When Guy was back in the funny St. Giles room, he decided there was something rather finely ascetic about Michael seated there and reading imperturbably in the lamplight. His courteously fatigued manner was merely that of the idealist who had overreached himself; there was nothing bilious about him, not even so much cynicism as had slightly chilled Guy's own career at Oxford; rather did there emanate from Michael a kind of medieval steadfastness comparable only to those stone faces that look calmly down upon the transitory congregations of their church. Michael had this solemn presence that demanded an upward look, and once again an upward look, until without conversation the solemnity became a little disquieting. Guy felt bound to interrupt with light-hearted talk of his own that slow, still gaze across the lampshine.
"Dash it, Michael! don't brood there like a Memento Mori. Put away Magna Charta and talk to me. You used to talk."
"You talk, Guy. You've been living alone all this time. You must have a great deal to say."
So Guy flung theories of rhyme and meter to overwhelm Magna Charta; and, next day, he and Michael walked all over Oxford in the rain, he himself still talking. The day after there came with the sun a letter from Pauline which he took away with him to read in the garden of St. John's, leaving Michael to Magna Charta.
There was nobody on the lawn, and Guy sat down on a wooden seat in air that was faintly perfumed by the precocious blooms of a lilac breaking to this unusual warmth of April. Unopened the letter rested in his hand; for his name written in this girlish charactery took on the romantic look of a name in an old tale. A breathlessness was in the air, such as had brooded upon Pauline's first kiss; and Guy sat marmoreal and rapt in an ecstasy of anticipation that he would never have from any other letter; so still he was that an alighting blackbird slipped over the grass almost to his feet before it realized the mistake and shrilled away on startled wings into the bushes behind. The trance of expectation was spoiled, and Guy with a sigh broke the envelope.
Wychford Rectory, Oxon,
Wednesday.
I am writing to you at my desk. I began this morning but it was time to go out when I began. Now it's after tea. Margaret came in just now and said I looked all crinkled up like a shell: it's because I simply don't know how to write to you. I have read your letter over and over again. I never thought there could be such a wonderful letter in the world. But I feel very sorry for poor Richard who can't write letters as exquisite as yours. I really feel miserable about him. And this letter to you makes me feel miserable because I can't write letters even as well as Richard. Mother was glad you thought of going to Oxford because she says we are a great responsibility to her. Isn't she sweet? She really is, you know. So I talked to Father myself very seriously. I explained to him that I was quite old enough to know my own mind, and he listened to all the things I told him about you. He said he supposed it was innevitable, which looks very funny somehow. Are you laughing at my spelling? And then he said it was nothing to do with him. So of course I rushed off to Mother and told her and when you come back we are to be allowed to go out twice a week and in three more months we can be engaged properly. Are you happy? Only, dear Guy, Mother doesn't want you to come back till my birthday. She thinks the idea of you and me will be better when Father has got an Iris lorti or some name like that. He has never had a flower of it before and he's so excited about it's coming out just when my birthday is. Every day he goes down and pinches the stalk of it. He says it's the loveliest flower in the world and grows on Mount Lebanon. So if it comes out on my birthday, you and I can certainly be engaged in August. Guy, I do hate my handwriting.
Your loving
Pauline.
It was a letter of gloriously good news, thought Guy, though he was a little disappointed not to have had the thrill of Pauline's endearment. Then, on the blank outside page, he saw scrawled in writing that went tumbling head over heels down the paper: My darling Guy, I love you and underneath I have kissed the letter for you.
The sentence died out in faint ink that seemed to show forth the whisper in which it had been written. For Guy the tumble-down letters were written in fire; and with the treasure in his heart of that small sentence, read a hundred times, he did not know how he should endure ten long days without Pauline, and in this old college garden, on this sedate and academic lawn, he cried out that he adored her as if indeed she were beside him in this laylocked air. At the sound of his voice the birds close at hand were all silent; they might have stopped to listen. Then a green finch called, "Sweet! sweet!" whose gentle and persistent proclamation was presently echoed by all the other birds twittering together again in the confused raptures of their Spring.