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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 49856
   :PG.Title: The Post-Girl
   :PG.Released: 2015-09-02
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Edward \C. Booth
   :DC.Title: The Post-Girl
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1908
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE POST-GIRL
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      THE POST-GIRL

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      BY

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      EDWARD \C. BOOTH

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      New York
      GROSSET & DUNLAP
      Publishers

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      Copyright, 1908, by
      THE CENTURY Co.

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      *Published, June, 1908*

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.. _`CHAPTER I`:

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   THE POST-GIRL

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   CHAPTER I

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When summer comes Mrs. Gatheredge talks of
repapering her parlor, and Ginger gets him ready
to sleep in the scullery at a night's notice, but the letting
of lodgings is not a staple industry in this quarter of
Yorkshire, and folks would fare ill on it who knew nothing of
the art of keeping a pig or growing their own potatoes in
the bit of garden at the back.

Visitors pass through, indeed, in large enough numbers
between seed- and harvest-time (mostly by bicycle),
staring their way round the village from house to house.  But
all that ever develops is an occasional request for a cup
of water—in the hope, no doubt, that we may give them
milk—or an interrogation as to the road to somewhere
else.  Steg's reply to the latter, through a long succession
of summers, has waxed into a set formula, which he
prepares with all the exactness of a prescription:

"There 's two rawds [roads] tiv it," he says, measuring
out his words carefully against the light of inward
understanding, like tincture in a chemist's vial.  "A right un
an' a wrong un.  'Appen ye 'd as lief gan right un.  Wrong
un 's a long way round."

These are mere migratory birds of visit, however—here
this morning and gone by noon—leaving little trace
of their passage beyond a footmark on somebody's doorstep
or a mustard-stained sandwich-paper blowing drearily
against the tombstones in the churchyard.  Residential
visitors are almost unknown to Ullbrig.  One or two petty
tradesmen bring their wives and families from
Hunmouth for cheap sojourn during the summer months, but
they are more residential than visitors, recurring each
year with the regularity of harvest, and blending as
imperceptibly with Ullbrig life as the water with Jevons'
milk.  They have become to all intents and purposes a
part of us, and are never spoken of as "visitors"—they
are merely said to be "wi' us again" or just "coom back."  The
class of visitor which is lacking to Ullbrig is the
pleasure-seeking variety which comes for a month, is
charged unprotesting for lights and fire, never lends a
hand to the washing of its own pots, and pays town price
for country butter.  Our local designation for such
guests—when we get them—is "spawers."

The word is apt to strike chill on urban understandings
when heard for the first time.  I remember when Ginger
sprang it upon me on the initial occasion of my hearing
it, I was filled for a moment with an indefinable sense of
calamity.

"Well," were Ginger's words, greeting me and leaving
me almost in a breath.  "Ah wish ah mud stay longer wi'
ye noo, but ah mun't.  We 've gotten spawers i' 'oose
[house]."

I shook his earth-worn hand with that degree of
comprehensive warmth which should suggest sorrowing
sympathy to a mind quickened through trouble, but nought
beyond fervor to the ruder tissues of health.

"There 's always something ... for some of us..."
I said oracularly.

"We mud as well 'ev 'em as onnybody," Ginger remarked,
with what I took to be rare resignation at the
time, and we parted.

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It was in the green, early days of July, when the corn
waved slumberously back and forth over the hedge-tops,
beating time to soundless adagios like a sleepy-headed
metronome, and as yet there were few scorched patches
in summer's rippling gown of emerald silk, that the
Spawer arrived.  Steg was one of the first to give tidings
of his advent to Ullbrig, and after him Mrs. Grazer, who
met him on his way home, bearing the intelligence
laboriously with his mouth open, like a brimming pail of milk.

"'Ev ye 'eard 'ow Mester Jenkison' mother' sister-in-law
's gettin' on, Steg?" she asked him, before he was
ready to speak first.

"Ay," says Steg, with a watchful eye upon his own
intelligence, set momentarily down, and waiting his turn.

"'Ow is she, then?"

"She 's deead."

"Nay!  Is she an' all!  Poor owd woman!"

"She is that!" says Steg, warming with a sense of
triumph to the work, as though he had the credit of her
demise.  It is good to be the bearer of tidings, and feel
oneself a factor in the world's rotation.  "She deed ti morn
[this morning] at aif-past six."

"An' when 's t' buryin'?  Did y' 'ear?"

"Ay, they telt me," says Steg.

"It 'll be o' Thosday, ah 's think."

"Nay, bud it weean't," Steg replied, mounting up
another step by contradiction toward the top rung of his
ladder.  "Wensday.  There 's ower much thunder about
for keepin'."  Then he struck up still higher without
loss of time.  "They 've gotten a spawer up at Clift," he
said.

The intelligence was a guest at every tea-table in
Ullbrig the same day, Steg and Mrs. Grazer having done
wonders in its dissemination under wholesome fear of
forestalment.  Mrs. Grazer beat Steg by a short head at
Shep Stevens', but Steg cut the triumph away from under
her feet at Gatheredge's.  To all intents and purposes they
ran a dead heat at the brewery, only Mrs. Gatheredge's
superior riding put Steg's nose out on the post.

"Steg 'll 'a telt ye they 've gotten a spawer up at Clift
Yend," she said, with diabolical cunning, just as Steg's
mouth was opening for the purpose, snatching the prize
from his very lips.

"Nay, Steg 's telt us nowt," repudiated the brewer.
"Steg 's nobbut just this minute walked i' yard.  Ev' they
an' all?  Up at Clift Yend?"

"'E come o' Monday," Steg chimed in morosely, picking
up what odd crumbs of attention were left him from
the purloin.

"O' Monday, did 'e?  There 's nobbut one on 'em,
then?" said the brewer interrogatively.

"That's all," answered Steg, left in undisputed possession
of the field by the departure of Mrs. Grazer into the
internals of the brewer's house by the back.

"Ay....  So there 's nobbut one on 'em, then?  It 'll
be newspaper man fro' Oommuth [Hunmouth], ah 's
think—'im 'at was 'ere last back-end."

"Nay, bud no," Steg answered, with decision, plucking
up brightly at the sight of unspoliated pickings.  "It 's a
right new un this time."

"'E 'll be fro' Oommuth, though," said the brewer,
going down squarely on the bilge of a beer barrel after a
cautious look backward.

"Nay, an' 'e 's not fro' Oommuth naythur," said Steg,
with zest.

"Why!  Where is 'e fro', then?" asked the brewer, in
genuine surprise.  Visitors to Ullbrig who don't come
from Hunmouth can hardly be conceived to come from
anywhere.  We divide the world into two constituents,
town and country, Hunmouth being the town.

"Ah nivver thought to ask," said Steg, after a thinking
pause; "bud 'e 's not fro' Oommuth....  Ah 'm none so
sure," he added, straining the chords of his actual intelligence
for the sake of a little extra effect, "'t 'e 's not fro'
Lunnon!"

"Ah think not, Steg," said the brewer quickly, rejecting
the probability without consideration, like the blind man's
box of matches pushed under his nose in Hunmouth.

"Ah think not," the brewer repeated.  "Lunnon 's a
long way off 'n Clift Yend."

"Ay, but ah 'm none so sure, ah tell ye," Steg urged,
real conviction growing in him out of contradiction, as is
the way of all flesh.  "'E 's lived a deal i' furrin parts,
onny'ow," he said craftily, making a counter demonstration
to relieve pressure on the main issue, and retiring
under its cover from the assailed position.

"Which on 'em?" inquired the brewer, with disconcerting
directness.

"T' most part on 'em, ah think," Steg replied, boldly.

"France, 'as 'e?" asked the brewer, testing this broad
statement of fact by the application of specifics.

"Ay," said Steg, with a big bold affirmative like the
head of a tadpole, thinning out all suddenly into a faint
wriggling tail of protective caution—"ah think so."

"Jarmany?" asked the brewer.

"Ay," said Steg again, "... ah think so."

"Roo-shah?" the brewer went on judicially, suddenly
of a mind to turn this interrogation into a geographical
display, but with a keen eye for the limits of his territory.

"Ay," repeated Steg, gathering such momentum of assent
that he had buried his reply in the brewer's second
syllable before he could stop himself, with his tail
sticking out by the interrogation mark—"ah think so."

"Hitaly?" queried the brewer, pausing through a futile
endeavor to pronounce whether America was a foreign
part or not.  "Choina?  Hindia?"

"Nay," Steg demurred, with wily scruple, "ah 'm none
so sure about t' last."

"'E 's traviled a deal, 'owseumdivver," said the brewer.
"What 's brought 'im to Clift Yend, ah wonder ... of
all places i' world.  'E 's not for company, it seems, bi t'
looks o' things.  Did y' 'ear owt why 'e 's come?"

"Naw," said Steg.  "They say 'e writes a deal of 'is time."

"'Appen 'e writes for t' paper," the brewer suggested.

"Nay, ah div n't think that 's it," Steg said, taking the
brewer's conclusion into his own hands like an ill-sharpened
pencil and repointing it.  "'E 's nowt to do wi' papers,
by what ah can mek oot.  'E 's ta'en rooms for a
month at start, wi' chance o' stoppin' on if 'e likes 'em, an'
'e 's brought a hextry deal o' things wi' 'im.  'E 's brought
a bath...."

"A bath!" said the brewer blankly, interrogation and
interjection in visible conflict over the word.  Complete
house furnishing in Ullbrig stops at the wash-tub.  Beyond
this all is vanity.  "What diz 'e want wi' a bath?"

"Nay..." Steg said, declining any conflict on the
unaccountabilities of strange men from far places.  "Ah 'm
nobbut tellin' ye same as they 've telt me," he added
half-apologetically, in fear lest he might be accused of
sympathies with false worship.  "It 's a rare great bath an'
all, by what they say—like one o' them big drums wi' a
cover tiv it.  Ye 've nobbut to gie it a ding wi' yer 'and
an' it sets up a growl same as thunder.  Onny road,
that 's what Jeff Dixon says, an' 'e ought to know.  'E
wor dingin' it all last neet."

"Some folks 'as fancies," said the brewer, with
impersonal scorn.

"Ay ... an' ah was nigh forgettin'..." Steg struck
in.  "'E 's gotten a 'armonium comin' an' all.  It 'll ought
to be 'ere before so very long, noo."

"A 'armonium!" exclaimed the brewer, trying the word
incredulously upon his understanding.  "Nay," he said,
after testing it with his own lips, "nay, ah think ye 're
wrong this time, Steg."

"A pianner, then," Steg hazarded, after staring fixedly
for a space with a wrestle going on laboriously behind his
eyes.  "It's all same thing i' yend."

"Nay, nor a pianner naythur," ruled the brewer, refusing
the substitute with equal disregard.  "Folks dizz n't
tek 'armoniums nor pianners about wi' 'em fro' place to
place i' that road.  It 'll be a concerteeny ye 're thinkin'
on, 'appen."

"Nay, it weean't," Steg said slowly.

"What'll it be, then?"

"It 'll be a pianner," he said, carrying the contention
relentlessly in his mouth as a dog does a bone, and,
seeing that, the brewer did not risk wresting it from him by
force.

"'Oo says it will?" he inquired, temporising warily
after this convincing display of faith.

"I do," said Steg, toll-gathering masterfully for himself.

"Ay, bud 'oo telt you?" demanded the brewer.

"Gyles' lad," said Steg.

"An' 'oo telt 'im?" the brewer continued, pursuing the
inflexible interrogative path to fundamentals.

"Arny."

"Arny Dixon?"

"Ay, 'e did."

"Arny Dixon 'issen?"

"Ay, Arny Dixon 'issen.  There 's not two of 'em."

"Arny Dixon telt Gyles' lad and Gyles' lad telt you, ye
say?"

"Ay, ah do," said Steg, with a voice that cried for no
abatement of its responsibility.

The brewer gave one thigh a moment's respite off the
hard cask, and after that the other.

"Well!" he said, sententiously.  "There 'll be time
enough an' all, Steg.  Them 'at lives longest sees most,
they say."

"Ay!" Steg assented, with equanimity.

A shadow fell across the brewer's yard; an irresolute,
halting shadow—the shadow of one with half a mission
and two minds.

"'Neet, James," greeted the brewer to the yard-end,
and the shadow deepened, falling finally over an adjacent
beer barrel with a couple of nods and an expectoration.

"We 've gotten company up at Gift Yend, then," it said.





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.. _`CHAPTER II`:

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   CHAPTER II

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Where the roadway splits on the trim, green prow
of Hesketh's high garden-hedge, dipping down like
the trough of a wave and sliding along the cool, moss-grown
wall beneath a tangle of leafy rigging towards the
sunlit opens of Cliff Wrangham, Father Mostyn, deep
in his own thoughts, came suddenly upon the Spawer,
going homeward.

He was a tall, lithe figure of young manhood, in
snowy holland, with the idle bearing of one whose
activity is all in the upper story; eyes brown, steadfast,
and kindly, less for the faculty of seeing things
than of thinking them; brows lying at ease apart, but
with the tiny, tell-tale couple-crease between them for
linked tussle—brows that might hitch on to thought with
the tenacity of a steel hawser; a jaw fine, firm, and
resolute, closing strongly over determination, though void of
the vicious set of obstinacy, with a little indulgent,
smiling, V-shaped cleft in the chin for a mendicant to take
advantage of; lips seemingly consecrate to the sober
things of this life, yet showing too a sunny corner for its
mirthmakings and laughters beneath the slight slant of
moustache—scarcely more tawny than its owner's
sun-tanned cheeks where it touched them.  Father Mostyn
awoke suddenly from his musing to the awareness of a
strange presence, encompassing it with the meshes of an
inquiring eye.  Before the Spawer could extricate his
glance from the toils of its inadvertent trespass, the dread
"Ha!" had completed his enslavement and brought him
up on his heel sideways at the moment of passing.

"... A stranger within our gates!" Father Mostyn
observed, with courteous surprise, rocking ruminatively
to and fro on his legs in the roadway, and dangling the
ebony staff in both palms.  He drew a comprehensive
circle with its ferrule in the blue sky.  "You bring
glorious weather," he said, contemplating the demarcated
area through rapt, narrowed lashes, and sensing its
beneficence with the uplifted nostrils of zest.

The Spawer unlocked his lips to a frank, boyish smile
that lighted up his face in quick response like the throwing
open of shutters to the sunlight.  Also, just a little
emanative twinkle that seemed to suggest previous acquaintance
with the Vicar over some Cliff Wrangham rail.

"To be truthful," he laughed, "it 's the weather that
brings me.  One feels it almost a sin, somehow, to let such
a sun and sky go unenjoyed.  The rain always comes soon
enough."

"Not till we 've prayed for it," Father Mostyn decided
with prompt reassurance, making critical diagnosis of
the sky above.  "... Prayed for it properly," he
hastened to explain.  "Indiscriminate Ullbrig exhortation
won't do any good—with a sky like that.  You can't
mistake it.  The meteorological conditions point to prolonged
set fair."  He dismissed the weather with a sudden
expulsion of glance, and put on his atmospheric courtesy of
manner for personal approaches.  "... A pilgrim to the
old heathen centre of Ullbrig?" he inquired, diffusing the
direct interrogation over the Spawer's holland trousers.
"Brig, the Bridge, and Ull, or Uddle, the Idol—the
Village of Idols on the Bridge.  The bridge and the idols have
departed ... the church is partly built of stones from
infidel altars ... but the heathen remain.  Large
numbers of them.  Do you come to study our aboriginal habits
and superstitions? ... A student of Nature at all?"

The Spawer exchanged a happy negative.

"Hardly a student," he said, rejecting the title with
pleasant demur.  "I 'm afraid I can't lay claim to that.  A
lover, perhaps," he substituted.  "That leaves ignorance
free scope.  Love is not among the learned professions."

"Ha!" Father Mostyn commented, considering the reflection,
like the scent of a cigar, through critical nostrils.
"A lover of Nature; with a leaning towards philosophy.
You come far to do your love-making?"

"Fairly far—yes.  I am fond of the country," the
Spawer explained, with simple confession of fact, "and
the sea."

"We have not much country to offer you hereabouts, I
fear," Father Mostyn said, looking deprecatingly round it.
"We have land."  He leaned interrogatively on the proffered
alternative.  "If that 's any good to you.  A fine,
heavy, obstinate clay like the rest of us.  We are sweaters
of the brow in these parts.  We find it an excellent substitute
for soap.  All our life is given over to the land.  We
are born on it, brought up on it, buried in it.  We worship
it.  It is the only god we bow to.  Notice the back of an
Ullbrig man; it is bent with devotion to the soil.  We
don't bend like that in church.  To bend like that in
church is idolatry.  So we go to chapel and unbend
instead, and hold mighty tea-meetings in honor of Jehovah.
Notice our eyes too; take stock of them when we give you
'Good day' in the road.  There is a peculiar, foxy,
narrow-grooved slant in them through incessant following of
the furrow.  You can't mistake it.  You don't need any
pretensions to metoposcopy to read our faces.  We are of
the earth, earthy.  When we turn our eyes towards
Heaven, we are merely looking for rain.  If we turn them
up again, we are merely looking for the rain to stop.  Our
lives are elemental and our pleasures few.  To speak ill of
one's neighbor, to slander the vicar, to deride the church,
to perpetuate heresy, to pasture untruths—*spargere voces
in vulgum ambiguas*—to fly off at a tangent on strong
beer—these are among our catalogue of homely recreations.

"If you were staying here to study us for any length of
time—but I suppose you are the mere sojourner of a day,
gone from us again in the cool of the evening with the
night-moths and other flitting things?"

The Spawer laughed lightly.

"Not quite so soon as that," he said.  "And you make
me glad of it.  No; I am pitching my tent in this pleasant
wilderness awhile."

Father Mostyn opened his roomy eye to the reception
of surprise.

"Ha!  Is it possible?  Within measurable distance of us?"

"At Cliff Wrangham."

"Cliff Wrangham!"  The ecclesiastical eyebrows elevated
themselves up out of sight under Father Mostyn's
cap-rim.  "So near and yet so far!  Friends?" he added,
as the eyebrows came down, casting over the word a
delicate interrogative haze.

The Spawer cleaved its meaning.

"I am making them," he said.  "At present I am merely
a lodger."

"Merely a lodger," Father Mostyn repeated, using the
words to nod over, as was his wont.  "And Mrs. Dixon,
I suppose, is our landlady?  Ha!  I thought so.  She has
the monopoly hereabouts.  A tower of nonconformity in
a district pillared with dissent—but a skilled cook.  A
cook for an abbot's board.  Only describe what a dish
smells like and she will come within reasonable approach
of its taste on the table.  You won't have much fault to
find with the meals—I 've tried 'em.  Her chicken-pies
are a specialty.  There 's not a single crumb of vice in the
whole crust, and the gravy glues your lips together with
goodness.  The pity is they are not even Protestant pies,
and are impiously partaken of on Fridays and other holy
fast days.  You need never fear for a dinner.  All you
have to do is to go out into the yard and point your finger
at it.  We possess an agreeable knack of spiriting poultry
under the crust hereabouts without unnecessary formula.
It is inherited.  Beef will give you trouble, and mutton;
both in the buying and the masticating.  We kill once a
week.  Killing day falls the day after you want steak in a
hurry—or has fallen some days before.  That is because we
sell first and slaughter second.  Our Ullbrig butchers leave
nothing to chance.  They keep a beast ready in the stall,
and as soon as the last steak 's sold by allotment, they
sign the execution warrant.  Not before, unless the beast
falls ill.  In the matter of fish we are better off.  We
don't go down to the sea in ships for it—we should come
back without it if we did.  We get it at Fussitter's.  Ready
tinned."

"Ready tinned!" said the Spawer.  "It sounds rather
deadly, does n't it?  It puts me in mind of inquests, somehow."

"Ha!"  Father Mostyn made haste to explain.  "You
must n't buy it out of the window.  That 's where the
deadliness comes in.  The sunlight has a peculiar chemical
action upon the tin, liberating certain constituents of the
metal exceedingly perilous to the intercostal linings.
Insist on having it from under the counter.  Ask for tinned
lobster—as supplied to his reverence the vicar...."  He
wrote out the instructions with his right forefinger upon
the left-hand palm.  "To be kept in a Cool, Dark Place
under the Counter.  The crayfish brand.  Nothing but the
crayfish brand.  Ask for the vicar's lobster—they 'll know
what you mean—and see that you get it."

"Would n't one of Mrs. Dixon's pies come in rather
handy there, even on Friday?" the Spawer suggested.

"Ha!" said Father Mostyn, with a luminous eye.  "I
see you realize the danger of them.  The sin that comes
in handy.  That 's it!  That we may have strength of
grace to turn away from the sin that comes in handy!
... Your tent has been pitched in the wilderness
before?"

"Many times."

Father Mostyn made expressive comment with his eyebrows.

"Ha!  I thought so.  A misanthrope?" he asked, in
genial unbelief.  "Shunning company for solitude!"

"On the contrary, I find solitude excellent company at
times."

"A literary man?"

"No."  The Spawer parted pleasantly with the word,
unattached to any further token of enlightenment.

"A visitor at large, I suppose!" Father Mostyn substituted,
holding the conclusion under his nose with the
delicate non-insistence of a collecting plate in church.
"Here for rest and quiet."

The Spawer shook his head.

"Again no," he answered.  "Rest and quiet are for the
wealthy."  Then he laughed himself free of further
dissimulation.  "I will be frank with you," he said.  "I am
none of these things.  I am a poor beggar in the musical
line."

Father Mostyn's eyebrows arched.

"The musical line!" he exclaimed.  "The musical line
drawn through Ullbrig!  Geography upheaved!  Mercator
confounded!  One might just as well expect the equator.
And yet ... I felt convinced ... a disciple of art.  You
can't mistake it.  But in Ullbrig.  Is it possible?"

He wagged the staff in his hands to appreciative
wonder, waltzing back and forth over three paces as though
he were performing the first steps of a minuet.

"A singer?" he said, with a beaming eye of discovery.
"Surely....  You have the singer's eyes."

"Alas!" said the Spawer.  "I have not the singer's
voice."

The gaze of the Vicar went suddenly thin.

"But the eyes!" he said; and then, with a quick
readjustment of vision: "At least ... there can be no
doubt....  An executant?  You play?"

The Spawer sighed.

"Yes," he admitted, with smiling resignation.  "I
suppose I play."

"The piano, of course?" Father Mostyn conjectured,
taking assent for granted.  "Ha! ..."  His face melted
in smiles, like golden butter, to rapt appreciation at the
vista of glorious possibilities that the instrument
conjured up before him.  He lingered over the contemplation
down a long-drawn, eloquent "M-m-m-m," gazing
out upon the infinite plains of melody with a brightened
eye.  "You are not relying on our aboriginal stone age
pianos, of course," he said, recalling his eye to the actual,
with a sudden recollective jerk.

The Spawer showed a sunny glint of teeth.

"Hardly," he replied.  "As soon as the railway people
remember where they saw it last, I hope to have one of
my own."

"One of your own.  Ha!"  Father Mostyn's eye glistened
to enthusiasm again.  "I judged so.  Beautiful!
Beautiful!"  The ebony staff shook to internal humor at
a thought.  "Fancy Mozart on an Ullbrig piano! ... or
Bach! ... or Beethoven! ..."  He wagged the unspeakable
with his head.  "I 'm afraid you won't find any
music hereabouts."

"Thank Heaven!" the Spawer breathed devoutly.  "I
was afraid perhaps I might!"

"Ha!"  Father Mostyn caught quickly at the inference
and translated it.  "I see; I see.  A musical monastic!
Coming into retreat at Cliff Wrangham to subject his
soul to a course of artistic purification and strengthening!"

The Spawer accepted the illustration with a modest laugh.

"Well, yes," he said.  "I suppose that 's it—only it 's
rather more beautiful in idea than in actuality.  I should
have said myself, perhaps, that I 'd come into the country
to be able to work in shirt-sleeves and loosened
braces, and go about unshaved, in baggy-kneed trousers,
without fear of friends.  I 'm half a monastic and half
refugee.  In towns so many of us are making music that
one never gets a chance to hear or think one's own; one's
ears are full of other people's.  So I 've run away with
my own little musical bone to a quiet place, where I can
tackle it all to myself and growl over the business to my
heart's content without any temptation to drop it for
unsubstantial shadows.  Instead of having to work in a
stuffy room, with all the doors and windows closed and
somebody knocking at you on the next house wall, I have
the sea, the cliff, the sands ... and the whole sky above
me for my workshop.  It will take me all my time to fill
it.  If a melody comes my way, I can hum it into shape
without causing unpleasant remarks.  Nobody ever hears
me, for one thing; and for another, they would n't bother
to listen if they did."  Father Mostyn's glance flickered
imperceptibly for a moment, and then burned with an
exceeding steady light.  "I can orchestrate aloud in the
open air, singing flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, ophicleide
... tympani ... just whatever I please, without any
risk of an official tap on the shoulder.  In a word, I can be
myself ... and it 's a treat to be oneself for a while.
One gets tired of being somebody else so long, and
having to go about in fear of the great Unwritten."

