept this offer: farewell, fame!