"I caught a six-pounder at Oxford with a mouse's head myself," Guy declared.
The friends looked at him in the admiration and envy with which anglers welcome a pleasant, companionable sort of lie. It was a bad move, for it seemed as if by that lie he had drawn closer the bonds of sympathy between himself and his guests. They visibly warmed to his company, for Brydone at once invited himself to another "tot" and was obviously settling down to a competitive talk about big fish; while Willsher's first shyness turned to familiarity, so completely indeed that he asked if Guy would mind his moving the furniture in order to try to explain to that fathead Brydone the exact promontory of the Greenrush where he had caught thirty trout in an hour when the mayfly was up two years ago.
Half past ten struck from the church tower, and Guy became desperate. There was nothing he hated so much as asking people to go, which was one reason why he always discouraged them at the beginning; but it really seemed as if he must bring himself to the point of asking Brydone and Willsher to leave him to his work. He decided to allow them until a quarter to eleven. The minutes dragged along, and when the quarter sounded Guy said he was sorry, but that he was very much afraid he would have to work now.
"Right oh," said Brydone. "We'll tootle off." But it took ten minutes to get them out of the house, and when at last they disappeared into the mazy garden Guy was in a fume of anxiety about his tryst. He could not now go round by Rectory Lane, as he had intended at first. No doubt Brydone and Willsher would stay talking half an hour on the bridge, for the rain had stopped and they had given the impression of having the night before them. In fact, Brydone had once definitely announced that the night was still young. Yet in a way the fact of their nearness and of his having to avoid them added a zest to the adventure.
How dark it was and how heavily the trees dripped in the orchard! Guy pulled the canoe from the shed and dragged it squeaking over the wet grass; not even he in the exaltation of the moment was going to swim the Hellespont.
When he was in the canoe and driving it with silent strokes along the straight black stream; when the lantern was put out and the darkness was at first so thick that like the water it seemed to resist the sweep of his paddle, Guy could no longer imagine that Pauline would venture out. He became oppressed by the impenetrable and humid air, and he began to long for rain to fall as if it would reassure him that nature in such an annihilation of form was still alive. Now he had swung past the overhanging willows of the churchyard; his eyes, grown accustomed to the darkness, discovered against a vague sky the vague bulk of the church, and in a minute or two he could be sure that he was come to the Rectory paddock. He was wet to the knees, and his feet, sagging in the grass, seemed to make a most prodigious noise with their gurgling.
Guy was too early when he crept over the lawn, for there were still lights in all the upper windows, and he withdrew to the plantation, where he waited in rapt patience while the branches dripped and pattered, dripped and pattered ceaselessly. One by one the lights had faded out, but still he must not signal to Pauline. How should he, after all, make known to her his presence on that dark lawn? Scarcely would she perceive from her window his shadowy form. He must not even whisper; he must not strike a match. Suddenly a light crossed his vision, and he started violently before he realized that it was only a glow-worm moving with laborious progress along the damp edge of the lawn. Black indeed was the hour when a glow-worm belated on this drear night of the year's decline could so alarm him. For a while he watched the creeping phosphorescence and wondered at it in kindly fellowship, thinking how like it was to a human lover, so small and solitary in this gigantic gloom. Then he began to pick it up and, as it moved across his hand and gave it with the wan fire a ghostly semblance, he resolved to signal with this lamp to Pauline.
Midnight crashed its tale from the belfry, and nowhere in the long house was there any light. There was nothing now in the world but himself and this glow-worm wandering across his hand. He moved nearer to the house and stood beneath Pauline's window; surely she was leaning out; surely that was her shadow tremulous on the inspissate air. Guy waved, and the pale light moving to and fro seemed to exact an answer, for something fell at his feet, and by the glow-worm's melancholy radiance he read "now" on a piece of paper. Gratefully he set the insect down to vanish upon its own amorous path into the murk. Not a tree quivered, not a raindrop slipped from a blade of grass, but Guy held out his arms to clasp his long-awaited Pauline. The "now" prolonged its duration into hours, it seemed; and then when she did come she was in his arms before he knew by her step or by the rustle of her dress that she was coming. She was in his arms as though like a moth she had floated upon a flower.
Their good night was kissed in a moment, and she was gone like a moth that cannot stay upon the flower it visits.
Guy waited until he thought he saw her leaning from her window once more. Then he drew close to the wall of the house and strained his eyes to catch the farewell of her hand. As he looked up the rain began to fall again; and in an ecstasy he glided back to Plashers Mead, adoring the drench of his clothes and the soft sighing of the rain.