"We have our great Unwritten here too," Father Mostyn
told him.  "I doubt if any of us could write it if we
tried.  Ullbrig is weak in its caligraphy.  We do most of
our writing in chalk.  It suits our style better.  The pen
has an awkward habit of impaling the paper, we find, and
carrying it back to the ink-pot."

"Don't teach me anything of Ullbrig's great Unwritten,"
the Spawer put in quickly.  "Let me violate it
with an easy conscience."

"By all means," Father Mostyn invited him genially.
"It will be a chastening mortification to our pride.  We
are swollen with local pride—distended with the flatulence
of dissent.  A little pricking will do us no harm.  I should
have thought, though," Father Mostyn went on, "that you
would have sought to feed your muse on richer fare than
turnip-fields.  I imagined that mountains and valleys,
with castles looking over lakes and waterfalls by moonlight,
were more the sort of stuff for stimulating a musician's
fancy.  Is it possible there can be music lying latent
in our Ullbrig soil?"

The Spawer smiled a sympathetic appreciation of his
perplexity.

"I think there may be," he told him.  "Anyhow, I have
come to make the experiment, and I 'm very well satisfied
with it so far."

"Heaven be with you," Father Mostyn prayed with
fervor.  "It passes the mind of man to imagine the
conversion of friend Joseph Tankard into a symphony, or
friend Sheppardman Stevens as a figure in a sonata.  You
have your labor."

"I am not dismayed," the Spawer laughed, with
light-hearted confidence.

"And you are staying here for any length of time—a
month, at least, to start with? ... I would suggest three,
if you wish to study the district."

"It might very well be three before I leave; certainly
not less than a month."

"Excellent!  Your soul is my cure while you stay.  It
will be my duty as parish priest to pay you parochial
visits.  I hope, too, that it will be my privilege to receive your
full musical confession.  And as soon as ever you grow
tired of the company of solitude up at the Cliff End, just
drop down to Ullbrig and try me for an antidote, any
time you happen to be passing.  If you 're tired, or want
something to drink, don't hesitate to make use of the
parish priest.  That 's what he 's for.  Just call in at the
Vicarage as you would at the Ullbrig Arms; you 'll find
the attention as good, and the welcome greater.  After
eight o'clock you can be almost sure of catching me
... without there be sick calls.  A pain in the umbilical
vicinity is an excellent worker for the Church.  Unfortunately,
it passes off too soon, and then we are apt to forget that
we called the vicar out of bed in a hurry one
morning...."  The first stroke of three fell across his words
from the church tower round the corner, and on the instant
his genial eye was wreathed in priestly mysticism as
with the spirals of incense.  The mantle of a mighty
mission descended upon him, and he gathered its folds in
dignity about his being.  "Ha!" he said, grasping his staff
for departure, and verifying the time from a handsome
gold chronometer, "... I must leave you.  They 're
waiting....  Priestly duties...."

He did not specify who were waiting or what the
priestly duties were, but exhaled the spirit of leave-taking
in an ineffable smile without words, and vanished round
Hesketh's corner—a vague, ecclesiastical vapor.  A few
moments later, by the time his Reverence could have
comfortably reached the belfry, the creaking of a bell-rope
overtook the Spawer on his way homeward, and the
tongue of the stagnant hour-teller roused itself once more
in public reproof of schism.



A mile and a half of roadway lies between Ullbrig and
Cliff Wrangham.  As near as may be it stretches straight
to the halfway house, like a yard of yellow ribbon measured
against the rod.  From there the rest of it rolls away
to the Cliff End in sweeping fold of disengaged material
and the gateways set in.  There are four of these, with a
music all their own as they clash behind you, wagging
their loose, worn, wooden tongues, that sometimes catch
and are still with one short note, and sometimes reiterate
themselves slowingly to sleep upon the gate-post behind
you as you go.  The first lets you by Stamway's long
one-story farm-house, before Stamway's three front
windows, hermetically sealed, each darkened with a
fuchsia and backed with white curtains drawn as
tight as a drumhead, and Stamway's front door, an
arm's length behind the wooden palisading, that Stamway
has never gone in or come out by since he happened
through with some of the parlor furniture thirty years
ago—our front door, as Father Mostyn himself tells
us, being no better than the church door for all the
use we make of it.  Beyond Stamway's third window
is Stamway's big semi-circular duck-pond, where
Barclay of Far Wrangham suffered shipwreck one night in
November, being found water-logged up to his knees, and
crying aloud (as it is attested):

"Lord 'ev mercy on me an' gie me strength ti keep my
legs while tide gans down."  Adding when rescued: "Ah
nivver knowed sea so 'igh i' all my days, nor rise so
sudden.  She mun 'a done a deal o' damage, Stamway.  If
ah 'ad n't been strongish o' my feet, like, ah sewd 'a been
swep away, for sure."

"Nay," Stamway told him bluntly, who does not hold
with dissipations in any shape or form, being a strict Good
Templar himself, and never known the worse for liquor
more than six times in the year.  "It 's Red Sea i'side of
ye, ah think, 'at 's most to blame.  It 's drowned a deal
o' Phaarahs in its time.  Gan yer ways 'ome wi' ye, an'
div n't say nowt about matter ti onnybody.  They 'll know
very well wi'oot."

The second gate gives you your first foot on Dixon's
land.  The house stands endwise to the sea, set deep in a
horseshoe of trees; a big, hearty, whitewashed building
under bronze red tiles, two stories high in front, that slope
down backward over the dairy toward the stackgarth till
they touch its high nettles.  If you are approaching it with
heelless boots and an apologetic tread, beware of the dog.
The door opens under the low scullery roof, with the sink
to your right hand as you go in, where the whole family
takes turns at the *papier-maché* basin before tea.  To the
left of the scullery lies the kitchen.  You go in as you go
in at Stamway's: scrape your boots over a spade, knock
both heels alternately against the outer wall, skate
inwards over two mats, and give a twist sideways, watching
the kitchen floor anxiously the while to see whether
the mats have done their work or will betray you.

The kitchen takes up the whole end of the house, facing
two ways.  The first window watches the lane across the
red tile path and the little unclassified garden; the second
comes on the broadside front of the house, facing south,
where the sun is a gorgeous nuisance after mid-morning
in summer, fading all the flowers on the figured print
blind drawn down against his intrusion.  It is one of six
that look out upon the little green lawn of ragged grass,
where invisible hens are desperately busy under its long
blades all day long, and chase the moths with vehement
beaks above the tangle at even.  A rude rail fence bounds
it in front, that gives way at times when you dangle both
legs on it, and tints your trousers with a rich, powdery,
green bloom where it darkens under the trees by the
orchard corner.  Beyond this, dipping below the sunk stone
wall and the dry nettle-grown ditch in which the ball
buries itself instinctively whenever you hit it, is the big
grass field for cricket, with the wickets always standing.
And beyond this, sweeping away in every direction to
right and left, go the great lagoons of corn, brimming up
to their green confines, and Barclay's farm shimmering
on the distant cliff hill against the sky-line; and the dim
Garthston windmill turning its listless sails over in
dreamy soliloquy across three miles of fattening grain
and green hedge and buttercupped pasture, with the cry
of cattle and the chorus of birds, and the hum of wings
and the fiddling of hidden grasshoppers; and the celestial
sound of the sea, two fields off, lipping the lonely shore,
and the basin of blue sky above, with a burning round sun
for trade mark; and the stirring of lazy leaves, the cluck
of poultry, the soothing grunt of distant pigs,
outstretched on the pungent straw and intoxicated with
content, the solaceful shutting of unseen gates, and all the
thousand things and doings, and sounds and sights and
scents that lie expressed in the words Cliff Wrangham
and Dixon's by the sea.

And here the Spawer came in the early days of July,
big with musical enthusiasm and the themes for his second
concerto.



They made the two end windows over to him, adjoining
the orchard; the best sitting-room—that is not even used
by the family on Sundays—with the best bedroom above;
and he was very happy indeed.  The diminutive front
door, all out of plumb under its three drunken panes of
different colored glass, and buried a yard deep behind its
porch of flowering tea, cut him off figuratively from the
rest of the house; and the little staircase, starting straight
upward for the square yard of bedroom landing from the
sunk mat, cut him off in effect.  Its tread is so steep and
so unwonted that it put him in mind of augmented
seconds whenever he went up or down, and the first step
gives the door so little turning space that you have to
mount your foot upon it and twist round, with the sneck
in your stomach, to get into the Spawer's room.  A little
faded, old-world, out-of-the-world room, like a faint last
century sigh, dear to the Spawer's heart on the first day;
doubly dear on the second.  The dearest little room in all
the world, perhaps, before the third.  Even the irresistible
tide of modernity flowing into it through the Spawer's
possessions settled down in clear, hushed pools, as though
the turbulent current of Time had found rest here at last
and was still.  In its nostrils the sweetest breath of decay;
the pleasant, musty incense of crumbling mortar and
horse-hair, and curtains heavy in their folds with the
record of departed harvests; of air kept piously secluded
under lock and key, through a sacred life of Sundays, and
never disturbed in its religious brooding by any thoughtless
gusts of worldly wind.  On its walls a choir of pink
roses, seeking the ceiling in prim devotion—such a paper
as you shall no longer find at any shop in these days of
Lincrusta and Tynecastle and Anaglypta and Japanese
leathers, though you pile gold on the counter in pyramids
and exhort the covetous glint in the salesman's eye
through tears.

From the hook in the center of the ceiling hangs the big
brass duplex lamp, beneath which the Spawer bends his
head by the hour together, orchestrating his concerto over
a busy Jacob's ladder of full score; or, in more material
mood, where he draws up his chair to Mrs. Dixon's
immortal productions in pastry, with the little brass bell to
his right hand, that gives forth a faint, far,
meadow-tinkle when he swings it.  Whereupon the twins, who
have been waiting for the sound of it all the time, under
orders, barely a nose-width out of sight round the corner,
take up its expiring message with a business-like scuffle
of boots and run loudly to the kitchen in double harness,
shouting as they go: "Mek 'aste wi' ye an' all.  Bell 's
gone."

By the left wall, abacking the staircase, the two-headed
horse-hair sofa, consecrate to Dixon, beneath the framed
print of the Ponte dei Sospiri and the twin china
shepherds staring hard at the mantelpiece off their Swiss
brackets; where Dixon fills his pipe at night when the
Spawer's work is over, and puts a cheery retainer on the
conversation with his familiar:

"Noo then ... ah 'll tell ye."

And tells him in a confidential whisper, after a look at
the door:

"They say Lunnon 's a rum place!"

Or, "Ah 've 'eard tell o' some queer goings on i' towns!"

Or, "Ye 'll 'a seed a deal o' strange sights i' France,
ah 's think!"

And goes to bed slapping his knees and saying: "Well,
ah don't know!" till Mrs. Dixon tells him, "Now, you 've
been talking your nonsense again," knowing well the tokens.

And for the rest, dispersed indiscriminately about the
room, there are Daudet's "Jack"; Tolstoi's "Sonate à
Kreutzer"; half a dozen old leather-bound volumes of
Molière, opening of themselves at "Le Bourgeois," "Le
Malade," or "L'Avare"; Turgenieff twice over in French
yellow; Swinburne's "Songs before Sunrise"; a litter of
Brahms in his granite Simrock livery; of Grieg in pale
pink Peters; of red brick Chopin; of Bülow's Beethoven;
of Tschaikowsky; of Rachmaninov; of Glazounow; of
Balakirev—of Young Russia, in a word; of Hans Huber;
of Smetana; of Dvorak; of loose MSS. and blank music
paper—all strewing the chairs and sofa and table in ideal
confusion, so that before the Spawer may sit down on one
seat he must mortgage another.  A letter-weight bust of
Chopin on the round antimacassared table by the window;
by its side a signed Paderewski; on the mantelpiece the
genial Bohemian 'cellist, piercing the soul of the little
room with his glowing eyes from under the well-known
silvery nimbus, and apostrophising his "dear young
friend," Maurice Ethelbert Wynne, in neatest English
through copper-plate German characters; Sarasate on the
sideboard by the big cupboard undermining the staircase,
where the Spawer's table-bass goes off in heat apoplexy,
a bottle a day.

Elsewhere of literary features a few; of singers, of
artists, of actors even.  Lastly, after an octave of days,
comes the piano too, and takes up the far angle by the
window corner, its treble truss touching the steel fender,
its bass abutting the sill.

And the Spawer sets to work in earnest.

Not the Spawer of hitherto.  No longer the smooth-browed
son of leisure, with laughter held lazily captive in
the meshes of his moustache and an unencumbered eye
for the clear draughts of gladness, but a purposeful
demon with conspiring brows and deadly-looking hands
clawing the keys with a sinuous throttle in each finger,
that draw forth a pencil murderously from time to time,
like a stiletto, to stab thought upon the paper with the
unpleasant despatch of assassination.

A pause for the day's dip and dinner, and on again;
and a pause for a stroll and tea, and on again; and supper
and a chat with Dixon, and on again.  Till Dixon slaps
his thigh when he comes back from anywhere and hears
it all in full progression, and asks:

"What!  Is 'e still agate [on the go]?"

Pushing his hat from his brow to reply:

"Mah wod!  It 's a caution, yon!"

For a second octave of days.

And then a strange happening, to check the buoyant
current of the Spawer's activity.

Very late one night the shadow of his head lingered
upon the figured print blind, drawn loosely down over
the wide-opened window, and the piano poured its
unceasing treasury into night's immeasurable coffers.
Already, in the long musical decade since Dixon's departure,
he had risen to readjust the smouldering wicks, and gone
back to a new lease of light at the keyboard.  The light
was failing for the second time as his fingers, slowing
dreamily, sought the final shelter of Chopin.  By many
winding ways they came at length to the hushed haven
of the seventeenth prelude, with the muffled A-flat bell
booming its solemn death-message over the waters, and
the little tear-laden boat of melody cradling its grief to
silence on the ripples below.

The bell tolled no more; the little boat lay tremulous
upon the echoes, and in the lingering stillness that
followed, before yet the player's fingers had dared to break
that sacred communion with the keys, fell all abruptly a
sudden human sob.

A sudden human sob out of the darkness beyond the
blind.  So near and real and necessitous that the
Spawer's elbows kicked backward from the keys, and the
pedals went off like triggers under his feet as he spun
round to the window.  And yet, so far, so remote in
probability, that even while he turned, he found far
easier to account for it as some acute, psychical
manifestation of his own emotions, rather than the
expression of any agency from without.  Through faith in
this feeling, and no fear of it, he flung up the blind
abruptly, and thrust forth his head with a peremptory
"Who's there?"

Outside, the world lay wrapped in a great breathing
stillness.  Night's ultramarine bosom was ablaze with
starry chain of mail.  From the far fields came faint
immaterial sounds, commingled in the suspended fragrance
of hay, in warm revelations of ripening corn, in the
aromatic pungency of nettles, and all the humid suffocation
of herbs that open their moist pores at even.  Distant
sheep, cropping in ghost-like procession across misty,
dew-laden clover, contributed now and again their
strange, cutting, human cough.  Came, as the Spawer
listened, the slow, muffled thud-thud of some horse's
hoofs on the turf, as it plodded in patient change of
pasture, and the deep blowing of kine along the
hedge-bottoms.  But these, with the soft sound of the sea,
spreading its countless fans of effervescing surf upon the
sandy shore, were the only answer to his challenge.

He threw it out again, with the mere indolent amusement
of casting pebbles into a pool, and swung one leg
over the sill.  Night allured him with all her mystic altar
lights.  He was of a mind to sit there and fling open his
soul like a lattice to her seductive minstrelsy; drain deep
draughts of celestial gladness from the overflowing
tankard of stars.  In the dead black porch of flowering tea,
with one pale planetary flame shining through its tabernacled
branches, no stir.  No stir in the square black rug
of long grass, softened in its centre to grey silver-point.
No stir in the massed shadow of trees, uprising rigid like
dim marine growths in a dense ocean of azure.

"Well?" he asked of the stillness, swinging his leg with
a complacent tattoo of heel against the brickwork, and
smiling indulgence at his own little extension in folly.
"For the last time!  One ... two ... three.  Or must
I fire?"

The stars twinkled him in irresistible summons to the
sea.  Even the sea itself raised its supplicative song a
little louder, he thought, as he listened, and called
"Come!"  The night was too full of blessings to be
suffocated untimely beneath the blankets; all his senses were
making outcry for its bounty, and the soul of him hearkened.
Just one stroll to the edge of the water and back
before bed.  It was no new thing for him to do.  He
reached his hat from its insecure slant upon the pile of
music topping the piano, and clasped the sill with both
hands for descent.

As he did so, in the still pause presaging the act, he
heard the frenetic tugging of someone at the sticky
orchard gate, that takes six pulls to open and three and a
kick to close, ever since Jabe Stevens painted it drab, with
black latch pickings.  He heard the quick repeated pant of
the pulls; felt in a flash the desperate occasion that was
urging them; felt the very prayers surging about him on
their way from a soul in turbulent tussle against destiny,
and next moment was down on his feet before the window
with a clear, arrestive "Hello!"

The click of the liberated latch; garments in swift full
stir; a prolonged rending, like the descent of some
four-octave chromatic, and a sudden breath-held, death-like
stillness fell upon his landing.  For a moment he could
elucidate nothing by the look.  Sight was sealed up in
yellow lamplight.  Two steps forward and the bondage
was burst.  He made out the line of flat wood stakes
bounding the orchard to its half width, whence rough
green rails complete the demarcation; and the gate,
thrown three quarters open; and by it, the dim,
motionless figure of a girl.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER III`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III

.. vspace:: 2

All that had been silence before was swallowed up
at a gulp in the sudden deeps of discovery.  The
Spawer, with legs planted forcefully apart, chin thrown
forward, and sidelong listening ear, tugged at the tawny
end of his moustache.  It is not altogether a child's task,
whatever may be thought to the contrary, to address
discreetly a panting feminine figure in the darkness at five
paces, that has drawn the undesirable fire of our
attention nearing midnight, and may be either a common
garden thief or a despicable henroost robber; or a farm
wench, deflected by the piano on her way home; or a
mere tramp, bungling the matter of a free straw bed, and
in trouble because appearances are against her; or none
of these things at all, but something quite other, utterly
beyond the scope of divination.  And since it is neither
generous to approach distress through the narrow portals
of suspicion, nor desirable to doff one's hat in premature
respect to what may turn out, after all, mere unworthy
fraud, the Spawer held his peace a while in courteous
attendance upon the girl.  Before him her black silhouette
remained rigid, stilled unnaturally, like a bird, in that last
tense moment of surrender beneath the fowler's fingers.
She stood, part way through the gate, with averted
head—one hand straining the gate-post to her for strength
and stay—the other clutched to quell the turbulence at her
breast.  In such wise, for a short century of seconds,
discoverer and discovered waited motionless the one upon
the other.

Pity for the girl's confusion, after a while, moved the
Spawer when it seemed she meant to make no use of the
proffered moments.  He broke up silence with a reassuring
swing of heel, though without advancing.

"I 'm sorry if I frightened you," he said, in an open
voice, devoid of any metallic spur of challenge or odious
trappings of suspicion.  "I did n't mean to do that....
But..."  He paused there for a moment, with the
conjunction trailing off in an agreeable tag of stars for the
girl's use, and then, when she caught her breath over a
troubled underlip, took it up himself.  "... We 're not
accustomed to callers quite so late ... and I came out
in a bit of a hurry.  Is there anything I can do for you?"

Beautiful question of solicitude for a guilty conscience,
that he smiled over grimly as he said it.  He knew well
enough that the very utmost he could have done for her
would have been to keep the other side of the sill till she
made good her escape.  And he knew, too, that some part
of her must have suffered tear by a couple of yards or
so, but that was a matter might very well wait over
awhile.  For the present, all he wanted was a little
enlightenment; later, the floodgates of compassion could be
liberally loosened if required.  He despatched his words,
and dipped a hand into his trouser's pocket, making a
friendly jingle of keys and coppers.  The unperemptory
tone of his voice, the kindness of the undiminished
distance he kept, and this last show of leisurely dispassion
did their work and raised the girl's head.

"Oh, I 'm sorry ... and ashamed!" she gulped, battling
forth into the open through a threatening tumult of
tears.  "It 's all my fault ... every bit of it.  I ought
never to have come."  She stopped momentarily, midway
through her words, gripping on to fortitude in silence as
to a hand-rail, till the big looming sob had gone by.
"... So close.  And I ought n't to have come ... at
all, I know.  But it 's too late now.  Wishes won't do
any good.  Oh ... forgive me, please."

Her voice, even in the listening stillness of leaves, was
almost inaudible, but there was the rare mellow sweetness
of blown pipes about it such as the Spawer had not been
prepared to hear at this time, and in this place.  The
musical ear of him opened swiftly wide to its magic like
a casement to some forerunning spring breeze; and his
heart stirred on a sudden to wakefulness—keen bird with
a most watchful eye.  Whatever else, it were absurd to
couple vulgar delinquencies with so soft a mouthpiece.
He flung the lurking idea afar, and a delightful flame of
wonder grew up within him, illuminating possibility.

"Certainly," he said, in answer to her petition, striving
to lull the girl's alarms with his manner of easy
consequence.  "I 'll do my best.  But tell me first what for."

"For ... for what I 've done," said the girl unsteadily,
each word tremulous with a tear.  "I did n't mean—to
disturb you.  I ought to have spoken—when you called—first
of all.  But I could n't—somehow—and I never
expected you—by the window.  I thought—perhaps—the
door.  And I feel so mean—and miserable—and
wretched...."  Her voice suddenly went from her to
an interminable distance, falling faintly afar like the
unreal voice that wanders aimlessly about the slopes of
slumber.  "And oh, please—will you give me a glass of
water?"

With that, and a residuary shaky sigh of her little store
of breath left over, her head fell limply forward.  There
was no mistaking this last tell-tale token of physical
extremity; and he was by her side in a moment.

"Hello!" he called on the way, encouraging her by
voice to resolution, till he reached her, "what a great
iron-shod beast I am, jumping out and scaring you in this
fashion.  Hold up a little.  You 're not going to give up
the ghost on my account, surely!"

She made a futile effort to move her lips for reply, and
lifted her head in the supreme spurt of conscious endeavor,
but it tumbled straightway across the other shoulder
uncontrolled, and swung a helpless semi-circle before her
breast.  She would have been down after that, all the length
of her, but that his arms were quick to intercept the fall.
The shock of sudden succor checked her in her collapse.

"Thank you," she panted, in a voice that stifled its
words, and striving, in a half-unconscious and wholly
incompetent fashion, to free him of the necessity of her
further support.  "... I 'm better now."

Words came no more easily to her under recovery than
under the original discovery, though he knew well enough
that it was because her lips were overburdened with them,
and through no poverty of desire.

"Better?" he echoed, transplanting her own convictionless
admission into the pleasantest prospect possible.
"Come, come!  That 's gladdening.  There! ... Do you
think you can stand all right?"

He loosened the clasp of his arms for a moment, and
she swayed out impotently in their widening circle.

"I think so," she said, giving desperate lie to proof
positive under the strenuousness of desire.

He laughed indulgently, and caught her in again.

"Capital!" he said, "if only you were trying to sit
down.  But you must n't sit down here.  See."  He took
a tighter hold of her.  "... If I help you—so....  Do
you think you can manage to the door?  It 's only a
step."

He urged her into motion with a gentle insistence of
arm, and set her the example of a leisurely foot forward.
For the first time he felt the exercise of her power in
resistance.

"Oh, no, no!" she told him, turning off the two little
panting negatives in their sudden hot breath of shame,
and stiffening at the suggestion of advance.

"No?" he queried, in audible surprise.  "You 're not
equal to that?  But you must n't stay out here.  You need
to sit down and have something to pull you up."  He
brought the other arm about her in a twinkling.  "Here,
let me lift you," he said.  "I 've helped drunken men up
three flights of stairs before to-day, fighting every bit of
the way.  I ought to be able to tackle you as far as the
door!"

