"Am I really all that to you?"
"Forward," he shouted, hurling his stick in front of him and dragging Pauline at the heels of Bob across turf that was already beginning to crackle in the frost. Pauline could not resist his confidence, and when at last they had to turn round and leave a smoky orange sunset, they came home glowing to the Rectory, both in the highest spirits. Guy wrote to the publisher that night and announced his intention of accepting the "offer," a word which he could not resist framing with inverted commas in case the sarcastic shaft might pierce Mr. Worrall's hard and conical head.
Sitting back in his chair and thinking over his poems, all sorts of verbal improvements suggested themselves to Guy; and he added a note asking for the manuscript to be sent back for a few corrections. He looked at his work with new eyes when it arrived, and bent with all the enthusiasm that fruition gave his pen upon reviewing each line for the hundredth time. He had enjoyed few things so well in his life as going to bed tired with the intense consideration of a rhyme and falling asleep in the ambition to reconsider it early next morning.
About ten days had passed since Guy sold the second lot of books, and the poems were now as good as he could make them until print should reveal numbers of fresh faults. He hoped that Worrall would hurry on with the printing in order to allow him plenty of time for an even more severe scrutiny; and he wrote to suggest April as the month of publication, so anxious was he to have one specially bound copy to offer Pauline on her birthday.
On the very morning when the manuscript had been wrapped up and was ready to be sent off a disturbing letter arrived from Lampard, his favourite Oxford bookseller, to say that having made a purchase of books two or three days ago he had been surprized to find among them a large number of volumes with Mr. Hazlewood's name inscribed on the fly-leaves, for which Mr. Hazlewood had not yet paid him. He ventured to think it was only by an oversight that Mr. Hazlewood had not paid his long outstanding account before disposing of the books and in short he was anxious to know what Mr. Hazlewood intended to do about it. His bill, £32 15s., was enclosed. Guy wrote back to say that it was indeed a most unaccountable oversight on his part, but that he hoped in order to mark his sympathy with Mr. Lampard's point of view to send him another cheque very shortly, reminding the bookseller at the same time that he had scarcely three weeks ago sent him £7 on account. Mr. Lampard in his reply observed very plainly that Guy's letter was no reply at all and threatened politely to make matters rather unpleasant if the bill were not paid in full instantly. Guy tried once more a letter full of bland promises, and received in response a letter from Mr. Lampard's solicitor. The £30 intended for Mr. Worrall had to be sacrificed, and even £2 15s. had to be taken from his current account. Savagely he tore the paper from the manuscript, wrapped it up again and despatched it to another publisher. The bad luck of the Lampard business made him only the more resolute not to invoke aid from his father or anyone else. He was a prey to a perverse determination to do everything himself; but it was gloomy news that he had to tell Pauline that afternoon, and she broke down and cried in her disappointment.
February
PAULINE had been looking forward to the entrance of February with joyful remembrance of what last February had brought her; and that the anniversary of Guy's declaration of his love should be heralded by such a discomfiture of their plans was a shock. The renewal of his uncertainty about the fate of the poems destroyed the progress of a love that seemed to have come back to its old calm course, and brought back with all the added sharpness of absence the heartache and the apprehension. Pauline sat in the nursery window-seat and pondered dolefully the obstacles to happiness from which her mind, however hard it tried, could not escape. Most insistently of these obstacles Guy's debts haunted her, harassing and material responsibilities that in great uncouth battalions swept endlessly past. Even in the middle of the night she would wake gasping in an effort to escape from being stifled by their vastness pressing down upon her brain. The small presents Guy had given her burned through the darkness to reproach her: even the two rings goaded her for the extravagance they represented. It was useless for Guy to explain that his debts were a trifle, because the statement of a sum so large as £200 appalled her as much as if he had said £2000. She longed for a confidante whose sympathy she could exact for the incubus that possessed her lover; and fancying a disloyalty to him if she discussed his money affairs with her family, she could think of no one but Miss Verney to whom the burdensome secret might be entrusted.
"William had the same difficulty," sighed the old maid. "Really it seems as if money is the root of all evil. £200, you say? Oh, dear, how uncomfortable he must feel, poor young man."
"If only I could make some money, dear Miss Verney. But how could I?"
"I used to ask myself that very question," said the old maid. "I used to ask myself just that very identical question. But there was never any satisfactory answer."