Before she could absorb the intention through his
words he had got her begirt for the raising.  The
consciousness, coming upon her at such short notice, in
company with the action itself, found her without preparation
other than a gasp of blank amaze.  Then her hand
went out to stay him.

"Oh, let me!" she said, with a horrified desire to avert
this fresh imposition upon his credulity or good-nature.
"I can walk—very well...."

She finished the petition in mid-air, and the sound of
his amused, wilful laughter just beneath her ears, as he
waded with her through that odious short sea of
lamp-light to the black porch.

"There!" he said, to another note of laughter, lowering
her carefully till her feet found the square slab of
scoured stone, with the scraper set in it, and strove hastily
to reassert themselves.  "That 's better than bartering in
yes's and no's.  Thank you for keeping so beautifully still
and not kicking me; you could if you 'd tried.  So!"

He steered her down the narrow darkness of the porch,
with his hands protectively upon her elbows from behind,
through a rustle of leaves and the springing of flexible
branches.  She went before him, without any words.
Only when his arm slid past her to throw open wide
the door did she seem about to offer any furtherance of
demur.  But the dreadful publicity of burning wicks lay
forward, and the still more dreadful publicity of his face
lay behind against retreat, and she went dumbly round
the door, and so into the room.  He could feel the sudden
shrinkage of her being as the full force of the episode
surged back upon her in a vivid hot wave out of the
lamp-light, and was sorry.  She would have dropped down, in
the penitential meekness of submission, upon the triangle
of chair that showed itself from beneath a litter of the
Spawer's music immediately by the door as they entered,
but his arm resisted the tell-tale bend of her body.

"No, no," he said, realising her desire for the penance
of discomfort rather than the comfort of repose, and
jerking the chair out of consideration, "... not there."  He
thrust the table far out into the room with a quick
scream of its castors at being so rudely awakened, and
pushed her gently to the sofa.

"That's better," he said, with a great evidence of content,
as she sank back upon it before solicitous pressure.
"The cushions are hard, but the passengers are earnestly
requested to place their feet upon them."  He drew in the
table again, so that she might have its rest for her arm or
her elbow, and deferring the moment for their eyes to
make their first official meeting, bustled off to the
sideboard.  "Please excuse the grim formality of everything
you find here," he continued, in light-hearted purpose,
and commingling his words with an urgent jingling of
glass, "but I 'm a musical sort of man, and like the rest
of them, a lover of law and order.  A time and place for
everything, that 's our motto, and everything in its place.
It 's a little weakness of ours....  Therefore"—his
voice suddenly went cavernous in the recesses of the big
cupboard—"... where on earth 's the brandy?  Ah!"
he emerged again on the interjection smiling, as on a
triumphal car.  "Here it is.  Now I 'm going to give you a
little of this ... it 's better than any amount of bad
drinking water, and does n't taste half so nasty.  Oh, no,
no, no"—in answer to the intuition of a quick protesting
turn of head from the sofa—"... not much.  I won't
let you have much, so it 's no use asking.  Only as
much as is good for you.  Just a lit—tle drop and no
more."  He measured out the drop to the exact length of
the accented syllable, and the stopper clinked home under
a soft, satisfied "So-o-o!"  The syphon took up the word,
seething it vigorously into the glass, and next moment
his arm had spanned the table to an encouraging: "Here
we are!  Take a good pull of this while it fizzes."

A soft, tremulous hand, nut-brown to the wrist, stole
out in timid obedience over the table, and the Spawer
perceived his visitor for the first time.

If the mere sound of her voice had aroused his wonder,
the sight of the girl's face added doubly to his surprise.
A face as little to be looked for in this place and at this
time, and under these conditions, as to make quest for
orchids down some pitmouth with pick and Davy lamp.
He could not maintain the look long, for before satisfying
his own inquiry he sought to establish the girl's
confidence, but he noted the wide generous forehead, the big
consuming eyes, burning deep in sorrowing self-reproach
and giving him a moment's gaze over the uplifted
tumbler; the dispassionate narrow nose, sprinkled about
its bridge and between the brows with a pepper-castor
helping of freckled candor; the small lips, parted
submissively to the glass rim over two slips of milky teeth;
the long, sleek cheeks; the slender, pear-shaped chin; the
soft, supple neck of russet tan, spliced on to a gleaming
shaft of ivory, where it dipped through her dress-collar
to her bosom; the quick throbbing throat, and the
burning lobes of red, like live cinders, in her hair.

As to the girl herself, her whence and where and
whither, the Spawer could make no guess.  She wore a
shabby pale blue Tam-o'-Shanter, faded under innumerable
suns, and washed out to many a shower, but on her
head it appeared perfectly reputable and self-supporting,
and identified itself with the girl's face so instantly and
so completely that its weather-stain counted for preciousness,
like the oaten tint of her skin.  A storm-tried
mackintosh-cape, looped over her arms and falling loosely
down her back from the shoulders, and the print blouse,
evidenced by her bust above the table and her sleeves,
and the serviceable skirt of blue serge that the Spawer
had caught sight of in the cleft between the table and sofa,
completed the girl as revealed through her dress.
Everything about her was for hard wear and tear, and had
stood to the task.  There was not a single button's worth
of pretension in the whole of her attire; not a brooch at
her throat, nor a bangle on either of her wrists to plead
for her station.  She had dipped her nose meekly into the
tumbler and was letting the sparkles play about her lips
momentarily, with dropped eyelids; then the glass went
down to the table, and her eyes opened wide upon the
Spawer as though casting up the full column of her
liabilities, resolved to shirk nothing.

"You don't drink," he said, with a voice of solicitude.
"I have n't made it too weak for you? ... Surely!  I
took great care—I might have been making it for myself.
Or is there anything else you 'd rather have?"

He found her soft voice entangled in his inquiry, and
stopped.

"... Ever so much," he drew up in time to hear.
"But it 's not that..."  The frank lips were wrestling
to pronounce sentence upon her crime, but they broke
down in the task and transferred their self-imposed
judgment to him.  "I don't know what you must think of
me..." she said.

The Spawer laughed light-hearted indulgence upon the
admission.

"To tell the truth," he said, "I hardly know what to
think myself, so it 's no use saying I do.  I thought
perhaps ... poultry, first of all; but your voice does n't
sound a bit like poultry, and I 'm sure you don't look it.
And I don't think it was apples either, though you 'd got
the right gate for those.  Besides, apples don't count
... that way.  I 've gathered them myself at this time
of night before now, and been hauled back over the wall
by a leg.  We don't think anything of that."

"It was the piano," she explained unsteadily, and for a
moment the steadfast flames in her eyes flickered under
irresolute lids.

"The piano?"  The Spawer raised his voice in amused
interrogation.  "Heavens!  you were n't going to try and
take that away, were you?  It took ten of us and a bottle
of whiskey to get it in, and threepence to Barclay's boy for
sitting on the gate and telling us by clockwork 'Ye 'll get
stuck wi' 'er yet before ye 're done,' and half-a-crown to
the man that let the truss down upon my toes.  Surely
you were n't thinking of tackling an enterprise like that
single-handed, were you?"

For the first time he drew forth the faint fore-glimmering
of what the girl should be like in smiles; a sudden
illuminated softening of the features, as when warm
sunlight melts marble, that spread and passed in a moment.

"I was listening," she said.

"But that 's a dreadful confession."  His eyebrows
went up in tragic surprise and his voice departed to the
mock-horrified aloofness of a whisper.  "Listeners never
hear any good of themselves, you know, and never come
to any."  He slipped from the pseudo-serious with a sly
laugh.  "Tell me the worst," he begged.  "How much
did you hear?"

"Oh!  I don't know...."  She searched his inquiry
for a space with her luminous eyes.  "Only very little.
Perhaps ... perhaps I 'd been half an hour."

"Half an hour," he said, "with the classics.  Lord! you
've been punished for your offence."

"But I was n't by the window all the time," she made
haste to assure him.  "I was standing in the lane
... by the kitchen gate."  And then, with the vial of
confession in her fingers, she let it drain before him in
dropped sentences.  "And I did n't mean to come any
nearer than that.  All I wanted was the music.  Only
... when you played ... what you played last..."  Her
voice stumbled a little with her here, but she picked up
the falter with a quick, corrective tilt of the nose, and
walked more wardedly down the path of speech, her
eyelids lowered, like one who moves by spiritual impulse.
"I felt ... oh!  I don't know how I felt—as though,
somehow, somebody were beckoning me to the window,
where the music was.  And so I came.  And then, when
I 'd got there, all of a sudden things came back upon me
that I knew I 'd known once ... and forgotten.  I saw
my mother ... as she was ever so many years ago,
before she died, playing to me ... and crying over the
keys; and the old room—ever so plain—that I could
hardly remember, even when I tried.  And all at once a
great lump came up into my throat.  I could n't help it....
And I sobbed out loud—as I 'd sobbed before when
I was a little girl.  And then..."

The tears, never wholly subjugated since their first
turbulent rebellion, rose up swiftly against her words at
the recital here.  She made a valiant endeavor to ride
through the tumult on her trembling charger of speech,
but memory plucked at the bridle, and unhorsed her into
the hands of her besetters; a fair, virginal
captive—beautiful under subjection.

"And then..." he said, catching up the girl's own
words, and simulating a careless stroll towards the
window to give her time, "... *I* came in—came out, I
mean."  He flicked a chord off the treble end of the
keyboard in passing that drew the girl's eyes towards him at
once, watchful through tears.  "But we won't talk about
that part of the business, if you 'll be so good as not to
mind.  One of us needs kicking very badly for his share
in it, and knows he does."  He stooped down to resolve
the chord briefly with both hands, and spun round,
outspread against the piano, with his fingers behind him,
touching extreme treble and bass.  Only an inactive tear
or two on the girl's lashes marked the recent revolt, and
the way to her eyes lay clear.  He sent his words
pleasantly out to them at once in friendly hazard.  "You
don't mean to say you 're a neighbor of mine?" he
suggested, smiling interested inquiry from his spread-eagle
pinnacle by the piano, "... and I have n't known it all
this time?"  For who was this strange nocturnal
visitant of his, with a soul for the sound of things?
"... Or are you..."—the alternative came twinkling
in time to join the previous inquiry under one note of
interrogation—"just a ... spawer, I think they call it,
like me?"

The girl shook her head at the latter suggestion.

"It 's my home here," she said.

"At Cliff Wrangham?" he asked, and brought his right
leg over the left towards her, in attitude of increased
attention.

"No-o."

She must have felt a sense of isolation in abiding by
that one word; as though it were a gate snecking her off
from the Spawer's friendly reach in conversation, for she
passed through it almost immediately and added the
specific correction: "At Ullbrig."

"Ah!"  His internal eye was soaring over the Ullbrig
of his remembrance in an endeavor to pounce upon stray
points of association for the girl's identity.  "I 'm
afraid," he said, "that I don't know my Ullbrig very
well.  It 's a part of my education here that 's been sadly
neglected.  But you were n't going to walk back there
alone?  To-night, I mean?"

She looked at him with mild surprise.

"Oh, yes," she told him.

"Jove!" he said.  "Are n't you afraid?"

"Afraid?"  She gathered the word dubiously off his
lips.  "What of?"

"Oh," he laughed.  "Of nothing at all.  That 's what
we 're most afraid of, as a rule, is n't it?  Of the dark,
for instance."

She smiled, shaking her head.

"I 'm not afraid of that," she said.

"Ah," he decided enviously, "you 're no newspaper
reader.  That 's plain."  Then taking new stock of
inquiry.  "But we 're not in the habit of passing by
... at this time, are we?" he asked.  "I thought all good
people were between the blankets by nine in the
country?"

A queer little flame of resolve began fighting for
establishment about her lips, like the flickers of a
newly-lighted taper, that burnt up suddenly in speech.

"I was n't ... passing by," she said, the flame
reddening her to candor.

"No?"

"I came ... on purpose."

The Spawer's eyebrows ran up in a ruffle of surprise
and friendly amusement.

"Not ... to hear me?"

She clasped her teeth in repression upon her lower lip,
and nodded her head.

"And you 've actually trudged all the way out from
Ullbrig?"

"It 's nothing," she said apologetically.

"But at night!" he expostulated, in friendly concern.

"There was no other time..." she explained.  "Besides
... I thought—They said ... it was only after
supper."

"Only after supper?" echoed the Spawer.  "What 's
that?  Indigestion?  Nightmare?"

"The music," she said.

"I see."  He laughed, nodding his head sagaciously.
"So they 've got my time-table.  And I thought I was n't
known of a soul!  What an ostrich I 've been!"

"Everybody knows of you," she said, in wonder he
should think otherwise.

"I 'm sure they do," he assented.  "What sort of a
character do they give me? ... Would just about hang
me at the Assizes, I suppose?"

"They say you 're a great musician..." she said,
with watchful eyes of inquiry.

"Palestrina!" he exclaimed.  "However did they come
by the truth?"

"... And no one can play like you...."

"Yes?"

"... And you 've come here away from people to
compose a great piece ... and don't want anybody to
... to hear you."

The tide of her words ebbed suddenly there, leaving
her eyes stranded upon his.  The same thought came up
simultaneously to them both.

"And so ... that 's why you did n't come."

She dropped her eyes.

"I knew it was mean," she said humbly, "taking things
when your back was turned.  I felt like stealing, at first.
I could n't listen for shame."

"And what 'll be to pay for it all ... when you get
back?" said he.

The fringe of her lashes was raised while her eyes
reconnoitred, and dropped again.

"Nothing," she told him.

"And no questions asked?"

"No."

"And nobody sitting up for you, ready to put the clock
on half an hour, and point a finger at it when you
return?"

"No-o...."  She twirled the tumbler jerkily between
soft thumb and forefinger.  "They think I 'm in bed.
And I did go," with a sudden resurrection of
self-righteousness.  "Only"—the self-righteousness went under
here—"... when they were all asleep ... I slipped
out and came to Cliff Wrangham."

"So-o-o!" said the Spawer, spraying his comprehension
hugely this time with the word, as though it were a
shower-bath to enlightenment.  "That 's the secret of
things at last, is it?"  His eyes were spinning on the girl
like peg-tops in delicious amusement.  "And I suppose
I 've got to guard it with my life's blood?"

A grateful face flashed thankfulness up at him for its
relief from the necessity of appeal.

"Here 's the bond," said he.  "Subscribe, and say
done."  He threw out an open palm of contract across
the table, and the small hand crept into it with the
timorous, large-hearted trust for an unfamiliar shelter.
"And I 'm afraid," he said self-reproachfully, "that
you 've torn your dress?"

"Oh, no, ... a little."  She made-believe to look at
her skirt between the table and sofa, and take stock of
the damage done.  "It 's nothing."

"At the time," said the Spawer, "it sounded terrible
enough.  I hope it is n't as bad as the sound."

She drew up what appeared to be the ruined remnants
of a phylactery, and held it above the table-edge for his
scrutiny, saying: "It does n't matter," with a hopeful
smile.

"But that 's awful," he said distressfully.

"It 's only an old skirt," she explained, making light
of the raiment with true feminine instinct, lest perhaps
he might think she had no better.  "I can soon mend it."

"Shall I fetch you a needle and some cotton?" he
asked, in a penitential voice.  "I have both upstairs."

The girl's eyes made a quick clutch at the needle and
cotton, but her lips hung back meekly to a suggestion of
pins, with some murmur about "trouble."

"Trouble!" said the Spawer.

He spun the word up in contemptuous disregard as
though it were a shuttlecock, and slipped blithely up the
little staircase.  A second or so later, when she had
heard him drop the matches and rake over the carpet for
them with his finger-ends, and weave sundry spiderous
tracks across the ceiling, he was down again triumphantly
extending the objects of his quest.

All too quickly the girl whipped the serrated edges of
serge together, while he watched her—with a busy back
and forth of needle—snapped the thread round a determined
small finger, shook the skirt into position, and rose
(conscientiously sheathing the needle in the cotton
bobbin), showing parted lips for gratitude and farewell.
The latter, taking the Spawer somewhat by surprise,
awakened all at once his dormant solicitude.

"But you 're not going ... now!" he said.  The girl
said softly, "If he pleased."  "Why, you have n't half
finished!" he exclaimed, pointing to the desolate tumbler,
its contents untasted.  The girl looked remorsefully at
the object of her neglect, and said, still more softly, "If
he did n't mind...."

"Not in the least," the Spawer reassured her.  "But
are you quite sure," he said anxiously, "that you 're
strong enough to start back—just yet?  Do you think
it 's altogether wise?"

The girl thought it so wise that the Spawer had no
alternative but to accept the cotton bobbin from her, a
thing which his fingers (in their concern for her
welfare) showed a certain disinclination to do.

"At least," said he, "you 'll let me see you back as far
as Hesketh's corner?" But the girl said, "Oh no, please
... and thank you....  I 'm accustomed to walk
alone," so once again he felt constrained to abide by her
decision, not knowing how many secret considerations
might have gone to the making of it.

"But ... look here," he said, in a conclusive spurt of
candor, brought about by the imminence of their parting;
"... we 're not saying good-by for good, are we?"

"I—I hope not," said the girl, and something stirred
her lips and lashes as though a breeze had blown across
them.

"Well, I hope not too," said the Spawer.  "For that
would make me feel sad.  I must n't keep you any longer
now, I know, for I don't want you to get into trouble;
but it 's awfully good of you to have come, and believe
me, I 'm really grateful.  If there 's anything in music I
can do for you, I want you to know that you 've only to
ask, and it shall be done for you with pleasure.  Honest
Injun.  You won't forget, will you?"

The girl said she could never forget ... his kindness.

"It 's a promise, then?" said the Spawer.

Again the little unseen breath blew across her features
at the question, and to his surprise he could have almost
sworn to tears upon her lashes when he looked up for
affirmation in the girl's eyes.  To cover any confusion
that his words might have wrought, he put out a friendly
hand for parting.

"All right," said he, in voice of cheerful agreement.
"So *that's* settled," though a dozen questions were fighting
for first place on his lips as he said it.  The little
brown hand stole for the second time into the shelter of
his own with a solemnity that, at other moments, he
could have laughed at, and a moment later the Spawer
was left gazing at the orchard gate, thrown three quarters
open, as he had done in that first memorable moment,
with the girl's soft footsteps merged every second more
deceptively in the starry stillness of night.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER IV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV

.. vspace:: 2

Whatever the Spawer might choose to say of
himself for purposes of humor (not, I am afraid,
an invariable pole-star to truth), he was no sluggard.
By agreement, dated the first night of his arrival, Jeff
Dixon was to get a penny a day for bringing up the
bath-water and having him into it at seven in the morning.
Something short of the hour Jeff would stumble up the
little steep staircase, with his tongue out, behind a big
bucket of cold water (the last of three drawn to get the
full freshness of the pump), and anticipating a few
minutes in his statement of the time, make preliminary
clamor for the Spawer's acknowledgment before
departing to fetch the hot.  From which moment forth the
Spawer was a marked man, whom no subterfuge or
earthly ingenuity could save.  Once a drowsy voice
begged Jeff to be so good as to call again.

"An' loss my penny!" cried Jeff, with fine commercial
scorn at the suggestion.  "Nay, we 'll 'ave ye oot o' bed
an' all, noo we 've gotten started o' ye."

And tramped diabolically downstairs after the second
bucket.

But though a little comedy of this sort, now and again,
served to test the validity of the agreement, and show the
Spawer that nothing—short of repealing the penny—could
save him from the inexorable machinery that his
own hand had set in motion, there was little real need of
the bond, except to guarantee that the bath-water should
be up to time.  More often than not Jeff came upon a
man alertly drawn up in bed, with a full score spread
across his knees, who had been writing and erasing hard
since sunrise.

Early in the morning after the girl's visit the sun
peeped over the Spawer's sill according to custom, and
the Spawer jumped out of bed to let him in.  Already
Nature's symphony was in full swing—a mighty, crescive,
spinning movement of industry, borne up to him on
a whirr of indefatigable wings.  The sun had cleared the
cliff railings and was traveling merrily upward on an
unimpeded course, though still the grassland lay grey in
the shadow beneath its glistening quilt of dew, and every
spider's web hung silver-weighted like a net new-drawn
with treasure from the sea.  He stayed by the window a
space, and then let go the curtain with an amused,
reminiscent laugh.

"I wonder who on earth she is?" he said.

He scooped up the bulky armful of music-sheets that
constituted his present labors at the concerto, and went
back to bed with them.  But though he made a determined
desk of his knees and spread the papers out with a
business-like adjustment of pages, the work prospered but
poorly when it came to the pencil.  After a short spell of
it he sat back in bed, with his hands locked under his
neck staring at the window.  For the events of last night
were a too inviting vintage to be left uncorked and
untasted, and out of this glowing wine of remembrance he
attempted to win back the girl's face, and did not
altogether succeed.  He reclaimed certain shifting
impressions of red lips exaggeratedly curled; of great round
eyes; of multiplied freckles about the brows and nose; of
a startling white throat beyond where the sun had dominion;
of a shabby blue Tam-o'-Shanter and a perfect midnight
of hair—but all of them seen grotesquely, as it
might be at the bottom of the cup, with himself blowing
on the wine.

"The thing is," he decided, "I was a fool not to stare
harder and ask more questions.  This comes of trying to
act the gentleman."

Duly before seven came Jeff Dixon stumbling up the
staircase, and dumped the first bucket down at the
Spawer's door with a ringing clash of handle.

"Noo then," he called under the door, when he had
summoned the Spawer lustily by name, and hit the panel
several resounding flat-handers (as specified in the
agreement).  "It 's tonned [turned] seven o'clock, an' another
gran', fine day for ye an' all.  Arny 's gotten ye some
mushrooms—some right big uns an' some little conny
[tiny] uns, a gret basket full oot o' big field.  Will ye 'ev
'em for breakfast?"

"Will I?"  The Spawer shot together the loose sheets
gathered in attendance upon an idle muse, and tossed
them dexterously on to the nearest chair, as though they
were a pancake.  "Ah, me bhoy! me bhoy!" he called out,
in the rich, mellow brogue of one whose heart was on a
sudden turned to sunlight.

"Ay, will ye?" inquired the mouth behind the door-crack.

"Ay, wull Oi?" echoed the voice of glowing fervor.
"Wull Oi, bedad! me bhoy?  Mushrooms, ye say!  Is 't
me the bhoy for mushrooms!  Arrah, thin, me bonny
bhoy, is 't me the bhoy for mushrooms!"

After a pause: "D' ye mean yes?" asked the mouth
dubiously, and with meekness.

"Ah, phwat a bhoy it is to read the very sowl o' man an'
shpake it!  Yis 's the word, bi the beard o' St. Pathrick,
iv he had wan (which Oi 'm doubtin'), an' a small,
inconsiderable jug o' rale cowld boilin' wather whin ye retoorn
convanient wid yer next bucket, me bhoy, bi yer lave an'
savin' yer prisince!"

"Will yon little un wi' yaller stripes do?" says the
mouth, brimming with the enthusiasm of willing, and
making from the door-crack for immediate departure.

Whereupon, in receipt of the Spawer's agreement, the
boots stumbled down the stairs again, as though there
were no feet in them, but had been thrown casually from
top to bottom.  A minute or so later, when they had
staggered up with the second bucket, and been cast down
again to fetch the jug, and come back with it, the owner
of them bestrode all these accumulated necessities laid
out upon the little landing, and let himself into the
Spawer's room—a blue-eyed, fair-haired Saxon of thirteen,
with white teeth and a quick smile, sharpened like a razor
on the cunning whetstone of the district.

"'Ere 's yer cold," said he, stooping to lift it in after
him.  "An' 'ere 's yer warm," bringing to view the
steaming wooden pail, with as much reminiscence of milk
about the water as we have to pay for by the gill in
town.  "An' 'ere 's yer rale cold boilin'.  'Ow div ye fin'
yersen this mornin'?"

"In bed," says the Spawer, "thanking you kindly,
where I put myself last night."

"Noo then, noo then!" with that indulgent tone of
grown-up wisdom which is the birthright of every baby
in Ullbrig, and on which it practises its first lisp; "are ye
agate o' that road already?  Ye mun 'a got the steel i'
bed wi' ye, ah think—ye seem strange an' sharp, ti-morn."  He
pulled the bath from its hiding under the bed, set the
mats about it, and brought the pails over within reach.
"Noo, it 's all ready an' waitin', so ye 'ad n't need
to start shuttin' yer eyes.  Let 's see ye movin', an' ah 'll
be away."

The Spawer made a feeble shuffle of legs under the
blankets, and smiled with the seraphic content of one who
has done his duty.

"Nay, ah s'll want to see ye on end, an' all," Jeff said
sternly, "before ah gan mi ways.  Come noo, Mr. Wynne—one,
two, three!"

Thus adjured, the Spawer found strength to raise his
eyelids after a few moments of bland inertness under
Jeff's regard, and turned out affably (with them down
again) on to the pegged rug alongside.

"That 's better," said Jeff, with conciliatory admiration.

"Is it?" the Spawer inquired sweetly, sitting down on
the bedside to think over the matter, and rubbing form
contemplatively into his hocks.  "Oh! ... Then get me
the third razor from the right-hand side of the case, and
I 'll kill myself.  Also the strop and the brush and jug
and soap-tube...."

"D' ye mean a shave?" asked Jeff, with some curiosity.

"Merely another name for it," the Spawer told him.

"What div ye want ti get shaved for?" Jeff persisted.

"Oh!" ... The Spawer sifted a few replies under
rapid survey, as though he were rolling a palmful of
grain, and picked out one at random.  "... For fun."

"Ah thought ye was n't gannin' to shave no more while
ye 'd gotten that there piece o' yours written!"

"Whatever put that idea into your head?" asked the
Spawer, in surprise.

"You," said Jeff, with forceful directness.  "It was you
telt me."

"I?  How wicked of me to tell such a story," the
Spawer said warmly.

"Ah do believe you 're gannin' after some young lady
or other," Jeff declared, by a quick inspiration.

"How dare you," said the Spawer, rising from the bed
in protest, "try to put such ideas into the head of an
innocent young man, old enough to be your father.  Hither
with the razor at once," he commanded, "and let 's shave
your head."

But inside, out of sight behind all this laughter, he sent
a knowing, sagacious glance to his soul.

"The young divil!" he said.

He shaved, like the Chinese executioners, with
despatch; whistled blithely through his bath as though he
were a linnet hung out in the sun, and was downstairs as
soon as might be.  The little room greeted him cheerfully
in its cool breakfast array, holding forth a great,
heavenly-scented garland of wall-flowers and sweet-williams
and mignonette—for all the world like some dear,
diminutive, old-fashioned damsel in white muslin—and his eye
softened unconsciously to an appreciative smile.  There,
too, was the sofa consecrate to Dixon.  He looked at
it with a more conscious extension of smile—thinking, no
doubt, of Dixon.  Then he shook the bell for breakfast,
being an-hungered, and smelling the mushrooms.

The door flew wide to Miss Bates' determined toe, as
she entered with the mushrooms in company with the
bacon and toast and steaming hot milk and coffee on the
big, battered tray of black Japan, securely held at either
foremost corner with a salmon-colored fist.

Now Miss Bates was Dixon's orphan niece, whose case
deserves all the pity you can afford to give it, as we shall
see.  Left quite alone in the world by the death of her
father (who had no more thought for her future than to
fall off his horse, head downwards, in the dark), she was
most cruelly abducted by her wicked uncle to Cliff
Wrangham (much against her will—and his own), and
imprisoned there under the humiliating necessity of
having to work like one of the family.  You must not call
her the scullery-maid or the dairy-maid or the kitchen-maid,
but rather, with the blood-right to give back word
for word and go about her day's work grumbling, you
must appoint her a place among the ranks of unhappy
heroines—reduced, distressed, and down-trodden
beneath the iron-shod heel of labor.  She was, indeed, the
persecuted damosel of mediæval romance, brought up to
modern weight and size and standard—not the least of
her many afflictions being that she was forcibly christened
Mary Anne by heartless parents, while yet a helpless
infant, and that nobody called her anything else.  Her lips
were full of prophetic utterances as to last straws; as to
what certain people (not so very many miles away)
would find for themselves one morning (not so very far
ahead) when they got up and came downstairs, and said,
"Where 's somebody?" and never an answer, and no need
to say then they were sorry, as if they had n't been
warned!

"Now who," the Spawer inquired craftily, dipping a
liberal measurement of spoon into the mushrooms, and
smiling confidentially at Miss Bates, who was balanced
gently by the door, with its edge grasped in her red right
hand, and her cheek pressed touchingly against the
knuckles—"who is the prettiest girl in Ullbrig?"

Miss Bates threw up her nostrils at this direct challenge
of romance, and squirmed with such maidenly desire to
insist her own claims through silence, that the tray in her
left hand banged about her knees like distant thunder.

"Cliff Wrangham allus reckons ti count in wi' Oolbrig,"
she said, coyly.

"But leaving Cliff Wrangham out of the question,"
suggested the Spawer, in a voice of bland affability.

Miss Bates' knees stiffened.

"Ah see no ways o' doin' it," she declared, tossing her
head as though she were champing a bit.

So the Spawer was left smiling over his cup, knowing
no more about the blue Tam-o'-Shanter than ever.  He
enjoyed his mushrooms very much, and went twice to coffee.
Then, breakfast over, he crossed over to the piano, ran his
hands over the keys, and set himself to his daily occupation
without loss of time.

Thick saffron of sunlight filled the little room.  Down
below the window-sash, about the shelterless roots of the
rose-tree, moored along the wall line in barge-like flotilla
and at anchor over the hard, sunbaked path, lay gathered
the Spawer's faithful band of feathered friends,
awaiting recurrence of the bounty so liberally bestowed
upon them at meals.  Each time the blind stirred they
uprose in spires of expectant beak, whereat the Spawer,
squinting sideways, would see the window space set with
jeweled, vigilant eyes, while afloat on the wavy green
border of grass beyond the pathway a snow-white convoy of
ducklings drew their bills from beneath fleecy breasts and
got under soft cackle of steam, ready to sail for the
window at the first signal of crumbs.

After his departure, for an hour or more nothing but
sunlight stirred the Spawer's blind.  Then the voice of
Miss Bates was heard in close proximity outside, and the
next moment the Spawer's first crop of Cliff Wrangham
letters was extended to him in Miss Bates' gentle fist.

"Three letters, a post-card, an' a fortygraft," said Miss
Bates, relaxing the proprietary clench of thumb (tightened
recently for dominion over the downcast Lewis),
and suffering the Spawer to gather them from her confiding
hand with all the romantic symbolism of a bouquet.
"It 's good to be you an' 'ev letters sent ye wi'oot nobody
pesterin' where they come fro'.  Will there be onnything
for 'post' to tek back?"

"Let 's see..." said the Spawer, skimming the postcard
more rapidly than Miss Bates had done before him.
"Is he waiting?"

"It 's not a 'e," Miss Bates replied, with no manifest
relish of the fact.  "An' she 's stood at kitchen door.
'Appen she 's waitin' to be asked twice to come in an' sit
'ersen down—bud she 'll 'ave to wait.  Once is good
enough for most folk, an' it mun do for 'er."

The Spawer finished the post-card, tossing it on the
table, and forced his fingers beneath the flap of the next
envelope.

"What?" said he, with a smile of amused surprise.  "Is
the postman a lady, then?"

"Nay," repudiated Miss Bates, stripping the amusement
off his surprise, and treating the question in grim earnest.
"She 'd onnly like to be.  It 'd suit 'er a deal better nor
tramplin' about roads wi' a brown bag ower 'er back."

"It sounds charming enough," said the Spawer, throwing
himself with a diabolical heartiness into the idea.
"What sort of a postman is she?"

"No different fro' nobody else," Miss Bates gives
grudgingly, "though she 's 'ods [holds] 'er chin where
most folk's noses is.  They gie 'er six shillin' a week for
carryin' letters to Cliff Wrangham an' Far Wrangham an'
round by Shippus—an' it mud be ten bi t' way she sets up."

"Six shillings a week," the Spawer mused wonderingly.
"Just a shilling a day and be a good girl for nothing on
Sunday.  She 'll need all the pride she can muster to help
her through on that."

"There 's twenty for t' job onny day she teks into 'er
'ead to leave it," Miss Bates reflected, with callous indifference.
"She's n' occasion to keep it agen [unless] she likes."

The Spawer put down the first letter and opened the
second.  It was a bill.  "There 'll be no answer to this,"
he said grimly, and passed on to the third.  He gave one
glance at the green Helvetian stamps under the Luzern
post-marks, and toyed with it irresolutely unopened.  "I
don't think the post need wait," he said, this time casting
the office considerately into the neuter gender.

"Ah 'll tell 'er to gan, then," Miss Bates decided, with a
foretaste of the asperity that would characterise the
dismissal.

"Please," said the Spawer.  "With my thanks for her
kindness in waiting."

"There 's na kindness in it," Miss Bates disclaimed.
"She 's got to gan back, onny road.  An' 'appen she
would n't 'ave offered bud ah was ower sharp to call of
'er before she 'd chance to get away.  She mun gan 'er
ways ti Far Wrangham, then."

The Spawer had opened the third envelope, and Miss
Bates was blowing herself out in great gusts like a
strenuous candle, fighting hard against extinction, when she
heard herself suddenly recalled.

"After all," he said, "I 'm going to be a woman and
change my mind.  Who writes quickly writes double, and
saves two pages of apology.  Then I can get back to work
with a clear conscience."

"Ah 'll tell 'er she 's got to stop, then," said Miss Bates.
"An' if ye 'll ring bell when ye 've finished, Lewis 'll let
me know, an' ah 'll come for letter.  Ye need n't trouble to
bring it."

She blew herself out to total extinction this time, and
the Spawer, throwing a leg over the table-end, turned his
attention to the letter in hand—a thin sheet of foreign
note-paper, covered on three of its pages with a firm
feminine handwriting.  He read it very carefully and earnestly,
his eyes running from end to end of the lines like setters
in a turnipfield, as though they followed a scent, till they
brought up to a standstill by the signature.  Then he took
up the photograph.

It was the face of a girl, and he studied it in such
stillness and concentration that his eyelids, lowered
motionless over the downward gaze, gave him the semblance of
a sleeper.  Without being beautiful, the face had beauty,
but though it took all its features under individual
scrutiny, it seemed, less as though he were concerned with
their intrinsic worth than that he was searching through
them the answer to a hidden train of inquiry.  Whether
he came near it or not would be difficult to tell.  The smile
with which he looked up at last and dispersed the brooding
cloud of concentration might have been purely recollective,
and with nothing of the oracular about it; for it
set him straightway to pen and ink and writing-paper,
staying with him the while, and through the next few
minutes the sound of his industry was never still.  Not until
well over on the fourth page did the pen stay behind in the
ink-pot, as he sat back to review what was written.  Then
the pen was rapidly withdrawn again, to subscribe his
name, and he addressed the letter:

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   "Miss WEMYSS,
       Luzernerhof,
           Luzern,
               Switzerland."

.. vspace:: 2

With this in his hand, and the big bath towel and red
bathing drawers slung over his arm from their drying
place on the hot sill, he made off down the baked pathway,
whistling pleasantly like a new pied piper—a whole
throng of feathered followers at his heels.  By the
wooden gate, where the red-tiled pump-walk makes junction
with the front path at the kitchen end, Miss Bates
waylaid him, holding out damp semi-wiped fingers, and
saying an expectant "Thank ye."

"What for?" asked the Spawer, trying to dodge on
either side of her ample bosom with an active eye for the
kitchen door.

"For t' letter," said Miss Bates, unperturbed, "if ye 've
written it.  Ah 'll gie it to 'er as she gans back."

"Back where from?" inquired the Spawer, with a
sudden thirst for information.

"Fro' Far Wrangham," Miss Bates told him, "... wi'
letters for Barclay.  But she 'll call again on 'er way 'ome,
an' ah 'll see she teks it an' all, then."

"Thanks..." the Spawer decided on consideration,
"but I think I 'll see her myself.  I want to ask about
posts...."

"There 's nobbut one," Miss Bates interposed hurriedly,
"an' it gans out at 'alf-past four."

"That 's not the one I mean," the Spawer explained,
and tacked on very quickly: "Which way does she come
back?"

"It 's none so easy ti say," Miss Bates parried.  "She
mud come back bi Barclay's road ... or bi—bi"—the
task of devising a second route being somewhat beyond
her powers at the moment, she fell back upon a generality—"bi
some other road," adding for justification: "She 'd
come thruff [through] 'edge an' all if it suited 'er."

"It 's on my way, anyhow," the Spawer determined
lightheartedly.  "I 'll sit on Barclay's gate and take my
chance."

He had been sitting on Barclay's gate some time, and
would have sold all share of interest in the chance for a
wax vesta, when suddenly he heard the stir of someone
swiftly coming, and turning a leisurely head—with a hand
laid ready to drop to his feet when they should reach the
gate—became in a moment keenly alert to an object that
showed now and again through the green hedge: a moving
object that was neither a bird, nor a blossom, nor a
butterfly, ... but a blue Tam-o'-Shanter.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER V`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V

.. vspace:: 2

And the face beneath it was the face he had been trying
to remodel this morning, out of the obstinate stiff
clays of remembrance.  There were the dear, kissable,
candid freckles, powdered in pure gold-dust about the
bridge of the nose and the brows—each one a minstrel to
truth; there were the great round eyes, shining smoothly,
with the black-brown velvety softness of bulrushes; there
were the rapt red lips, no longer baffling his gaze, but
steadfast and discernible; there was the big beneficence
of hair; the oaten-tinted cheeks, showing their soft
surface-glint of golden down where the sunlight caught
them; the little pink lobes; the tanned russet neck, so
sleek and slim and supple, and the blue Tam-o'-Shanter
topping all, as though it were a part of her, and had never
moved since last the Spawer had looked upon it.

In every other respect she was the same girl that had
sat in Dixon's place on the sofa last night.  She wore still
the simple skirt of blue serge, cut short above her ankles
for freedom in walking (showing too, at close quarters, a
cleverly-suppressed seam running down to the hem on the
left side, like a zig-zag of lightning), and the plain print
blouse, pale blue, with no pattern on it, ending at the
throat in a neat white collar borrowed from the masculine
mode, and tied with a little flame of red silk.  Only the
light rain-proof cape was wanting, but over her shoulders,
in place of it, was slung the broad canvas belt of a
post-bag that flapped bulkily against her right hip as she
strode, with her right hand dipped out of sight into its
capacious pocket.  She came swinging along the hedge at
a fine, healthy pace, as though the sun were but a harmless
bright new penny, making rhythmic advance in a pair
of stubborn little square-toed shoes, stoutly cobbled, with
a pleasing redolence of Puritanism about their austere
extremities; and so into the Spawer's presence, all
unconscious and unprepared.

The sight of him, waiting over the gate, with his elbows
ruling the top bar, his chin upon linked fingers, and
a leisurely foot hoisted on to the second rail, broke the
rhythm of her step for an instant on a sudden tide of
color, and brought the hand out of the bag to readjust the
shoulder-strap in a quick display of purpose.  But she
showed no frailties of embarrassment.  She came along
with simple self-possession to the greeting point, giving
him her eyes there in a queer little indescribable sidelong
look that a mere man might ponder over for a lifetime
and never know the meaning of—a queer little indescribable,
smileless, sidelong look, sent out under her lashes,
that had nothing of fear or favor, or friendship or
salutation, or embarrassment about it, but was pure,
unmingled, ingenuous, feminine, stock-taking curiosity, as
though she were studying him dispassionately from behind
a loophole and calculating on his conduct with the most
sublime, delicious indifference.  The Spawer could have
thrown up his head and laughed aloud at the look.  Not
in any spirit of ridicule—angels and ministers of grace
defend us!—but with fine appreciative enjoyment, as one
laughs for sheer pleasure at a beautiful piece of musical
phrasing or an unexpected point of technique.  If he had
opened the gate with a grave mouth and let her through,
not a doubt but she would have passed on without so
much as the presumption of an eyelash upon their last
night's relations, and never even looked back over a
shoulder.  But he stood and barred the way with his
unyielding smile, and when she came up to him: "Are n't
you going to speak to me?" he asked meekly.

At that the quick light of recognition and acknowledgment
poured through the loophole.  Not all the gathered
sunbeams, had the girl been of stained glass, could have
flooded her to a more surpassing friendly radiance than
did her own inward smile.  No word accompanied it, as
if, indeed, with such a perfect medium for expression, any
were needed.  She drew up to the gate, and casting
herself into a sympathetic reproduction of his attitude at a
discreet distance down the rail, shaded a glance of
gentle curiosity at him under her velvety thickness of
lashes.

"To think," said the Spawer, looking at her with
incredulous enjoyment, "here I 've been waiting innocently
for the post, and wondering what it would be like when
it came, and making up my mind it never was coming—and
it 's you all the time."

"Did n't you know?"

"Sorra a word."

"I wanted to tell you all the time ... last night, who
I was."

"I wanted badly to ask."

"But I dared n't."

"And I dared n't either.  What a couple of cowards
we 've been.  Let 's be brave now, shall we, to make up
for it?  I'll ask and you shall tell me.  Who are you?"

She dipped an almost affectionate hand into the
post-bag, and extended it partly by way of presentation.

"I 'm the post-girl," she said.

He looked at the bag, and then along the extended arm
to her.

"Really?" he asked, visibly uncertain that the post-bag
was not merely part of a pleasing masquerade, or that
the girl might not have put herself voluntarily under its
brown yoke for some purpose as inexplicable as the
trudging to Cliff Wrangham by starlight.

"Really and truly," she said.  "I know I ought to have
told you ... at first.  But I thought, perhaps..."  She
plucked at a blade of grass, and biting it with her small,
milk-white teeth, studied the bruised green rib with
lowered eyes.  "... Thought perhaps you 'd taken me for
somebody different.  And I was frightened you might be
offended when you knew who it was."

In the clear frankness of her confession, and the soft,
inquiring fearlessness of eye with which she encountered
his glance at its conclusion, there was no tincture of
abasement.  As she stood there by the gate, with the
broad badge of servitude across her girl's breast, she
seemed glorified for the moment into a living text,
attesting eloquently that it is not toil that dishonors, and
that the social differences in labor come but from the
laborer.  In such wise the Spawer interpreted her, and
embraced the occasion for belief with an inward glad
response.

"But why should I be offended at the truth?" said he
at length, his eyes waltzing all round hers (that were
vainly trying to bring them to a standstill) in lenient
laughter.  "And how on earth could I take you for
somebody different," he asked, drawing the subject away from
the awkward brink of their disparity, "when you 're so
unmistakably like yourself?  Sakes alive!  Nobody could
mistake you."

She lowered eyes and voice together, and made with
her fingers on the rail as though she were deciphering
her words from some half-obliterated inscription in
the wood.

"I want to tell you," she began, and the dear little
golden freckles on her nose seemed to close in upon each
other for strength and comfort, "how very sorry I am
... for what happened last night."

"You can't be sorrier than I am," the Spawer said.
"It 's been on my conscience ever since.  I was a beast to
jump out as I did, and I admit it."

"I don't mean you," the girl cut in, with quick correction.

"Who then?" asked the Spawer.

"Me..." said the girl.  "You were as kind as could
be.  Nobody could have been kinder ... under the
circumstances ... or helped me to be less ashamed of
myself."

"Please not to make fun of the poor blind man," the
Spawer begged her, "... for he can't see it, and it 's
wicked."

"Oh, but I mean it," said the girl.  "I never got to
sleep all last night for thinking of the music, and how
badly I 'd acted."

"To be sure," said the Spawer, "your acting was n't
altogether good.  If, for instance, you had n't mistaken
your cue when I came out through the window, I should
never have known you were there at all."

"Should n't you?" asked the girl, with the momentary
blank face for an opportunity gorgeously lost.

"Indeed, I should n't."

"All the same ... I 'm glad you did," she said, with
sudden reversion of humility.

"Ah.  That 's better," the Spawer assented.  "So am
I.  It shows a proper appreciation of Providence."

"Because," the girl proceeded to explain, "when you 're
found out you feel somehow as though you 'd paid for
your wrong-doing, don't you?  And, at least, it saves you
from being a hypocrite, does n't it?"

"Oh, yes," said the Spawer, with infectious piety.
"Capital thing for that.  Splendid thing for that."

"Father Mostyn..." she began.  "You know Father
Mostyn, don't you?"

The name brought an uncomfortable sense of visitorial
obligations unfulfilled to the Spawer's mind.

"Slightly," he said, the diminutive seeming to offer
indemnity for his neglect.

"Yes, I thought so.  He said you did," the girl continued.
"You 're going to call and see him sometime, are n't
you?"

"Sometime," the Spawer acquiesced.  "Yes, certainly.
I 'm hoping to do so when I can get a moment to spare.
But I 'm very busy."  He shifted the centre of conversation
from his own shoulders.  "Father Mostyn ... you
were saying?"

"Oh, yes!  Father Mostyn 's always warning us against
being Ullbrig hypocrites.  But it seems so hard to avoid."  She
sighed in spirit of hopelessness.  "I seem to grow
into an Ullbrig hypocrite in spite of everything."

"Never mind," said the Spawer consolatorily, casting a
glance of admiration along the smooth, sleek cheek and
neck.  "It looks an excellent thing for the complexion."

"That?"  The girl ran a careless hand where his eye
had been without making any attempt to parry the
compliment.  "Oh, that 's being out in the rain.  Rain 's a
wonderful thing for the complexion.  Father Mostyn
says so.  But it can't wash these away," she said, touching
the little cluster of freckles with a wistful finger.
"These are being out in the sun."

"I was looking at those too," said the Spawer frankly.
"I rather like them."

"Do you?" asked the girl, plucking up at his appreciation.
"Yes, some people do—but not those that have
them.  Father Mostyn says they 're not actually a
disfigurement, but they 're given me to chasten my pride.
He says whenever I 'm tempted to look in the glass I
shall always see these and remind myself, 'Yes, but my
nose is freckled,' and that will save me from being vain.
And it's funny, but it 's quite true."

"You know Father Mostyn well, of course?" said the
Spawer, his question not altogether void of a desire to
learn how far this estimable ecclesiast might be discussed
with safety.

"Oh!"  The girl made the quick round mouth for
admiration, and held up visible homage in her eyes.
"Father Mostyn's the best friend I have in the world.  He 's
taught me everything I know—it's my fault, not his, that
I know so little—and done things for me, and given me
things that all my gratitude can never, never repay.  It
was he allowed me to go round with the letters."

"That was very good of him," said the Spawer, with a
tight mouth.

"Was n't it?" the girl said, showing a little glow of
recognisant enthusiasm.  "At first uncle was rather
frightened—frightened that I ought not to do it, but we all
thought six shillings a lot of money to lose (that 's what
I get); and Father Mostyn said most certainly I was to
have it."

"And so he gave it," said the Spawer.  "Jolly kind of him."

"Oh, no! he did n't give it," the girl corrected, after a
momentary reference to the Spawer's face.  "Government
gives it ... but he said I was to have it—and I have."

"And what did uncle say?" asked the Spawer amicably.

"Uncle?  Oh, he said it was the will of Providence, and
he hoped it would soon be ten; but it's not ten yet, and I
don't think it will be for a long time.  There were others
who wanted the six shillings too, as badly as I did—and
deserved it better, some of them, I mink.  At one time I
felt so ashamed to be going about and taking the money
that seemed to belong to such a number of people who
said they had a right to it, that I asked to give the bag up;
but uncle seemed so sad about it, and said it was flying in
the face of Providence to give anything up that you 'd
once got hold of, and Father Mostyn said it was a special
blessing of Heaven bestowed upon me (though I 'm sure
I don't know) ... and so I kept it.  It was a struggle
at times, though—even though Father Mostyn used to
walk with me all the way round by Shippus to keep up
my courage....  And that reminds me," she said, showing
sudden perception of responsibility, "I have to go
that way this morning."

"What! have n't you got rid of all your letters yet,
then?"

"All except two," she said, and thrusting open the
flabby canvas maw with one hand, peered down into its
profounds as though her look should satisfy him of
their presence by proxy.  "They 're for Shippus."

"And you have to walk round by Shippus ... now?"

She nodded her head, and said a smiling "Yes" to his
surprise, letting fall the canvas and patting the bag's
cheek with the consolatory dismissal for a dog just freed
from dental inspection.  Then, more reluctantly, as
though the saying were as hard to come at as a marked
apple at the bottom of the barrel, she said ... she must
really ... be going.  They would be expecting her.
She 'd been kept rather long at Barclay's as it was,
writing something out for him.  And made to come through
the gate.

"And, by Jove ... that reminds me," said the
Spawer.  "So must I."

She drew a covetous conclusion from his bathing equipment,
and the blue sky, showing so deep and still beyond
the cliff line, and was already half turned on a leave-taking
heel (a little saddened, perhaps, at his readiness to
assist the separation), when she found him by her side.

"But which way are you going?" she asked, for the sea
lay now at their backs, and the Spawer, as was evident
(and as we all know), had been going a-bathing.

"The same way as you are," he answered, "if you 'll
have me."

And when Miss Bates (who had been watching them
all the time from the end attic window, with Jeff's
six-penny telescope stuck to one eye and a hand clapped over
the other) saw this result of the girl's abominable scheming,
she became very wroth indeed; filled to the brim and
overflowing with righteous indignation that her sex could
sink thus low.  She snapped the telescope together so
viciously that she thought she had cracked it, and when she
found she had n't she was wrother than ever as compensation
for this false alarm, and almost wished she had.

"Ay, ye may set ye-sen up at 'im, ye gret, cat-eyed,
frowsy-'eaded 'ussy!" she said, hurling the javelins of
her anger at the blue Tam-o'-Shanter (every one of which,
so far as could be discernible at that distance, seemed to
miss), "bud if ye think 'e 'll be ta'en wi' yer daft, fond
ways ye think wrong an' all.  Ay, *you*, ah mean.  Ah 'd
be sorry to set mysen i' onny man's road like yon, mah
wod.  Think shame o' ye-sen, ye graceless mynx.  Ah
know very well 'e 's wantin' to be shut o' ye."

And after much further vehement exhortation to this
effect, flung herself gustily down the staircase, slamming
all the steps in descent, like March doors, and carried the
full force of her indignation into the kitchen, where she
swept it from end to end, as though she were a tidal wave.

"Out o' my road!" she cried at Lewis, innocently engaged
in fishing the big dresser with a toasting-fork for
what it might yield; and before he could stop spinning
sufficiently to get a sight of his assailant (though he had
no doubts who it was), was on him again: "Away wi' ye
an' all."

And had him (still revolving) round the table.

"Let 's be rid o' ye!"

And licked him up like a tongue of avenging flame by
the big range.

"Div ye want to throw a body over?"

And was ready for him by the door.

"Noo, kick me if ye dare."

And whipped him out through the scullery like a top,
with a parting:

"Tek that an' all."

Which he took, like physic, as directed; and ten minutes
later, seeing his mother emerge from the calf-house,
and being in possession of ample breath for the purpose,
put Miss Bates' injustice on record in a historic howl.





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.. _`CHAPTER VI`:

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   CHAPTER VI

.. vspace:: 2

The sun had slipped away through Dixon's stackgarth
and twilight was subsiding slowly in soft rose
amber, like the sands of an hour-glass, as the Spawer
wheeled round Hesketh's corner.  Against a tremulant
pink sky the lich-gate stood out in black profile,
edged with luminous copper; the church tower
was dipped in dull red gold as far as the luffer of the
belfry; and the six Vicarage windows gleamed bloodshot
from behind their iron bars when he came upon
them for the first time.  A group of happy children,
playing at calling names and slapping each other down
the roadway, stopped their pastime on a sudden and ran
up to take awed stock of this presumptuous stranger,
who dismounted before his reverence the Vicar's as
though he actually meant to open the gate.

At the first contact of bicycle with the railings, the
gathered gloom about the Vicarage door seemed suddenly
to be sucked inwards, and the eddying dusk reshaped
itself over the priestly dimensions of Father Mostyn.

"Ha!"  The word rang out in greeting like a genial
note of prelude blown on Gabriel's trumpet.  "There you
are.  Capital! capital!  I made sure we should find you
not so far away."  He waltzed down the narrow path to
open the gate, balancing both hands as though they held
an invisible baby for baptism, and its name was
"Welcome."  One of these—a plump, soft, balmy, persuasive,
clerical right hand,—he gave to the Spawer by the gate;
threw it, rather, as Noah might have thrown his dove
across the face of the waters, with such a beautiful
gesture of benediction that in settling down upon the Spawer's
fingers it seemed to confer the silent virtue of a blessing.

"The bicycle too," he said, wagging humorous temporal
greeting towards it with his left.  "Capital! capital!  I
thought we should n't be walking to-night.  There 's no
evening post, you see, in Ullbrig."  He flung the gate
backward on its hinges as far as it would go.  "Come in;
come in.  Bring your bicycle along with you.  Not that
anybody would dare to violate its sanctuary by the
Vicarage palings, but the saddle would absorb the dew
and—let me help you."

All the time, from the gate to the doorway, his hands
were hovering busily about the bicycle without once
touching it; yet with such a consummate suggestion of
assistance that the Spawer with very little prompting
could have sworn before Justices that his Reverence had
carried the machine into the hall unaided.

It was a big, bare hall—square, flagged in stone, and
ringing to their footsteps with the sonority of a crypt.
From the ceiling depended a swing-lamp of brass at the
end of a triple chain.  On the left-hand side stood a hard
ecclesiastical bench of black oak, primarily provided, no
doubt, for the accommodation of those visitors to whom
the privilege of a front room audience would be denied.
On the right side filed a long line of austere wooden pegs
in monastic procession.  A canonical beaver obliterated
the first of them; two more held up the dread square
mortar-board against the wall between them, diamond-wise,
each supporting a corner.  For the rest, some sticks and
umbrellas—with the ebony divining rod of far-reaching
reputation conspicuous among them—completed the movables
of the hall.  The bicycle followed the mesmeric
indication of Father Mostyn's hands into place along the
wall under the hat rack, and the priest saw that it was
good.

By a magnificent act of courtesy he relieved the Spawer
of his cap, and swept his own black mortar-board down
the rack to make place of honor for it—though there
were half a dozen unoccupied places to either side.  Then,
taking up a matchbox from the oak bench, which he
shook cautiously against his ear for assurance of its store,
he invited the Spawer to follow him, and threw open
the inner door.

"The Vicar, you see," he explained, as his shoulders
dipped into the dusk over the threshold, "is his own
servant in addition to being everybody else's.  He acts as a
chastening object-lesson to our Ullbrig pride.  We don't
go out to service in Ullbrig.  We scrub floors, we scour
front-door steps, we wash clothes, we clean sinks, we
empty slops, we peel potatoes—but, thank God, we are
not servants.  Only his reverence is a servant.  When
anything goes wrong with our nonconformist inwards—run,
Mary, and pull his reverence's bell.  That 's what
his reverence is for.  Don't trouble the doctor first of all.
Let 's see what his reverence says.  The doctor will go
back and enter the visit in a book, and charge you for it.
If anything goes worse—run, Mary, again.  Never mind
your apron—he won't notice.  Pull the bell harder this
time, and let 's have a prayer out of his reverence to make
sure—with a little Latin in it.  The pain 's spreading.
For we 're all of us reverences in chapel, each more
reverend than his neighbor; but in sick-beds we 're very
humble sinners indeed, who only want to get better so
that we may be ready and willing to go when the Lord
sees fit to take us.  Or if it 's a little legal advice you 're
in need of—why pay six and eightpence to an articled
solicitor?  Go and knock up his reverence.  He 's the
man for you—and send him a turnip for his next harvest
festival."

Genially discoursing on the Ullbrig habit as they
proceeded, with an occasionally guiding line thrown over his
shoulder in bolder type for the Spawer's assistance:
"... A little crockery to your left here.  Ha! ... mind the
table-corner.  You see the chair?" he led the way into the
right-hand room—a room larger than you would have
dared to imagine from the roadway—lighted dimly by
one tall, smouldering amber window of many panes;
heavy with the smell of tobacco, and heaped up in
shapeless shadow-masses of disorder.  Two great bales of
carpet stood together in one corner like the stern roots of
trees that had been cut down.  On the grained side-cupboard
to the left hand of the fireplace were glasses—regiments
of glasses—of all sorts and shapes and sizes and
qualities.  A cumbersome early-century round table,
rising like a giant toad-stool from a massive octagonal stalk,
apparently constituted the larder, to the very verge of
whose circumference were cocoa-tins, marmalade jars,
tea-cups, tea-pots, saucers; sugar-bags red and blue; some
cross-marked eggs in a pie-dish; a brown bread loaf,
about three parts through, and some cold ham.

And yet, despite the room's disorder, entering in the
wake of those benignant shoulders; treading in the
constricted pathways delineated by those sacerdotal shoes
(virtually and spiritually sandals); wrapped about with
the atmosphere of genial indulgence thrown forth this
side and that from those priestly fingers, as though they
swung an invisible censer—one lacked all power to
question.  A swing to the left, the fault of the chair was
forgiven; a swing to the right, what fear of treading on
crockery; a swing to the front, were he swinging a
lanthorn now the way could hardly be better lighted.

Such was the power of Father Mostyn.

So, swinging and censing, and asperging and exhorting,
and absolving and exorcising till all the ninety-nine devils
of disorder were cast out, the priest passed through to the
window.

"Ha!" said he, with the keen voice for a conviction
realised, when he came there.  "I knew we should catch sight
of Mrs. Gatheredge somewhere about.  By Fussitter's
steps for choice.  She suffers dreadfully, poor woman,
from a chronic enlargement"—he paused to slip his
fingers into the rings of the shutters—"of the curiosity.
I believe the disease is incurable.  It will kill her in the
end, I 'm afraid, as it did Lot's wife.  Nothing can be
done for her, except to protect her as much as possible
from harmful excitement.  If you don't mind the dark
for a moment"—the first shutter creaked upward—"we 'll
fasten ourselves in before making use of the matches.
The strain of looking into his reverence's room when he
lights the lamp and has a guest inside might prove too
much for her—bring about a fatal congestion of the *glans
curiosus*.  His reverence, you see, has got to think for
others as well as himself.  Ha!  that's better."  The
second shutter closed upon the first like the great jaw of a
megalosaurus, swallowing up the dwindling remains of
daylight at a gulp.  "Now we can light up in all good
Christian faith and charity."

He struck a match, and so far as the Spawer could
observe—since the Vicar's back was turned—appeared to
be setting fire to the stack of papers on his writing-table.
After a moment, however, when the flame had steadied,
he drew it forth transferred to the wick of a composite
candle, which he held genially horizontal while he
beckoned the Spawer forward by virtue of the signet finger.

"That 's it," he said, wagging appreciative grease-drops
from the candle.  "Come along! come along!  Let's
see if we can't manage to find some sort of a seat for
you.  We ought to do—I was sitting down in one myself
not so long ago."  Still wagging the candle and performing
an amiable bear-dance on both feet in a revolving
twelve-inch circle as he considered the question on all
sides of him, presently he made a pounce into the central
obscurity and dragged out a big leather-backed chair by
the arm, like a reluctant school-boy.  "Here we are," says
he, rejoicing in the capture.  "The very thing I had in
my mind.  Try that.  You 'll want to beg it of me when
you 've known its beauties a time or two.  That 's the
chair of chairs, *cathedra cathedrarum*.  There 's comfort
for you!"

Negligently wiping the leather-work with a corner of
his cassock, he declared the chair open for the Spawer's
accommodation.

From the fender, bristling with the handles of saucepans,
all thrust outward like the quills of a porcupine, he
commanded a block tin kettle—and a small spirit-lamp.
Other journeyings to and fro provided him with water
in a glorious old John Bull mug, with a lemon, with a
basin of lump sugar, with two spoons, with whiskey, with
a nutmeg and grater, with cigars, contained in a massive
case of embossed silver, with cigarettes, of which the
Spawer was constrained to acceptance, having previously
disappointed Father Mostyn by a refusal of his choice
Havanas; with tobacco in a fat, eighteenth-century jar,
lavishly pictured and proverbed; and with a colored, clay
churchwarden as long as a fiddlestick, that looked as if
it would snap brittly in two of its own weight at the first
attempt to lift it.  Lastly, all these things being
accumulated one by one, and laid out temptingly on the little
round table, with the blue flame established at the bottom
of the kettle, and tapering downwards to its junction with
the wick like a sea-anemone, Father Mostyn permitted
himself to sink back hugely upon the chair, lifting both
feet from the ground as he did so, in supreme testimony
to the full ripe fruits of ease.

"Well," said he, setting his fingers to work in the
depths of the tobacco jar, "and what about the music?"
His tongue appeared reflectively in his cheek for a
moment, and his keen eye fixed the far wall on a nice point
of remembrance.  "Let 's see....  A symphonium?"

The Spawer adjusted the balance gently: "A concerto."

"Ha! a concerto."  Enlightenment swept over the
Vicar's face like a tide of sunlight, and his shoulders
shook as with the laughter of gladsome things.
"Beautiful! beautiful!  To think of our stubborn Ullbrig soil's
being made to yield a concerto.  Had it been a turnip
now.  But a concerto!  Ullbrig knows nothing of concertos.
It would know still less if you were to explain.
Explanations only confuse us—besides being an
unwarrantable violation of our precious rights of ignorance.
Tell friend Jevons you 're at work upon a concerto, and
see what he says.  He 'll tell you, yes, his son 's got
one."  Father Mostyn cast the forefinger of conviction at him.
"Depend upon it, that 's what he 'll tell you.  His son 's
got one.  A beauty with bells that he gave eighteenpence
for.  Meaning one of those nickel-silver mouth-organs
such as we can't go to Hunmouth Fair without bringing
back with us—unless we plunge for a concertina.  It 's
got to be one or the other, or people might n't think we 'd
been to Hunmouth Fair at all, and that 's a light too
glorious to be hid under a bushel.  But it 's all one in
name to us whatever we get.  We call it a 'music.'  Whether
it 's a piano, or a fiddle, or a song, or a
symphonium, or a sonata, or a Jew's harp, or a concertina, or
a sackbut—the definition does n't alter.  We call it a
'music.'  'So-and-So 's gotten a grand music.'  'It 's a
grand music, yon.'  That 's our way."

The little black cat of a kettle, after purring complacently
for a while over the blue flame, suddenly arched
its lidded back and spat out across the table.

"Ha!"  Father Mostyn turned gladsomely at the sound.
"There 's music for you.  Come; you 're a whiskey man?
Say when and fear not."

"If you don't mind, I 'll say it now," said the Spawer,
with laughing apology.

"No?"  His Reverence held out the uncorked bottle by
the neck, persuasively tilted.  "Think twice, my son,
before committing yourself to hasty judgments."  Then
seeing the Spawer was not to be moved: "A glass of
sherry, then?  Benedictine?  Capital!  You won't beat
Benedictine for a standard liqueur.  Apart from its
pleasant effect upon the palate, it has a valuable corroborant
action on the gastric juices, and tends to the promotion
of chyme."

All in speaking he produced the familiar flagon from
the sideboard, poured out a cut-glass thumbful of amber.
This act of hospitality fulfilled, he turned, with no
diminished zeal, to the serving of his own requirements.
He sipped warily from an edge of his smoking glass
to verify his expectations of the flavor, nipped his lips
for a moment in judicial degree, and subsided slowly
upon the chair in a long breath of rapture, extending the
tumbler towards the Spawer for wassail—"here 's
success to our concerto, and may your days be long in the
land with us.  We 're a stiff-necked and obstinate
generation, who worship gods of our own making, and have
more than a shrewd idea that the devil 's in music (we
know for certain he 's in the Church); but we bake good
pies for all that, and our nonconformist poultry can't be
beaten."

The Spawer laughed.  "And our postman?" he asked.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VII`:

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   CHAPTER VII

.. vspace:: 2

"Ha!"  Father Mostyn played upon the note momentously,
as though he were throwing open the grand
double gates of discussion.  "Pamela, you mean!  I knew
we should come to that before long.  No help for it."  He
subpoenaed the Spawer for witness to the wisdom of his
conclusions with a wagged forefinger.  "But Pamela 's
not Ullbrig.  Pamela was n't fashioned out of our Ullbrig
clay.  She 's not like the rest of us; comes of a different
class altogether.  You can't mistake it.  Take note of
her when she laughs—you 're a musical man and you 'll
soon see—she covers the whole diapason.  Ullbrig
does n't laugh like that.  Ullbrig laughs on one note as
though it were a plough furrow.  There 's nothing of
cadence about our Ullbrig laughter—that 's a thing only
comes with breed.  Notice her eyebrows, too, when she 's
speaking, and see how beautifully flexible they are."  The
Vicar warmed to the subject with the enthusiasm of
a connoisseur.

"No—there 's nothing of our clay in Pamela's
construction.  Pam is like charity; suffereth long and is kind.
Envieth not; vaunteth not herself; is not puffed up.  Doth
not behave herself unseemly; seeketh not her own; is not
easily provoked; thinketh no evil.  Ullbrig does n't
understand Pam any more than it understands the transit
of Venus or the rings of Saturn.  Pam 's above our heads
and comprehension.  Because she goes to church on
Sunday, and does n't walk with our Ullbrig young men down
Lovers' Lane at nightfall, we say she 's proud.  Because
she 's too generous to refuse them a word in broad
daylight, when they ask for it, we say she 's forward.
Because she never says unkind things of us all in turn
behind our backs, and won't listen to any, we say she 's
disagreeable.  Because she does n't read the post-cards
on her way round, and tell us whether Miss So-and-So
ever hears from that Hunmouth young gentleman or not,
we say she keeps a still tongue in her head—which is our
Ullbrig idiom for a guilty conscience.  That we had only
a few more Pams—with due gratitude to Blessed Mary
for the one we 've got."

"As a postman," said the Spawer, entering into the
Vicar's appreciation, "she 's the most astonishing value I
ever saw.  The girl seems to have a soul.  Who is she?
And where does she come from?"

Father Mostyn's brows converged upon the pipe-bowl
in the hollow of his knee, and his cassock swelled to a
long breath of mystery.  "Who is she? and where does
she come from? ... Those are the questions.  *À priori*,
I 'm afraid there 's nothing to answer them.  So far, it
seems to have been Heaven's wise purpose to reveal her
as a beautiful mystery; an incarnate testimony to the
teaching of Holy Church—if only Ullbrig knew the
meaning of the word testimony.  She came to Ullbrig, in
the first place, with her mother, as quite a little girl, and
lodged with friend Morland at the Post Office.  I believe
there was some intention on her mother's part of
founding a small preparatory school in combination with
poultry farming at the time.  Yes, poor woman, I rather fear
that was her intention.  She seemed to think it would
yield them both a livelihood, and give Pamela the benefit
of new-laid eggs; but she died suddenly, the very day
after Tankard had agreed to let her the cottage down
Whivvle Lane at four and sixpence a week—being three
shillings the rent of the cottage, and eighteenpence
because she was a lady.  Ha! that 's the way with us.  To
try and do you one; do your father one; do your mother
one; do your sister one; do your brother one; but
particularly do one to them that speak softly with you, and
his reverence the Vicar.  Him do half a dozen if you can,
being an ecclesiast, and so difficult to do."  He wiped the
smile off his mouth with one ruminative stroke of his
sleek fingers—you might almost suppose he had palmed
it, and slipped it up his sleeve, so quickly did it come
away.  "She died suddenly, poor woman, before I could
get to her.  Cardiac hæmorrhage, commonly, and not
always incorrectly, called a broken heart.  No doubt about
it.  They sent for me three times, but it happened most
grievously that I had tricycled off to Whivvle that day to
inquire into a little matter concerning the nefarious sale
of glebe straw—(I 'm afraid I shall have to be going there
again before so long; the practice shows signs of
revival)—and she was dead when I got back.  We buried her
round by the east window, where the grass turns over
the slope towards the north wall.  You can just see the
top of the stone from the roadway."  He indicated its
approximate position with a benedictory cast of the signet
hand.  "After paying all funeral expenses, it was found
that there remained a small balance of some thirty pounds
odd—evidently the tail-end of their resources—in virtue
whereof, friend Morland's heart was moved to take Pam
to his bosom, and give her a granddaughter's place in the
family circle.  Thirty pounds, you see, goes a long way
in Ullbrig, where we grow almost everything for ourselves
except beer and tobacco.  One mouth more or less
to feed makes hardly any appreciable difference."

"But were there no relatives?" the Spawer suggested.

Father Mostyn shook his head significantly.

"And you were n't able to trace the mother's movements
before she came to Ullbrig?"

"No further than Hunmouth."  His Reverence tried
the edge of the Spawer's interest with a keen eye through
drawn lashes, as though it were a razor he was stropping.
"Following up a theory of mine, we traced her as far as
Hunmouth.  But for that, if we 'd taken friend Morland's
advice, we should have lost her altogether.  As I
predicted, we found she 'd been living for some time in small
lodgings there....  There was some question of music
teaching, I believe."

"Music teaching?"  The Spawer leaned on the interrogative
with all the weight of commiserative despair.

"I rather gathered so.  She gave lessons to the landlady's
daughter, I fancy, in return for the use of the
piano, and she had a blind boy studying with her for a
while.  His family thought of making him a church
organist, but unfortunately for all parties concerned, the
boy's father failed.  Yes, failed rather suddenly, poor
man, and cast quite a gloom over the musical outlook.
Then Pamela seems to have acquired diphtheria from a
sewer opening directly under the bedroom window, and
had a narrow squeak for it; and after that her terrified
mother fled the town with her, and brought her into the
country.  There 's no danger of sewers in the country,
you see.  We have n't such things; we know better."

"And that's what brought them to Ullbrig?" asked the
Spawer.

"That's what brought them to Ullbrig.  What brought
them to Hunmouth is still a matter for conjecture.  I
called upon the doctor subsequently who attended Pam
there, but he could give me no information about them,
beyond the fact that his bill had been paid before they
left."

"I should have thought, though," said the Spawer,
tipping his lips with golden Benedictine, and sending the
bouquet reflectively through his nostrils, "that she would
have left letters—or something of the sort—behind her,
which might have been followed up."

"One would have thought so, naturally.  But no; not
a single piece of manuscript among all her possessions."

"That," said the Spawer, "looks awfully much as
though they 'd been purposely destroyed."

Father Mostyn's lips tightened significantly, and he
nodded his head with sagacious indulgence for the
tolerable work of a novice.

"Moreover, in such books as belonged to her the flyleaf
was invariably missing.  Torn bodily out.  Not a
doubt about it."

"To remove traces of her identity?"

The Vicar slipped his forefinger into the pipe-bowl and
gave the tobacco a quick, conclusive squeeze.
"Unquestionably."

"But for what reason, do you think?"

His Reverence sat back luxuriously in the arm-chair,
with fingers outspread tip to tip over the convex outline
of his cassock, and legs crossed reposefully for the better
enjoyment of his own discourse.  "In the first place, she
was a lady.  Not a doubt about it.  No mere professional
man's daughter, brought up amid the varying circumstances
incidental to professional society, and trained to
consider her father's interests in all her actions—(the
little professional discipline of conduct always shows)—but
a woman of birth and position.  Belonging to a good
old military family, I should say, judging by her bearing,
with a fine, sleek living or two in its gift for the benefit
of the younger branch.  Depend upon it.  She would
come of the elder branch, though, and I should take her
to be an only daughter.  There would be no sons.
Unfortunately, a painful indisposition of a lumbaginous
nature prevented my extending her more than the ordinary
parochial courtesy at the first, and she died within
a fortnight of her arrival.  Otherwise, doubtless she
would have sought to tell me her circumstances in giving
the customary intimation of a desire to benefit by the
blessed Sacraments of the Church—but there 's no
mistaking the evidence."  He recapitulated it over his fingers.
"She was the daughter of a wealthy military man, a
widower, who had possibly distinguished himself in the
Indian service (most likely a major-general and K.C.B.),
living on a beautiful estate somewhere down south—say
Surrey or the Hampshire Downs."

"Could n't you have advertised in some of the southern
papers?" suggested the Spawer.

"Precisely.  We advertised for some time, and to some
considerable extent, in such of them as would be likely to
come under the General's notice—but without success.
Indeed, none was to be expected.  Men of the General's
station in life don't trouble to read advertisements, much
less answer them—and if, in this case, he 's read it, it
would n't have changed his attitude towards a discarded
daughter or induced a reply.  Therefore, to continue
advertising would have been merely to throw good money
after bad....  Ha!  Consequently the next step in our
investigations is to decide what could be responsible for
her detachment from these attractive surroundings, and
her subsequent lapse into penurious neglect.  It could n't
have been the failure of her father's fortune.  A catastrophe
of this sort would n't have cut her off completely
from the family and a few, at least, of her necessarily
large circle of friends.  Some of her clerical half-cousins,
too, would have come forward to her assistance, depend
upon it.  But even supposing the probabilities to be
otherwise, then there would be still less reason for her
voluntary self-excision.  Though under these circumstances,
one might understand her never referring to her family
connection, it 's inconceivable to suppose that she should
have gone to any particular trouble to conceal traces of
the fact.  To have done so would have been a work of
supererogation, besides running counter to all our priestly
experience of the human heart and its workings.  No.
In the resolute attempt to cut herself off from her family
the priestly eye perceives the acting hand of pride.
Not a doubt about it.  Pride did her.  The pride of
love.  No mistaking it.  The headstrong pride of love.
Faith removes mountains, but love climbs over 'em, at
all costs.  Depend upon it, she 'd given her heart to
some man against the General's will, and run away and
married him.  Marriage was the first step in her descent."

"Or do you think..." hazarded the Spawer, with all
humility for intruding his little key into so magnificent
a lock of hypothesis, "that marriage was a missing step
altogether, and she tripped for want of it?"

Father Mostyn received the suggestion with magnanimous
courtesy—almost as though it had been a duly expected
guest.  "I think not.  Under certain conditions of
life that would be an admirable hypothesis for working
purposes.  But it won't fit the present case.  In the first
instance, we must remember that those little idiosyncrasies
of morality occur less frequently in the class of
society with which we 're dealing, and that when they
actually occur, the most elaborate precautions are taken
against any leakage of the fact.  Moreover, let's look at
the actual evidence.  All the woman's linen—the
handkerchiefs, the underclothing, the petticoats, the chemises,
and so forth—were embroidered with the monogram
'M.P.S.,' standing, not a doubt about it, for Mary
Pamela Searle.  Some of the child's things, bearing the
identical monogram, showed that they 'd been cut down
for her; while one or two more recent articles—of a
much cheaper material—were initialled simply 'P.S.' in
black marking-ink.  It 's necessary to remember this.
Now, if we turn from the linen to the books I spoke
about and contrast their different methods of treatment,
we shall find strong testimony to the support of my
contention.  On the one hand, linen, underclothing, chemises,
petticoats, pocket-handkerchiefs, and so forth, marked
plainly 'M.P.S.' and 'P.S.'  On the other hand, a Bible,
a book of Common Prayer in padded morocco, evidently
the property of a lady; a Shakespeare; a volume of
Torquato Tasso's 'Gerusalemme Liberato,' in levant; an
old-fashioned copy of 'Mother Goose'; and one or two
other volumes, all with the fly-leaf torn out.  No
mistaking the evidence.  Searle was her rightful married name,
and there was no need to suppress it.  For all intents and
purposes, it suited her as well as another.  Besides, pride
would n't allow her to cast aside the name of her own
choosing.  Pride had got too fast hold of her by the
elbow, you see, for that.  Keep a sharp look-out for the
hand of pride in the case as we go along, and you won't
be likely to lose your way.  It will be a sign-post to you.
Searle was the name she 'd given everything up for—her
father, her home, her friends, her family, her position—and
it had been bought too dear to throw aside.  It was
the other name pride wanted her to get rid of.  That 's
why the fly-leaves came out.  Depend upon it.  They were
gift-books belonging to her unmarried days.  The
Shakespeare was a present from her father; Torquato Tasso
came most likely from an Italian governess; some
girl-friend gave her the Prayer-book—perhaps as a souvenir
of their first Communion.  The Bible would hardly be in
the nature of a gift-book.  People of social distinction,
brought up in conformity with the best teachings of Holy
Church, and abhorring all forms of unorthodoxy as they
would uncleanliness, don't make presents to themselves of
Bibles.  That 's a plebeian practice, savoring
objectionably of free-thinking and dissent.  The Bible is not
mentioned or made use of by well-bred people in that
odious popular manner.  No, the book would figure in
her school-room equipment as part of a necessary
instruction, but no more.

"... Ha!"  His hand, on its way to the round table,
arrested itself suddenly in mid-air as though to impose a
listening silence.  "... There goes friend Davidson—keeping
his promise.  I thought it was about his time.
He gave me his sacred word he would n't touch a drop
of liquor in Ullbrig for three months, so now he has to
trot off to Shippus instead."  The Spawer listened, but
could get not the faintest hint of the delinquent's passage.
"So now," Father Mostyn took up, starting his hand on
again with a descriptive relaxation of its muscles, as
though the culprit had just rounded the corner, and there
were nothing further of him worth listening for,
"... we 've got the whole case in the hollow of our hands.
We see that the breach with the family was brought
about by her own act, and that that act was marriage.
But it was n't merely marriage against the General's
consent or sanction.  Marriages of disobedience and
self-will are nearly always, in our priestly experience,
forgiven at the birth of the first child; more especially, of
course, if it happens to be a son....  Therefore we must
find a stronger divisional factor than a marriage of
disobedience.  Ha! undoubtedly.  A marriage of derogation.
No mistaking it.  A marriage of derogation.  She
married beneath her.  That 's an unpardonable offence in
families of birth and position.  We can forgive a
daughter for marrying above her, but we can't forgive a
daughter for marrying beneath her—even when she 's the
only daughter we 've got.  Moreover, this case was badly
aggravated by the fact that there was no money in it.
She fell in love with some penniless scamp of a fellow,
with an irresistible black moustache and dark eyes—there
are plenty of 'em knocking about in London society, who
could n't produce a receipted bill or a banker's reference
to save their lives—got her trousseau together by stealth;
had it all proudly embroidered with the name she was
about to take; kissed her father more affectionately than
usual one night ... and the next morning was up with
the lark and miles away."  He kept casting the ingredients
one after another into the hypothetical pancheon
with a throw of alternate hands—the right hand for the
sin she had committed; the left hand for the penniless
scamp of a fellow; the right hand again for her trousseau;
the left hand for the elopement, and so on, with all
the unction of a *chef* engaged upon the preparation of
some great dish, and stuck the spoon into it with a fine,
conclusive "Ha!"

"After that," said he, interrupting the sentence for a
moment to give two or three reclamatory puffs at his
pipe, "the rest 's as plain as print.  She 'd made a bad
bargain with her family, and she 'd made a worse with
her husband.  Depend upon it.  Searle was a gambler—an
improvident, prodigal, reckless rascal—who tapped
what money she had like a cask of wine.  As soon as
Pamela was born, the wretched woman began to see
where things were drifting.  She dared n't suggest
retrenchment to her husband, but she began to practise a
few feeble economies in the house and upon her own
person.  No more silks and satins after that.  No more
embroidered chemises.  No more fine linen.  Nothing
new for Pamela, where anything could be cut down.
Nothing new for herself, where anything old would do.
Cheapen the living here, cheapen the living there—until
at last, thank God! in the fourth year of his reign, this
*monstrum nulla virtute redemptum a vitiis* takes to his
wife's bed—not having one of his own—and does her the
involuntary kindness of dying in it.  So our Blessed Lady
leads Pamela and her mother to Ullbrig by gradual stages,
and there, the mother's share in the work being done, she
is permitted to fall asleep.  Ha!  Friend Morland"—he
approached the tumbler to his lips under cover of the
apostrophe, and sought the ceiling in drinking with a
rapturous eye, "... you never drove a better bargain
in your life than when you acquired a resident daughter
of Mary with a premium of thirty pounds.  Look at all
the blessings that have been specially bestowed upon you
for her sake.  Look at the boots that get worn out in
tramping backwards and forwards to the Post Office
since Heaven put into our heads the notion of buying
penny stamps in two ha'penny journeys, and calling
round to let you know we shall be wanting a post-card
in the morning.  Did our young men do this before
Pam's time?  And where do we carry all our boots and
shoes to when they have n't another ha'penny journey in
their soles?  Not to Cobbler Roden.  Cobbler Roden
does n't shelter a daughter of Mary.  Cobbler Roden
does n't shelter a daughter of anybody—not even his
own—if he can help it.  Not to Cobbler Dingwall.  Cobbler
Dingwall does n't shelter a daughter of Mary.  Heaven
sends down no blessing on Cobbler Dingwall's work.
We find it 's clumsy and does n't last.  No, we don't take
'em to any of these.  We take 'em to Shoemaker Morland.
That 's where we take 'em.  Shoemaker Morland.  He 's
the man.  All the rest are only cobblers, being under no
patronage of Blessed Mary, but friend Morland 's a
shoemaker.  Moreover, the Post Office has n't lacked for
lodgers since Pam came to it—there 's the schoolmaster
there now.  A strange, un-get-at-able sort of a fellow, to
be sure, whom I strongly suspect of nursing secret aggression
against the Church; still a payer of bills, and in that
respect a welcome addition to the Morland household."

"Friend Morland, then," said the Spawer, "combines
the offices of shoemaker and postmaster-general for Ullbrig?"

Father Mostyn forefingered the statement correctively.

"Those are his offices.  But he does n't combine them.
He keeps them scrupulously distinct.  One half of him is
postmaster-general and the other is shoemaker.  I forget
just at the moment which half of him you 've got to go
to if you want stamps, but you might just as well try to
get cream from a milk biscuit as buy stamps at the
shoemaking side.  Apart from these little peculiarities,
however, he 's as inoffensive a specimen of dissent as any
Christian might hope to find.  Without a trained
theological eye one might take him any day for a hard-working,
respectable member of the True Body.  His humility
in spiritual matters is almost Catholic.  You 'd be
astonished to find such humility in the possession of a
Non-conformist—until you knew what exalted influence had
brought it about.  He repudiates the Nonconformist
doctrine that the Divine copyright of teaching souls goes
along with the possession of a fourpenny Bible.  His
view on the question is that the Book 'takes overmuch
understanding to try and explain to anybody else.'  On
this point, with respect to Pamela, I 'd never had any
trouble with him.  She 's been born and brought up in
the Church; she 'd true Church blood in her veins.  Her
mother was a Churchwoman.  Her grandfather, like the
gallant old soldier that he was, was a Churchman; a
strong officer of the Church Militant, occupying the
family pew every Sunday morning, who would have died
of apoplectic mortification at the thought that any
descendant of his should ever sink so low as to sit on the
varnished schismatical benches of an Ullbrig meeting-house.
All which, when I put it before him, Friend Morland
saw in a clear and catholic spirit.  It 's true for a
short time he wished to make a compromise—at the
instigation of his wife, undoubtedly—whereby Pamela was
to attend church in the mornings and meeting-house in
the evening—a most odious and unscriptural arrangement,
quite incompatible with canonical teaching.  However,
special light of grace was poured into his heart
from above, and he perceived the aged General in such a
vivid revelation trembling with martial anger at this act
of indignity to one of his flesh and blood, that he woke
up in a great sweat two nights successively, and came
running before breakfast to tell me that the spiritual
responsibility of a general's granddaughter was proving too
much for him, and he 'd be humbly grateful if his
Reverence the Vicar would take the matter on his own
shoulders, and bear witness (should any be required) that he
(John William Morland) had in all things done his
utmost to act in conformity with what he thought to be
the General's wishes.  So I made him stand up in the
hall and recite a proper *declaratio abjurationis* before me
then and there, gave him his coveted *ego te absolvo
Joannes*, and received Pamela forthwith as spiritual ward
in our most Catholic Church."

"But is she going to consecrate all her days to the
carrying of letters?" asked the Spawer, in a voice of
some concern.  "*A dieu ne plaise*."

Father Mostyn knocked the ashes cautiously out of
his pipe into a cupped palm and threw them over the
hearth.  "There 's the rub.  That 's what I 've been
wanting to have a little talk with you about.  Her
bringing up has been in the nature of a problem—a sort of
human equation.  We 've had to try and develop all her
latent qualities of birth and breed, and maintain them in
a state of exact equilibrium against the downward forces
of environment.  Just the slightest preponderance on one
side or other might have done us.  Two things we had
to bear constantly in mind and reconcile, so far as we
were able, from day to day."  He ticked them off on his
fingers like the heads of a discourse: "First.  That she was
a lady; the daughter of a lady; the granddaughter of a
lady.  Second.  That she was become by adoption a
daughter of the soil, dependent on her own exertions for her
subsistence and happiness.  At one time, so difficult did
the two things seem to keep in adjustment, I had serious
thoughts of taking her bodily under my own charge and
packing her off to school.  But after a while, I came to
reflect that it would be an act of great unwisdom—apart
from the fear that it might be making most impious
interference with the designs of Providence.  Providence
plainly had brought her, and to send her off again for the
purpose of having her trained exclusively in the
accomplishments of a lady would simply have been contempt of
the Divine laws and a deferment of the original difficulty
to some more pressing and inopportune moment.  My
work, you see, was here in Ullbrig.  His Reverence is tied
to the soil like the rest of us—ploughing, sowing, harrowing,
scruffling, hoeing, and reaping all his days—though,
for the matter of that, there 's precious little ear he gets
in return for his spiritual threshing.  Moreover, there 's
always the glorious uncertainty of sudden death in the
harvest field; and then what would be likely to happen to
a girl thrown on her own resources at the demise of her
only friend and protector?  Would she be better
circumstanced to face the world bravely as a child with his
Reverence helping her unostentatiously by her elbow and
accustoming her to it, or as a young lady in fresh
bewilderment from boarding-school, with his Reverence
fast asleep in the green place he 's chosen for himself
under the east window?  Ha! no mistake about it.  His
Reverence has seen too many nursery governesses and
mothers' helps and ladies' companions recruited straight
from the school-room, with red eyes and black serge, to
risk Pamela's being among the number.  Out in the world
there 's no knowing what might happen or have happened
to her.  Here in Ullbrig, you see, she stands on a pedestal
to herself, above all our local temptations.  Temptations,
in the mundane sense of the word, don't exist for her.
One might as well suppose the possibility of your being
tempted from the true canons of musical art by hearing
Friend Barclay sing through the tap-room window of the
Blue Bell, or of his Reverence the Vicar's being
proselytised to Methodism by hearing Deacon Dingwall
Jackson pray the long prayer with his eyes shut.  No; our
local sins fall away from Pamela as naturally and
unregarded as water off a duck's back.  Such sins as she has
are entirely spiritual—little sins of indiscrimination, we
may term them.  The sin of generosity—giving too much
of her favor to the schismatical; the sin of toleration—inclining
too leniently towards the tenets of dissent; the
sin of forbearance—making too much allowance for the
sins and wickednesses of others; the sin of equanimity—being
too little angered by the assaults and designs of the
unfaithful against Holy Church—all beautiful qualities
of themselves when confined to the temporal side of
conduct, but sinful when thoughtlessly prolongated into the
domain of spirituals, where conduct should subordinate
itself to the exact scale of scientific theology.  Spiritual
conduct without strict theological control is music without
bars; poetry without metre; a ship without a rudder;
free-will; nonconformity; dissent; infidelity;
agnosticism; atheistic darkness.  Ha! but our concern for
her future is n't on these counts.  The question that 's
bothering us now, as you rightly put it, is: Is she
going to consecrate all her days to the carrying of letters?"

"As a career," commented the Spawer, "I 'm afraid
there 's not much to recommend it.  The office of post-girl
seems, from what I know about the subject, peculiar
to Ullbrig.  There 's precious little chance of promotion,
I should think.  She might slip into the telegraph
department, perhaps, but from a place like Ullbrig even
that 's something of a step."

"I was n't so much thinking of the telegraphic
department," Father Mostyn explained, "... though, of
course, it had suggested itself to me.  But I 'd been
thinking ... it came upon me rather forcibly ... partly
since your arrival ... after our first little talk together
... and I wondered.  Of course, the telegraph department
could be held in view as a reserve.  But I 'd rather
got the idea..." a certain veil of obscurity seemed to
settle down upon his Reverence at this point, as though
a sea-mist were drifting in among his words.  "You see,"
he said, suddenly abandoning the attempt at frontal
clearance and making a detour to come round the thickness of
his difficulty, "Pamela 's altogether a remarkable girl.
She 's not the least bit like the rest of us.  She can do
everything under the sun, except kill chickens.  She can't
kill chickens; but she can cook 'em.  And she can make
Ullbrig pies till you could swear Mrs. Dixon had done
'em.  And she can bake bread—white bread, as white
as snow for Friend Morland's delicate stomach; and
brown bread as brown as shoe-leather and mellow as
honey for his Reverence the Vicar.  Three loaves a week
without fail, because there 's nobody else in Ullbrig can
make 'em to his satisfaction—and she wanted to have the
paying for 'em herself into the bargain.  And she can
paper-hang and paint.  She and his Reverence are going
to undertake a few matters of church decoration shortly.
And she can milliner and dressmake.  If it was n't for
Pamela, Emma Morland would soon lose her reputation
as our leading society *modiste*.  Not even the brass plate
would save her—if she polished it three times a day.
Ullbrig does n't want brass plates; Ullbrig wants style.
So when Ullbrig goes to Emma Morland for a new dress
and Pamela 's not there, Ullbrig says, 'Oh, it does n't
matter just then, it 'll call again.'  Ha! says it 'll call again.
But what I wanted to illustrate ... with regard to
telegraphic departments, of course ... you see ... her
remarkable versatility.  Not only that..." the old fog
showed signs of settling over him once more, but he
shook it off with a decisive spurt.  "She 's inherited
music from her mother in a marked degree.  It seems to
come naturally to her.  I think you 'd be surprised.
What little bit I 've been able to do for her I 've
done—taught her the proper value of notation, the correct
observance of harmonies, clefs, solfeggio, scales, legato,
contra punctum, and so forth.  The amazing thing is the
way she 's picked it up.  Not a bit of trouble to her,
apparently.  What I should have done without her at the
organ—she 's our ecclesiastical organist, you know—I
dare n't think.  And it occurred to me ... I felt it
would be such a pity to let the chance go by ... if we
could only induce you....  You see, she 's not exactly an
ordinary girl.  Different from the rest of us altogether....
And I thought if we could only induce you to give
her the benefit of a little musical advice..."  He
paused inferentially.

"With a view," asked the Spawer, "to what is diabolically
called the profession?"

Father Mostyn caught the note of dissuasive alarm.

"Ha! not exactly the profession..." he said.  "I
was n't so much meaning that.  But I thought, you see,
she 'd appreciate it so much ... and there 'd be no fear
of her abusing your favor in the slightest degree.
Unfortunately ... I 'm afraid you 'd find our piano rather
below par ... the Ullbrig air has a peculiar corrodent
action upon the strings.  Tuning 's no good; indeed, it
only seems to unsettle 'em.  But if ... sometime when
you 're here you would n't mind my asking her in
... just for a short while?"

"Not the least bit in the world," said the Spawer.
"And for as long as you like."

"Ha!"  The fog lifted off Father Mostyn's utterance in
sudden illumination of sunlight, and he rubbed his knees
jocosely.  "I thought we should manage it.  Capital! capital!
We must fix up a sort of a soirée some night.
That 's what we must do.  Fix up a sort of soiree some
night and feed you.  We won't speak of dining; that 's
a word we leave behind us when we come to Ullbrig.
But we 'll feed you, and give Pamela a chance to display
her culinary skill.  Of course, we know all about our
little business of last night, so we need n't speak darkly...."

"The deuce we do!" exclaimed the Spawer, laughing.
"And I 've been thinking all the time we did n't."

Father Mostyn spread his fingers with priestly unction.

"That," said he, "is one of our fatal Ullbrig errors;
always to think that his Reverence does n't know things.
No matter how many times we prove to our cost that he
does, we go on acting upon the supposition that he
does n't.  It 's a source of endless trouble to us.  Of
course, in the present instance, we absolve you.  Your
tongue was honorably tied.  Pamela told me all about
it this morning—she was full of the music and your
goodness, and the desire to tell me what she 'd done before
silence made a hypocrite of her.  Indeed, she was horribly
afraid, poor girl, that she was becoming an Ullbrig
hypocrite already.  As though there were a grain of
hypocrisy in the whole of her nature.  But that 's what
we must do.  We must rig up a sort of soirée some night
and feed you."

How the soirée and the feeding were going to affect
the vital question of the girl's future did not altogether
transpire—though this one subject carried them henceforth
into the small hours, and the Spawer used no inconsiderable
skill to elicit some clear understanding on
the point, and when finally the Spawer slid away from
the Vicarage gate under a deep July skyful of stars, the
words floated in mystic meaning about his ears like the
ringing of sanctus bells.

And as far away as the very last gate of all, when the
Spawer turned his head back towards the scene of his
evening, he seemed to hear the bells wafting to him over
the corn, as though languid with pursuit:

"... Feed you.  Feed you.  Feed ... you."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII

.. vspace:: 2

Pam had grown up in the sight of Ullbrig, variously
loved and hated for her self-same virtues; and on a
day when the time seemed not yet ripe (for fear some
more enterprising spirit might pluck it green), the men
of Ullbrig and of Whivvle, and of Merensea and of
Garthston, and of Sproutgreen and of Ganlon, and of
Hunmouth even, arose, gave a pull to their waistcoats,
and took turns at offering themselves before her on the
matrimonial altar.  That, as you may imagine, made Pam
more enemies than ever.

Who the first man was to win the honor of her refusal
has not been established on a sufficiently authoritative
basis for publication in this volume, but after him came
a constant stream of postulants.  She could have had any
man she liked for the lifting of her little finger; hardly
one of them got married but took the wife he did
because he could n't take Pam.  George Cringle, indeed,
from Whivvle way, boldly challenged her to marry him
while his own banns were up with the daughter of the
Garthston miller.

"Oh, George," said Pam, when he stopped her by the
smock-mill on the Whivvle road and made his views
known to her; too much shocked by his dreadful duplicity
to exult over her sister's downfall as an Ullbrig girl
might have done.  "However could you."

"Ah could very well," said George resourcefully,
misconstruing the reproval into an encouraging query about
how the thing was to be done.  "An' ah 'll tell y' t' way.
Ah 'd send my brother to let 'er know ah 'd gotten chance
o' betterin' mysen, an' wor gannin' to tek it, an' we 'd
'ave me an' you's names called i' Oolbrig Choch.  Noo,
what div ye say?"

Pam said "No," and preached one of the prettiest
open-air sermons you ever heard.  It was on love and
marriage; telling how true love was essential to happiness,
and how marriage without love was mere mockery, and
how the man that betrayed the affections of a girl by
demeaning her in the sight of another was not worthy to
be called man at all; and how, if George did n't care for
Rose, he ought never to have soiled his lips with the
falsehood of saying he did ("Ay, ah do, bud ah care for
you a deal better," said George); and how he ought to
try and make himself worthy of Rose, and she of him;
and how, if he really felt that that was impossible, he
ought to stand forth boldly and proclaim so before it was
too late ("Ah 'm ready, onnytime ye tell me," said
George); but how Pam knew that George was a good
fellow at heart ("Ah div n't say there is n't them 'at's as
good," said George, modestly, "if ye know t' place to
look for 'em"); and how, doubtless, he did n't mean any
harm ("Ah-sure ah div n't"); and so on ... much as
you 've seen it all put in books before, but infinitely more
beautiful, because Pam's own dear face was the page,
and Pam's lips the printed words; and George stood and
watched her with his own lips reforming every word she
said, in a state of nodding rapture.

"Gan yer ways on," he begged her, when at last she
came to a stop.  "Ah can tek as much as ye 've got to gie
me."

"I 've finished," said Pam.

"Ay; bud can't ye think o' onnythink else?" he inquired
anxiously.  "Ah like to 'ear ye—an' it mud do me some
good.  Rose could n't talk i' that fashion, ah 'll a-wander.
Nay; Rose could n't talk same as yon.  Not for nuts, she
could n't.  She 's a fond 'un, wi' nowt to say for 'ersen
bud, 'Oh, George! gie ower.'  What did ye tell me ah 'ad
to prawclaim?" he asked, with a crafty attempt to lure
Pam on again.  "Ah want to mek right sure ah en 't
forgotten owt."

Whereupon Pam wrought with her wavering brother a
second time...

"Ay; it 's all right what ye 've telt me," he said, in
deep-hearted concurrence, when her words drew to an
end once more.  "Ah know it is.  Ye 've gotten right pig
by t' lug, an' no mistek....  Well?  What div ye say?
Mun ah send my brother to tell 'er ah s'll not be there o'
Monday week?"

Pam ground her little heel into the dust for departure,
and threw up her head with a fine show of pitying
disdain.

"Some day, George Cringle," she told him in leaving,
"you may be sorry when you think of this."

"Ah can't be na sorrier nor ah am to-day, very well,"
George admitted sadly, "... if ye mean 'No.'"

"I do," said Pam, with emphasis.

"Well, then," George decided, "there 's nowt no more
for it.  Things 'll 'a to gan on as they are."

Which they did.

Any other girl might have been ruined with all this
adulation; all these proposals open and covert; all these
craning necks; these obvious eye-corners—but Pam was
only sorry, and sheer pity softened her heart till many
thought she had merely said "No" in order to encourage
a little pressing.  And indeed, Pam said "No" so nicely,
so lovingly, so tenderly, so sorrowfully, so sympathetically,
and with so little real negation about the sound of
it, that one woke up ultimately with a shock to realise the
word meant what it did.  Some even found it difficult to
wake up at all.

"What div ye keep sayin' 'Naw' for?" asked Jevons,
with a perplexity amounting to irritation, when he had
asked her to be the mother of two grown-up daughters
and a son, ready-made, and Pam had not seen her way.
"Ah s'll be tekkin' ye at yer wod, an' then 'appen ye 'll
wish ye 'd thought better on.  Noo, let 's know what ye
mean, an' gie us a plain answer to a plain question.  Will
ye 'a me?"

"No..." said Pam again, shaking her head sorrowfully.
Not N-O, NO, as it looks here in print—hard,
grim, inexorable, forbidding; but her own soft "No,"
stealing out soothingly between her two lips like the
caress of a hand; more as though it were a penitential
"Yes" in nun's habit, veiled and hooded—a sort of
monosyllabic Sister of Mercy.

"See-ye!  There ye are agen," said Jevons, convicting
her of it with his finger.  "Noo, what am ah to mek on ye?"

"Oh, nothing at all, please," Pam begged of him, with
solicitous large-eyed humility through her thick lashes.
"Don't bother to try.  It 's not as though I was worth it
... or ... or the only one.  You 'll be sure to find
plenty of somebody elses ... There are just lots of
girls ... older than me too ... who 'd be only too glad
to say 'Yes' ... and be better for you in every way."

"Ay, ah know there is," Jevons assented, with refreshing
candor.  "Lots on 'em.  Bud ah mud as lief finish
wi' you sin' ah 've gotten started o' ye.  T' others 'll 'ave
to be looked for, an' ah can't reckon to waste mah time i'
lookin' for nawbody.  Work gets behint enough as it is.
Noo, let 's come tiv a understandin'.  'Ave ye gotten
onnything agen me?"

"Oh, no, no," said Pam, all her sympathies in alarm at
the mere suggestion, lest it might have been derived from
any act or word of hers.  "Indeed I have n't."

"Well," said Jevons himself, stroking down the subject
complacently.  "Nor ah div n't see rightly i' what way
ye sewd.  Ah 'm a widdiwer—if that 's owt agen a man?
Bud if it is, ah s'll want to be telt why.  An' ah 've gotten
a family—so it 's no use sayin' ah en't.  Bud it 'll be a
caution if there 's owt agen a man o' that score.  There 'll
be a deal o' names i' Bible to disqualify for them 'at say
there is.  An' ah 've gotten seummut ah can lay my 'ands
on at bank onnytime it rains—though it 'll 'a to rain
strangelins 'ard an' all before ah do.  Ah 's think ye
weean't say 'at that 's owt agen a man?"

"Not a bit," said Pam conciliatorily.  And then, with
all the steadfast resolution of her teens: "I shall never
marry," she told him.

Only girls in their teens—taking life very seriously
because of them—ever say that.  When they get older they
commit themselves to no such rash statement, lest it
might be believed.

Ginger's turn took place in the Post Office itself.  He
had been waiting for it for six weeks, so, of course, being
fully prepared, it caught him at a disadvantage when it
came.  As he slipped into the Post Office his prayer was
for Pam, but after he 'd got inside and remembered what
he 'd sworn to do if it were, he prayed it might be the
postmaster, until he thought he heard him coming, when
his heart sank at another opportunity lost, and he changed
the prayer to Pam again.  He was still juggling with it
from one to the other, with incredible swiftness and
dexterity, when there was a sudden ruffle of skirts and Pam
stood waiting behind the counter, with her knuckles on
the far edge of it, in a delightful transcription of the
postmaster's position.

"Well, Ginger," she said, nodding her beautiful head at
him.  (Ginger being also a surname, it was quite safe to
call him by it.) "Do you want a stamp?"

"... Naw, thank ye.  At least ... ah 'm not
partic'lar.  Ay ... if ye 've gotten one to spare..." said
Ginger.  "Bud ye 've n' occasion to trouble about it o'
mah account.  It's naw consequence.  Ah 'm not so sure
ah could lick it, evens if ye 'ad to gie me it; my mouth 's
that dry ..."

"Let me get you a glass of milk, then," said Pam
promptly, showing for departure.

"Nay, ye mun't," Ginger forbade her in a burglar's
whisper, waking up suddenly to the alarming course his
conduct was taking—as though he had come so far in a
dream.  "Milk brings me out i' spots i' naw time, thank
ye ... an' besides, ah can do better wi'out.  Wet's
comin' back to me noo, ah think, an' ah s'll not want to use
stamp while to-morrer, 'appen ... or day after; if then.
'Appen ah s'll sell stamp to my mother, when all 's
said and done ... thank ye....  Did ye see what ah
did wi' penny?  It ought to be i' one o' my 'ands, an'
it 's not no longer.  Mah wod!"  He commenced to deal
nervous dabs at himself here and there as though he were
sparring for battle with an invisible adversary, and one,
moreover, he feared was going to prove the master of
him.  "Ah en't swallered 'er, ah 's think.  There 's a
strange taste o' copper an' all...."

"What 's that on the counter?" asked Pam.

"Ay ... to be sure," said Ginger, with a mighty air
of relief, picking up the penny and putting it in his
pocket.  "There she is....  Mah wod, if ah 'd slipped
'er—she mud 'a been finish o' me.  Well...."  It
suddenly occurred to him that he 'd been a tremendous
time in the shop delaying Government business, and his
teeth snapped on the word like the steel grips of a
rat-trap.  "Ah 'll wish ye good-night," he said abruptly, and
made a bolt to go.

"Are n't you going to pay me, Ginger?" Pam asked
from across the counter, with the soft simulation of
reproach.

"What for?" Ginger stopped to inquire with surprise.

"For the stamp I gave you," said Pam.

"Ay ... noo, see-ye.  Ah wor so throng wi' penny ah
nivver thought no more about stamp.  Did ye notice what
ah did wi' 'er?"

He seemed to be shaking hands with himself in all his
pockets, one after the other.

"In your waistcoat," said Pam.  "That 's it....  No;
see!"—and as his hands still waltzed wide of the indicated
spot, shot two little fingers over the counter, stuck
straight out like curling-tongs, and into his waistcoat
pocket and out again, with the stamp between them.
"There you are," she said, holding it up before his eyes
in smiling triumph as if it were a tooth she 'd extracted.

"Ay..." said Ginger, divining it dimly; "ye 're
welcome tiv it."

That touch of her hand on his waistcoat, and the little
waft of warm hair that went with it, had almost undone him.

"Don't you want it?" asked Pam, scanning him curiously.

"Not if you do, ah don't," said Ginger.  "Ah 'll mek ye
a present on it."

"Oh, but..." said Pam, with the tender mouth for a
kindness, "it 's awfully good of you ... but we 've got
such lots of them.  As many as ever we want and more.
You 'd better take it, Ginger."

"Ay, gie it me, then," said Ginger, holding his
waistcoat pocket open, "'Appen ye weean't mind slippin' it
back yessen, an' ye 'll know ah 've gotten it safe."  The
little warm waft went over him again, and he shut his
eyes instinctively, as though to the passage of a supreme
spirit whose glory was too great to be looked upon by
mortal man.  "Diz that mek us right?" he asked hazily,
when the power had gone by, and he awoke to see Pam
looking at him.

"Yes," said Pam, feeling it too mean to ask for the
penny again after Ginger's recent display of generosity.
"That makes us all right, Ginger, thank you."

"Same to you," said Ginger.  "Ay, an' many on
'em."  Then he knew his hour was come.  "Ah want to know
..." he begged unsteadily, gripping himself tight to
the counter's edge, and speaking in a voice that seemed
to him to boom like great breakers on the shore, and
must be audible to all Ullbrig, let alone the Post Office
parlor—though Pam could hardly hear him, "if ye 'll
remind me ... 'at ah've gotten seummut ... to ask ye?"

"I will if I can only remember," said Pam amiably,
slipping a plump round profile of blue serge on the
counter and swinging a leg to and fro—judging by the motion
of her.  "When do you want me to remind you, Ginger?"

"Noo, if ye like," said Ginger.

"This very minute?" asked Pam.

"Nay, bud ah think not," said Ginger, backing suddenly
in alarm from the imminence of his peril.  "It 's
not tiv a minute or two.  Some uvver day, 'appen, when
you 're not busy."

"Oh, but I 'm not busy now," said Pam, stopping her
leg for a second at Ginger's recession, and setting it
actively in motion again when she spoke, as though to
stimulate his utterance.

"Ah 'm jealous y' are, though," said Ginger, with a
rare show of diffidence at taking her word.

"Indeed I 'm not," Pam assured him.  "I promise you
I 'm not, Ginger.  Do you think I 'd say that to you if I
were?  Now, what is it you want to ask me?"

"Can ye guess?"  Ginger tested her cautiously, with a
nervous, twisted smile—intended to carry suggestion, but
looking more as though he 'd bitten his tongue.  Pam
thought over him for a moment, and shook her head.

"I 'm not a bit of good at guessing," she said.

"'Appen ye 'd be cross if ah telt ye," reflected Ginger.
"Ay, ah 'd better let it alone while ah 'm right.  Ah mud
mek a wuss job on it."

"Oh, Ginger, you aggravating boy," cried Pam, spurring
a dear, invisible heel against the counter to urge
him on, and slapping the oilcloth with her small flat
hand till Ginger's ears tingled again in jealous delight.
"... Go on; go on.  You must go on.  You 'll have to
tell me now, or I 'll never be friends with you
again—and I shall know you don't care, either."

"Well, then," Ginger began, pushed reluctantly forward
by this direful threat, "... it 's this."  He held
on to it as long as he could, taking breath, and then when
he felt he could n't hold on any longer, he suddenly shut
his eyes and let go, saying to himself, "Lord, help me!"
and to Pam, "Will y' 'ave me?"—so quickly and
indistinctly that it sounded like a cat boxed up under the
counter, crying "Me-ow."

"Oh, Ginger," Pam apostrophised him mournfully,
when she 'd begged his pardon three times, and he 'd
mewed after each one until at the third she 'd received the
inspiration to know what they all meant.  "I wish you 'd
asked me anything but that."

"There wor nowt else ah 'd gotten to ask ye," Ginger
said gloomily.

"Because..." Pam proceeded gently to explain, "I
shall have to say 'No.'"

"Ay, ah thought ye would," Ginger threw in.  "Ah
know very well ah 'm not good enough for ye."

"You 're every bit good enough for me," said Pam,
with swift tears of championship in her eyes, drawn
there by his masterstroke of humility.  "And you must
never say that again, please, even if you don't mean it.
It 's very, very good of you indeed to want me, Ginger.
It 's awfully good of you; and I 'd as soon say 'Yes' to
you as to any I 've ever said 'No' to.  I 'm sure you 'd
do all you could to make me happy...."

"Ay, that ah would," said Ginger, snatching hopefully
at the small bone of encouragement.  "Ah 'd try my best.
Is it onny use me askin' ye agen after a while?—say
to-morrer or Friday?  Ah sewd n't think owt about trouble."

Pam shook her head regretfully.

"I 'm afraid not," she said.  "But you must n't imagine,
Ginger, it 's because I don't care for you, or because I
doubt you.  It 's myself I doubt, if I doubt anybody, not
you.  If I could only be a hundred Pams instead of just
a miserable one, I 'd have said 'Yes' to all those that
asked me.  I know I should.  You can't think how it
troubles me to have to keep on saying 'No'—but what
am I to do?  Everybody asks me to marry them ... at
least, a few do ... and as I can only marry one, I 'm
frightened it might be the wrong one.  It 's so easy to
make a mistake—unless you 're very, very sure.  And
I'm not; and I feel I might end by making both of us
unhappy...."

"Ah 'd chance that," said Ginger, with resolution.

"But there ought to be no chance about it, Ginger,"
Pam reproved him gently.  "Nobody ought ever to
marry by chance.  People that only marry by chance can
only hope to be happy by chance—and that 's a dreadful
idea."

"Ay, ah see it is," said Ginger hurriedly.  "Ah beg yer
pardon."

"Well, then," said Pam, "... you understand me,
don't you, Ginger?"

"Ah 'm jealous ah do," said Ginger despondently.

"And you 're not angry with me ... for what I 've
said to you?"

"Nay, ah 'm not angry wi' ye," said Ginger.  "Ah 'm
only sorry.  Ah misdoot ah s'll not be i' very good fettle
for my supper when time comes."

"You 'll shake hands, though," said Pam, catching a
certain indication that he was about to depart without.

"Ay, ah sewd like, sin' ye 're good enough to ask me,"
Ginger acknowledged eagerly, blundering hold of her
fingertips, and dropping them like hot coals as soon as he
felt the desire to linger over them.  "'Appen ye 'll let me
... shek 'ands wi' ye ... noo an' agean," he asked
Pam humbly, turning his coat collar up to go—not that
there was any rain at the time, but that the action seemed
somehow, in his conception of things, to befit the
hopeless finality of departure.

"Whenever you like, Ginger," Pam promised him, with
moist lashes.

"Thank ye," said Ginger, making for the door.  "Ah
div n't know ... at ah s'll trouble ye so offens ... but
may'ap it mud save me ... fro' gannin altagether to
bad if ah was ... to shak 'em noo an' agean."

And with a husky farewell he dipped out of the office.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER IX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX

.. vspace:: 2

So Ginger went over to the great majority of those
that loved Pam and lost her, and in his own hour
was as sick a man as ever you might wish to meet
outside the chapters of a mediæval romance, where gallant
knights are wont to weep like women, and women stand
the sight of as much blood, unmoved, as would turn the
average modern man's stomach three times over.  But
anything like a complete account of all the hopeless loves
that had Pam for their inspiration would crowd the pages
of this book from cover to cover, and still leave material
for a copious appendix, and any amount of lesser
contributory literature.  "Pamela Searle: her Time, Life,
Love, and Letters," including several important and
hitherto unpublished meat-bills rendered to Mrs. Gatheredge
by Dingwall Jackson, with a frontispiece.  "'Pamela
Searle,' being a barefaced attempt to confound the
thinking public as much as possible on the subject of this
fascinating character, and present her to them in an
altogether novel and unreliable light, as a means of catching
their pennies—(truth being worse than useless for the
purpose)—with a vindication of Sheppardman Stevens
from sundry charges that have been customarily laid
against him."—"'Ullbrig, Past and Present'—(also
'Rambles Round')—fully illustrated; containing a special
chapter on Pamela and Father Mostyn in the light of recent
investigation.  Compiled to serve as a guide-book to the
district."  "'Pamela Searle, the Ullbrig Letter-Carrier;
or, What can Little Ladies do?'  A tale and a lesson.  By
Mrs. Griffin (Good Children Series, No. 105.)."

It is no secret that the Garthston parson wanted Pam
as badly as he wanted a new pair of trousers, and would
have had her at a moment's notice if she 'd only asked
him, but she never did; and he wore the old pair to the
end.  And the Merensea doctor wanted her too—the
same that came in for six thousand pounds when his
father died, and married his housekeeper—but Pam
went very sad and soft and sorrowful each time he asked
her (which was generally from his gig, driving some
seven miles out of his way, by Ullbrig, to reach an
imaginary patient on the Merensea side of Whivvle), and said
"No," just the same as she said it to everybody else, with
not the least shade of an eyelid's difference because he
happened to be a doctor—which was the girl all over.
No supplicant that ever supplicated of Pam was too
mean or too poor, or too ridiculous or too presuming, in
her eyes, ever to be treated with the slightest breath of
contumely.  When poor Humpy from Ganlon, whose
legs were so twisted that he could n't tell his right from
his left for certain without a little time to think, asked a
Ganlon lass to have him, she screamed derision at him
like a hungry macaw, and ran out at once to spread the
news so that it should overtake him (being but a slow
walker, though he walked his best on this occasion)
before he had time to get home.  When he asked Pam to
have him, Pam could have cried over him for pity, to
think that because God had seen fit to spoil a man in the
making like this, human love was to be denied him; and
though, of course, she said "No," she said it so
beautifully that Humpy could hardly see his way home for the
proud tears of feeling himself a man in spite of all; and
if, after that, there had been any particular thing in the
whole world that twisted legs could have done for a girl,
that thing would have been done for Pam so long as
Humpy was alive to do it.

Lastly, two years before the Spawer's arrival, the old
schoolmaster grew tired of teaching and died, and there
came a new one in his place; a younger man, pallid and
frail, with the high white student's forehead, worn
smooth and rounded like the lamp globe he 'd studied
under; the weak brown moustache and small chin, and a
cough that troubled him when the wind was east, and
took up his lodgment at the Post Office.  Every day he
sat four times with Pam at the same table—breakfast,
dinner, tea, and supper.  Every morning, when the clock
struck ten, he manoeuvred over his toes for a sight of the
roadway through the school-room window, and if the
veins in his forehead swelled and his jaw muscles
contracted:

"Ah knaw 'oo yon 'll be," went the whisper round
behind him.

Once he was ill, drawing the breath into his lungs like
great anchor chains dragged through hawse-holes, and
Pam nursed him.  Dressed the pillows under his head;
laid her cool hand on his hot forehead; gave him his
medicine; sat through the night with him, clasping
courage and comfort and consolation into his burning fingers,
wrote letters for him; read for him.  "Noo we s'll be
gettin' telt seummut before so long," said Ullbrig to itself.
"A jug gans to pump adeal o' times, but some fond lass 'll
brek it before she 's done,"—but the schoolmaster
consumed in stillness like the flame of a candle.  There were
days when "Good morning, Yes, No, Please, Thank you,
and Good-night" would have covered all that he said to
Pam directly—and even then the veins in his forehead and
the tightening muscles about his jaws reproved him
straightway, as though he had already said too much.  If,
by any chance, Pam addressed him suddenly, the blood
would mount up to his forehead and the outlines of his
face would harden, like a metal cast in the setting, before
he spoke, till it almost looked as though he were debating
whether he should give her any reply.  And the reply
given, he would take the first opportunity of turning his
back.  Indeed, there were times when he barely waited
for the opportunity, but clipped his sentence in the middle
and threw an abrupt word over his shoulder to complete
the sense of it, while Pam stood sorrowfully regarding
the two familiar threadbare tail buttons and the shine
about the back of the overworked morning coat, whose
morning knew no noon, wondering if she 'd said anything
to offend him.  Once, when he had swung round more
abruptly than usual, giving her the reply so grudgingly
that it fell altogether short of her hearing, as though he
had cast a copper to some wayside mendicant for peace's
sake, Pam—who could never bear to leave anything in
doubt that a word might settle—asked him softly if he
were angry with her.  The question fetched him suddenly
round again, with the appearance of warding a blow.

"Angry with you?" he repeated.  There was the hoarseness
of suppressed emotion about his voice, and his lip
trembled.

"You are angry with me now, though," said Pam
mournfully, "for asking you."

And indeed, by the way he had turned upon her and
spoken, he seemed like a man brought to the sudden
flash-point of passion by some injudicious word.

"I am not angry with you," he said, in the same
constrained, hoarse voice, and said no further, but put his
shoulders between them again as though the subject were
too unimportant to be discussed.

Then Pam made a discovery.

"He does not like me," she told herself, and without
showing that she held his secret, she set herself in her
own quiet, gentle fashion to verify the fact by observation.
He was never a man of many words at any time,
but she saw he was never a man of so few as when he
was with her.  He had words for the postmaster; he had
words for the postmaster's wife; he had words for
Emma; he had words—stray, detached, pedagogic schoolroom
words, read up aloud from the chalkings on an
invisible blackboard—for the villagers.  But for Pam—Pam
saw herself—he had only the constrained, hard
words between his teeth like the enforced bit of a horse,
that he champed fretfully in the desire to break away
from her.

No.  Pam knew what it was.  He liked the postmaster
because they could talk the papers over together, and
predict terrible things about the country to each other;
and he liked Emma because Emma was so straightforward
and sensible and earnest looking—even if she
was n't pretty, which perhaps, after all, she was n't—and
never said silly things she did n't mean; and he liked
Mrs. Morland because nobody could help liking her—she
was so kind and motherly and sympathetic and talkative,
and so full of allowances for other people.  But
Pam! ... Well, he did n't care about Pam because ... oh,
because of heaps of things, perhaps.  It was n't any
use trying to put them all together.  Because he thought
she was a silly, empty-headed gad-about, who cared for
nothing but showing herself around the countryside ... (but
that was n't true a bit; he knew it was n't!) ... and
being asked if she 'd have people....

Pam doubled up one little hand in anguish, and stared
at an invisible something in front of her—that seemed
to be a bogey by the startled look she gave it—with a
bitten underlip twisting and struggling like a red live
thing to be free; and a drawn grey cheek—till the great
round tear-drops gathered in her eyes and fell hotly on
her knuckles one by one.

But that was only for a moment.

Then Pam dashed the tears aside and shook her
glorious head with new-found resolve.  Pam would be
brave; and strong; and steadfast; and still; and modest;
and nobly feminine; and true.  And would show him by
her actions that he had done her a wrong in his heart.

Pam was still engaged upon the work of showing him
when the Spawer took up his quarters at Cliff Wrangham.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER X`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X

.. vspace:: 2

On the morning following the Spawer's session at
Father Mostyn's, before James Maskill had yet
flung himself round the brewer's corner, his Reverence
threw open the blistered Vicarage door and sallied forth
genially to the Post Office in a pair of well-trodden
morocco slippers, screwing up his lips to inaudible cheery
music as he went, and holding in his left hand a round
roll of grey stuff which, judging by wristbands of a
similar texture that showed beyond the crinkled cassock
sleeves, appeared to be a reverend flannel shirt.  Jan
Willim was chalking their price on a pair of virgin soles
when he heard the insidious slip-slap of heelless leather
take the cobbles like the lipping of an advancing tide,
and he put his head hurriedly round the little clean
kitchen door at the sound of it.

"Noo, 'ere 's 'is Rivrence," he announced, with the
loud double-barrelled whisper intended to do duty as a
shout on the one side and be inaudible on the other,
"... an' it 'll be Pam 'e 's after....  Noo, Pam lass!"

"Ha!  The very girl I wanted to see," his Reverence
told her, as Pam slipped her frank face deftly behind the
counter to receive him, like a beautiful honest marguerite,
fresh plucked and button-holed, with a friendly upward
"Yes-s-s?" prolonged through her ivory petals,
pink-tipped, and' a peep of rosy tongue.  "The very girl!
How 's Government this morning, John?" he inquired
obliquely of the deferential shadow brooding by the inner
door, where the sound of straining shoe-leather bespoke
the presence of somebody striving to keep silence on his
toes.

"She 's very well, ah think, yer Rivrence, thank ye,"
responded the postmaster, stepping forward the necessary
six inches to show himself respectfully before the Vicar
in the act of speaking, and retiring when his words were
ended.

"Busy, is she?" asked his Reverence affably, commencing
to unroll the grey bundle of flannel on the counter
with a leisurely ordering of his hands—Pam lending
assistant touches here and there.

"Ay, she 's busy," said the postmaster, showing again
in the door-frame, and wiping his fingers on his apron,
lest their inactivity might seem like disrespectful
indolence before the Vicar.  "Bud it 'll be slack time wi' 'er
an' all before long.  Theer 's not so many stamps selt i'
'arvest by a deal, nor so many letters written.  Folks is
ower throng i' field."

"Ha!  No doubt about it.  The harvest field is a fine
corrective for *cacoethees scribendi*," said his Reverence,
disposing the shirt on the counter lengthwise, with limp,
outstretched arms, for Pam's inspection, as though it
were some subject on an operating table.  "Buttons again,
you see, Pam," he told her, pointing out where they
lacked.

"My word, I see!" said Pam, running over the outlines
of the article with a swift, critical eye.  "And
wristbands and collarbands as well.  You want some new
shirts badly.  You 've only four now, with the one
you 've got on—and that," she said, turning up his
cassock sleeves to get a look at it, "is almost past mending.
See how thin it is....  And will you have pearl buttons,
then?" asked Pam, composing the shirt to seemly folds
under soft, caressing fingers, and following every move
of her hands with a fascinating agreement of head,
"... or plain white?"

"Ha!  Plain white ... by all means," said Father
Mostyn.  "Large plain white for his reverence the
vicar—as large and as plain and as white as we can get 'em,
that lie flat where they fall, and don't run all over the
floor and try to find the crack in the skirting-board.  Pearl
buttons are for the young and flexible (incidentally too,
for the profane), and not for aged parish priests, whose
knees are stiffened with a life of kneeling....  Shirts
and pearl buttons must n't let me forget, though," he
admonished himself, drawing the solitary, backless
cane-bottomed chair under him from below, and sitting to the
counter with one hand drumming on its oilcloth and the
other gripping a spindle, "what I really came about."

"No," said Pam, watching his lips.

"We had a visit from our friend of the Cliff End last
night."

Pam's eyes were drawn for a moment to sundry faults
in the folding of the shirt, and her fingers busied
themselves with their correction.

"Yes," she said, looking up again.  "But you did n't
have any music? ... Did you?" she asked, with the
sudden eagerness for a coveted opportunity gone by.

"All in good time—all in good time, dear child," Father
Mostyn exhorted her indulgently.  "Last night we made
music with our mouths, but the next night we 're going
to make a little with our fingers.  Bach!  Scarlatti!
Beethoven!  Mozart!  Schumann!  Palestrina! ... And
then we shall have to have you with us."

"Me?" asked Pam, with swift, desirous incredulity.

"You," said Father Mostyn.

Pam plunged her face into her two hands straightway
(which was a characteristic trick of hers at such times),
as though the beauty of this thing were too great to
behold.  After a moment she let her fingers slide away into
her lap of their own weight and threw back a brave head
with the smile of tears about it, and the little double
shake that remained over to her from the short while ago
when her hair had fallen in sleek, black curtains on either
side of her cheeks each time she stooped.

"Does he know I 'm to be there?" she inquired.

"To be sure he does, dear child."

"But it was your idea ... to ask me," said Pam.

"It was my vicarage," said Father Mostyn.

Pam made pot-hooks with her fingers.

"Yes..." she said, as though the word were only the
beginning to a puzzled objection, but her breath went out
in it in lingering, and she let it stand by itself as an
assent.  "What did he say?"

"When?"

"When you told him ... I was to be there?  Perhaps
he did n't say anything?"—with anxiety.  "Did he?"

"And supposing he did n't?"

"Then perhaps it would mean he did n't want me.  And
perhaps it would n't ... but it might."

"Ha!  Might it?  Let 's make our mind easy, dear
child.  He said lots of things."

"About me?"

"Certainly.  It was you we were discussing."

There was only one question possible to ask after this
on the direct line, and Pam drew up short, confronting it
with a sudden air of virtue.

"I don't want to know what they were," she said.

"There 's no earthly reason why you should n't,"
Father Mostyn told her suavely, "so far as that goes."

"Is n't there?" asked Pam; and then quickly: "... Of
course, I did n't think there would be.  Why should
there?"

"Ha!  Pam, Pam, Pam!" said his Reverence, raising
his hand from the counter, and wagging a monitory loose
forefinger at her.  "All the doctrine of Church Catholic
can't drive the first woman out of you quite, I fear.
Curiosity in that little breast of yours is a blackbird in a
linnet's cage, and may break away through the bars."

Pam looked up from her pot-hooks sideways and
laughed the soft, musical confession of guilt.

"All that was said about you last night," his Reverence
assured her, "had to do with your music...."

"But you never told him," said Pam, locking her
knuckles with a sudden alarm against the impending
disclosure, and straining them backwards over her knee.

"To be sure I did."

"Oh!" said Pain, and dipped her face into her basined
fingers a second time.  "... That 's dreadful.  Now
he 'll come to church."

Father Mostyn stroked a severe, judicial chin.  "Is that
so dreadful? ... to go to church?  You would n't have
him go to chapel?"

"No, no," said Pam.  "Not if he did n't want.  But he
never went ... anywhere before.  And now he 'll
laugh."

"In church? ... I think not."

"When he gets outside."

"Why should he laugh when he gets outside?"

"Because....  Oh!"  Pam twisted her fingers.  "Because
of me."

"And why, pray, because of you?"

"Oh ... because....  Not because you have n't
taught me properly, because you have, and been clever
and kind, and more painstaking than I deserved
... ever.  But because ... what must my playing sound
like to him, when he plays so beautifully?"

"Pride, dear child, pride!"  Father Mostyn cautioned
her with uplifted finger.  "Let 's beware of our pride.
The Ullbrig pride that can't bear the humiliation of being
taught."

"I 'm sure I try," said Pam penitentially.

"Let's try harder, then," said his Reverence, with
affable resolve.  "Never let 's cease trying to try harder.
The laughter you speak of is most assuredly a miasma;
rising from the deadly quagmires of your own pride.  If
our playing merits the fate of being laughed at, why
should we wish it to receive any better fate, or fear its
receiving its just deserts.  Is n't that a virulent form of
Ullbrig hypocrisy?"

"I did n't mean it to be hypocrisy," said Pam sadly.
"And I did n't think it swas till you showed me.  Only
... somehow ... I can't help it.  I seem to be growing
more and more into a hypocrite every day."

"Ha!" said Father Mostyn, welcoming the admission,
"... so long as we recognise the sin, and the nature and
the degree and the locality of it ... and have strength
to confess it, dear child, salvation is still within our clasp.
It 's only in sinning without knowing it that the deadliness
lies.  And that 's what the Church Catholic is to
protect us from....  Are you listening, John?"

"Ah catch seummut o' what 's bein' said, yer Rivrence,"
the postmaster acknowledged cautiously, manifesting
a certain diffidence about showing himself to this
appeal, "... bud ah 'm not listenin' if it 's owt 'at
dizz n't consarn me."

"The Catholic Church," Father Mostyn instructed him
solemnly, "concerns all men—even shoemakers—and you
would be well advised to catch as much of what you hear
her saying as you can.  Truth may come to us some day
by keeping our ears open to her, but be sure she won't
come to us without."

"Ah expeck she weean't," said a depressed voice from
the shoemakery.  "Thank ye."

"You 're welcome, John.  And now"—Father Mostyn
turned to Pam in lighter vein—"enough of spiritual
meats for our soul's digestion, dear child.  Far from
laughing at you, as your little momentary lapse from
discipline permitted you to imagine, our Cliff End friend
was most genuinely interested in your musical welfare;
inquired diligently concerning your state of proficiency;
whether—"

"Oh!"  Pam had been torturing her ten fingers over
her knee while the list proceeded.  "Did n't you
just tell him I knew nothing at all?" she begged
pathetically.

"Patience, dear child, patience!" Father Mostyn adjured
her, with episcopal calm.  "I did better than that.
I told him the truth.  Ha! told him the truth.  Told him
you were willing at heart to learn, but headstrong, and
apt to be careless.  Explained where the grave
shortcomings lay."

"... About the thumbs going under?" Pam prompted
anxiously.

"Ha! ... and your fatal tendency to depart from the
metronomic time as adjudicated by the old masters.
Have no fear, dear daughter.  I told him all your musical
offences that I could remember at the moment.  He
knows the dreadful worst, and has most kindly promised
to lend a helping hand and assist us to make better of it
if the thing can be done."

Pam gulped, with her eyes fixed on Father Mostyn, as
though she had been swallowing one of Fussitter's
large-size three-a-penny humbugs.

"Does a helping hand ... mean lessons?" she asked,
in a still, small voice, after the humbug had settled down.

"Not so fast; not so fast," Father Mostyn reproved
her.  "I feared what my words might induce.  Let 's
beware of the fatal trick of jumping at conclusions.  It
does not appear at present what a helping hand, in its
strictest interpretation, may mean.  You see ... we 've
got to remember ... our friend is n't like the common
ruck of 'em.  No mere bread-and-cheese musician,
dependent on the keyboard for his sustenance, but a
dilettante ... a professional patron of the muse, so to speak,
who is n't solely concerned with its sordid side of
pounds, shillings, and pence.  I told him he 'd have to let
us feed him the next time he came to see us.  Not dine
him ... but feed him.  And he seemed to cotton to the
idea.  So now, dear child, what are we going to do about it?"

"Oh!"  Pam pressed a hand flat to each cheek and
fastened a look of round-eyed, incredulous delight on
Father Mostyn's face.  "Is it to be a party?"

"Not altogether a party."  Father Mostyn pursed up
his lips dubiously over the word.  "Let 's beware of
confusions in our terms, dear girl.  Not a party.  Nothing
set or fixed or formal.  Not a dinner.  No, no; not a
dinner.  A feed.  That 's what it 's to be."

"Yes," said Pam, sticking close to the suggestion as
though she were afraid of losing it, and nodding her
head many times with an infinity of understanding.  "I
know.  A feed.  What sort of a feed?"

Father Mostyn's judicial eyebrow shot up like the
empty end of a see-saw.

"That 's what we 've got to settle.  I rather fancied....
You see—the weather 's so hot ... we must
consider.  My idea was ... I thought, perhaps ... we 'd
have something rather cooling.  Something, say, in the
nature of a cold spread....  But anything you like, dear
child," he allowed her.  "Just think out for yourself—when
I 've gone—the very best you can do for us, and
we 'll subscribe to it in success or failure when the time
comes.  And now, let 's settle when the time 's to be.
When can we manage it, think you?"

"To-night? ... were you thinking of?" said Pam.

"Ha!"  Father Mostyn wagged his hands free of all
part in the proposal.  "I was thinking of nothing.  But
to-night 's a little too precipitate, dear child.  To-morrow
night, then, let us say, and I 'll ride up to the Cliff
myself some time this morning, and take the invitation."

So it was arranged, and the post rattled up over the
cobbles, and his Reverence departed, after a genial word
with James Maskill.

"Ha!  Here comes the joyful-hearted James," he said
to the figure of the postman, that showed hot and angry
through the doorway, gripping the neck of his red-sealed
canvas bag as though it were a doomed Christmas turkey,
and waiting sullenly sideways for his Reverence to pass
by.  "No need to ask how the joyful-hearted James is.
Fit and smiling as ever.  Not even the burden of other
people's letters can disturb his equanimity.  Splendid
weather for you, James.  Don't stand; don't stand.
Come in, and let 's see what you 've got inside your
lucky-bag this morning—anything for the Cliff End at
all?  Eh, Pam?"

Thereupon James brushed past the reverend cassock
buttons with a grunt like a felled ox, that might have
been apology or anathema, or neither, and brought down
the post-bag on the counter like a muffled thud.

"No," said Pam, when she 'd taken it from him with a
smiling nod of recognition and thanks, and run its
contents deftly under her fingers.  "There 's nothing for
farther than Stamway's this morning."

"And nothing for his Reverence?"

Pam ran over the letters again before his Reverence's
eyes, to show him that she was n't merely making use of
the word "No" to save her a little trouble, and shook her
head.

"Ha!  Capital! capital!" said his Reverence, preparing
to go.  "At least, it means there 's nobody petitioning for
new drain-pipes or a cow-shed roof by this post."

"Ay," pronounced the postman darkly after him,
watching the retreating shoulders with an explosive face
like a fog-signal.  "Yon sod ought to 'ave 'is dommed
neck screwed round an' all."

"Sh!  James, James, James!" cried Pam, biting a lip
of grieved reproof at him across the counter, and seeking
to melt his hardness with a sorrowing eye.  "How can
you bear to say such wicked things?"

"Ah sewd run after 'im an' tell 'im o' me, if ah was
you," James taunted her, free of any anxiety that the
challenge might be accepted.  "'E weean't 'a gotten so far."

"You know very well I would n't do it," said Pam.

"Ah know nowt about what ye 'd do," James denied
obstinately, shaking admission away from him like
raindrops gathered on the brim of his cap-shade.  "Nor ah
don't care."

"You know very well I would n't do that, anyhow,"
said Pam, with a trembling lip for the injustice.  "And
it 's wrong of you to say I would."

"Ah know ah 'm a bad 'un," said James.  "Let's 'a my
letters an' away."

"You 're not a bad one," Pam protested, with a more
trembling lip than ever, "but you try to make people think
you are.  And some of them believe you."

"They can think what they like.  Folks is allus ready
to believe owt bad about a man," said the postman bitterly,
"wi'oot 'im tryin'.  Ah sewd 'ave seummut to do to
mek 'em think t' other road, ah 'll a-wander, ne'er mind
whether ah tried or no.  Nobody 's gotten a good wod for me."

"I 've got a good word for you," said Pam.

There was silence over the postman's mouth for a
moment, and in that moment his evil genius prevailed.

"Ye can keep it, then," he said ungraciously, swinging
on his heel.  "Ah nivver asked ye for it."

And the silence was not broken again after that.  Pam
went on sorting her letters steadily, but every now and
then she turned her head to one side of the counter, and
for each stamp on the envelope there were a couple—big,
blurred, swollen, and rain-sodden, with a featureless
resemblance to James Maskill about them—that danced
before her eyes.

Only, later in the day, when there was no postmaster
to prejudice matters with his presence, Pam heard James
Maskill whistling the Doxology outside the door with
his heel to the brickwork, and she slipped round and
took him prisoner by his coat lapels.

"James..." she said softly, and the Doxology
stopped on the sudden, as dead as the March in Saul.
"You did n't ... mean it, did you?"

The postman dropped his eyelids to their thinnest
width of obstinacy, and said nothing.  Pam waited,
looking persuasively at his great freckles (so unlike her
own), and still holding him up against the brickwork, as
though he were Barclay, in need of it on Saturday night.

"You did n't really ... think I would do such a
thing....  Did you now, James?" she asked him, after
a while, trying to gain entrance to his heart by a soft
variation on the original theme.

"There 's some on 'em would," James muttered evasively
through his lips, when it seemed that Pam meant
going on looking at him for ever.  "... Ay, in a minute
they would."

"But not me," Pam pleaded.

"Ah did n't say you," James answered, after another
pause.  "Ah said ah did n't know."

"But you do know, don't you?" Pam urged him.  "You
know I would n't; don't you, James?"

The postman changed embarrassed heels against the
brickwork.

"'Appen ah do," he said, with his eyes closing.

"Say you do," Pam begged.  "Without any 'happen,'
James."

There was an awful period of conflict once more, in
which James showed a disposition to clamp both heels
against the brickwork together, but this second time his
good genius conquered.

"... Do," he said, with his eyes quite shut; and Pam
let go the lapels.

"I knew you did," she said, but without any sting of
exultation about the words—only pride for the man's
own victory—and went back to her work again (which
had reference to hard-boiled eggs and chickens) with a
brightened faith in the latent goodness of humanity.

And when James was standing on the cobbles before
the Post Office that night, loosing the knot in his reins
prior to departure, Pam slipped out with a neat little
parcel done up in butter paper, and put it into his hands.

"Ay, bud ye 're ower late," said the postman tersely,
with no signs of the recent softening about him, and
sought to press it back upon her.  "Bag 's made up."

"But it is n't for the bag," said Pam, resisting the
transfer.  "It 's for you, James."

"What 's it for me for?" demanded the postman, with
the old voice of ire.

"To eat," said Pam.  "It 's a chicken pasty I made on
purpose for you, with a savory egg and a sponge sandwich.
The egg 's in two halves with the shell off, and
it 's quite hard.  You can eat it out of your fingers if you
like.  I thought they 'd be nice for your tea."

The postman exchanged the parcel from hand to hand
for a while, as though he were weighing it, slipped it
after deliberation under the seat, gathered the reins,
gripped the footboard and splasher, pulled them down to
meet him, treading heavily on the step, till the whole cart
appeared to be standing on its side, and rocked up into
place with a send-off that looked like shooting him over
the saddler's chimney.  For James Maskill to thank
anybody for anything was an act of weakness so foreign to
his nature that there were few in all the district who
could accuse him of it; and from the present signs Pam
did not gather she was to be among the number.

"Good-by, James," she said wistfully, stepping back
from the wheel as he sat down—for James Maskill's
starts were sudden and fearful events, not unattended
with danger to the onlooker, "... and I hope you 'll like
them."

"Kt, Kt!" was all James vouchsafed (and that not to
Pam) out of a threatening corner of his mouth; but as
the bay mare leaned forward to the traces, and Pam gave
him up utterly for lost, he turned a quick, full face upon
her.  "Good-neet ... an' thank ye," he said.  And in a
smothered voice that seemed to issue from under the
seat, turning back again: "Ah 'll try my best."

Then he set his teeth and brought the whip down
hissing venomously, as though desirous to get clear of the
sound of his own words and weakness.  The bay mare
sprang up into the sky like a winged Pegasus, taking
James Maskill and the trap along with her, and before
Pam's eye could catch on to them again, they were gone
in a cloud round the brewer's corner.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI

.. vspace:: 2

Then for two days there were six very busy girls in
Ullbrig—busier, indeed, than any other six girls in
the world, I think, and their name was Pam.  They
cooked things in the little clean kitchen that gave forth a
savor like all the flesh-pots of Egypt; things that turned
Jan Willim's nostrils sideways in his head through trying
to smell them from the shoemakery at work with his head
down, and elicited a constant sound of snuffling outside
the Post Office as of pigs that prize their snouts under
the stye door at feed time.  They went abroad with baskets,
whose white napkins Ullbrig's fingers itched to lift,
and pushed open the blistered Vicarage door without
knocking, and passed in.  They were seen to pay calls at
Mrs. Fussitter's, and then Ullbrig sent bonnetless
emissaries after them, with their bare arms wrapped up in
harden aprons, to inquire:

"Ye 've 'ad Pam wi' ye just noo, en't ye? ... Ay, ah
thought y' 'ad.  Ah thought ah seed 'er...  Ah 's think
she 'd nowt to say for 'ersen, 'ad she?"

You may judge, then, if Pam was busy.

But in the end the things that had to be done were
done, and the appointed hour came to pass, and Pam
slipped through the Vicarage door with the final basket,
and did not emerge again, and the shutters were drawn
in both windows.

("Ay ... see ye ... look there! ... If ah did n't
think they would," said Mrs. Fussitter, when all hope had
gone with the second.  "They weean't let onnybody tek a
bit o' interest i' them, ah-sure.  Ah mud just as well 'a
gotten on wi' my work nor waste time ower them 'at
dizz n't thank ye.")

And lastly, the Spawer rode down from Dixon's when
the dusk was falling, to enjoy the ripe fruits of all this
preparation.  They heard the sound of his bell, percolating
the stillness from Hesketh's corner like a drop of cool
musical rain, and Pam said: "Here he is," in a whisper,
almost awestruck, and bit her nails between her white
teeth with a sudden enlargement of eye, as though they 'd
been lying in wait for a burglar all this time, and the
burglar had come.

And for a moment her heart failed her.  She did n't
know what to do.  For how was she there?  Why was
she there?  By what right was she there?  What folly or
blind presumption had led her to be there?  Why had
she ever consented to be there?

Suppose it was all a mistake, after all, and he did n't
really expect her.  What would happen then?  What
should she do if his face dropped discernibly when she
showed herself, and he became cold?

Oh, he would be terrible cold.

And what would he be thinking of if his thoughts
made him look like that?  Would he be thinking of the
same things as the schoolmaster?

Oh, no, no, no!  Would he?

Would he turn his back upon her, and talk over her to
Father Mostyn as though she were a mere wooden palisade?
What if she was a lady, as Father Mostyn found
necessary to remind her at times when she did n't act like
one?  How was he to know that?

And even if he did know it, what did it matter?  If
the thing itself was wrong to start with, how was it
bettered because a lady did it?

Besides ... she was n't a lady.

She knew very well she was n't.  She was just the
post-girl.  And he 'd been most good to her in the past;
had shaken hands with her and talked French for her
(that she was trying hard to learn, with Father Mostyn's
assistance, out of an eighteenth century grammar that his
father's father had used), and promised to play to her
whenever she wanted.

Oh, yes ... she knew; and was very grateful.  But
that was different now.  Then (and he knew it, too) she
had been trying to get out of his way.  Now she was
thrusting herself into it.  She was taking advantage of
his own kindness to claim friendship and equality out of
it, like the impudent beggars that make your one favor
the plea for asking a dozen.  Friendliness was one thing;
friendship was another.

Oh, what should she do? and how should she meet him?

It was a terrible moment.

And then Pam suddenly bethought herself, and dipped
her face swiftly into the font of her two joined
hands—as though for baptism by resolution—and prayed.

It was very silly of her, of course—though, for the
matter of that, lots of people do the same thing when
they are in trouble—particularly girls; and Pam was only
a girl, we are to remember.

Perhaps she did n't exactly pray so much as think
aloud in her thoughts, so that God might hear His name
and listen to her if He would.  Very quickly and earnestly,
and without any stops at all, as though the words
had been in her great heart to start with, and she 'd just
turned it upside down.  And no sooner had they turned
out than she heard the Spawer's two feet strike the
ground outside like a dotted crochet and a quaver in a
duple bar as he jumped from his bicycle, and heard
Father Mostyn throw open the front door and say "Ha!"
and the Spawer give him back sunny greeting in his
familiar voice of smiles (that she seemed to know almost as
well as her own—if not better), and immediately her fear
left her as though it had never been; and she knew he
was expecting her and would be glad to see her, and had
come more on her account than on his own, and would
put out his hand as soon as ever he saw her, and smile
friendship; and her appetite for this joyous double
feast returned.

Then she threw up her head and shook it, and slipped
out into the hall (she 'd been standing out of sight in the
door-frame during her momentary disquietude), with her
lips a little apart as though for the quickened breathing
of eagerness that has been a-running, and her white teeth
glistening between like the pure milk of human kindness,
and her cheeks aflush with the transparent golden-pink
of a ripening peach, and her head thrown back, and her
chin tilted forward, and her two eyes gazing forth—each
under an ineffable half-width of lid; and nobody a penny
wiser about the prayer.

"Ha!  Come in; come in," Father Mostyn was saying.
"Take stock of our lamp.  Ha! the glory makes you
blink.  That's better than the reprehensible Ullbrig habit
of carrying lighted candles with us to see who 's at the
front door, and setting our guests on fire while we shake
hands; or inviting 'em into darkness and bidding 'em
stand still and break nothing until we 've got the shutters
up and can strike a match.  Tell Archdeaconess Dixon
when you get back that his reverence has a twenty-four
candle-power lamp lavishing its glory in the hall—just
for shaking hands and hanging your hat up by—it 'll do
her good to know!"  The Spawer, who had already been
passing his recognitions to Pam over Father Mostyn's
shoulder, leaned across the bicycle and shook hands with
her to her heart's content in his own happy fashion—a
fashion that had nothing of offensive familiarity about it,
nor any chill of reserve, but was as sunny as you please
and honestly affectionate.  Had he pulled her ear or
patted her cheek or kissed her, it would have seemed to
come quite naturally to the occasion under the
circumstances, without any suggestion of impropriety.  But
he did n't do any of these things—nor did he call her
by any name—which Pam noticed.  He simply shook
the little brown handful of fingers that had been so
busy on his behalf these two days, and smiled upon her.

"Pam, dear child," his Reverence was saying, "how 's
the table getting on?  Ready to sit down to, is she?"

Then he turned to the Spawer.

"You 've brought your appetite with you, Wynne?" he
charged him, with solicitous interrogation.

"All there is of it," the Spawer affirmed pleasantly.
"They advised me to up at the Cliff (if it 's not betraying
confidences)."  A rendering of the vernacular less
literal, perhaps than elegant.  "Noo, ye 'll get some
marma-lade!" had been Miss Bates' reflection on the
subject.  "... So I 've been keeping it up to concert pitch
all day."

"Come along, then," said Father Mostyn.  "Let 's all
go and take the table as we find it.  No use waiting for
formality's sake.  We 'll manage to get a feed off it
somehow."

And spreading out a benedictory semicircle of arm,
whose left extremity was about Pam and whose right
fell paternally on the Spawer's shoulder, he gathered
them both before him like a hen coaxing her chickens,
and so urged them invitingly to the feast.



Ah! but that was a feed to remember.  The glorious,
never-to-be-forgotten first of many of its kind.  The
same old room it was in which the Spawer had sat with
Father Mostyn two nights ago, but you could never have
known it without being told.  There was no longer any
need to walk like a prisoner in shackles, sliding one foot
past the other for fear of treading on crockery, or
balancing outstretched arms as you went against the dizzy
inclination to sit down.  All the things by the side of the
wall and the skirting-board (including the cobwebs)
were either gone or unrecognisably reduced; cunningly
compressed into semblances of Chesterfields and
ottomans and settees.  And all about the room were traces
of Pam's taste and explorative industry; everything that
had a good side to show showed it, and even those that
had n't had been coaxed by Pam's alluring fingers into
looking as though they had.

You may guess if the Spawer tried politely to make
believe he did n't notice any change in the room.

But the crowning glory of the place and of all Pam's
achievements—it was the table.  Four candles lighted it
and a brass lamp, and they were every one lighted to start
with.  There was a chicken-pie in a Mother Hubbard frill,
with its crust as brown as a hazel-nut, and just nicely large
enough to feed half a dozen, which is a capital size for
three; and a noble sirloin of beef, fringed with a hoary
lock of horse-radish, and arching its back in lonely
majesty on an oval arena of Spode; and there was a salad,
heaped up high under the white and yellow chequer of
sliced eggs, and a rosy tomato comb, in a glorious old
oaken bowl as big as a kettle-drum, china-lined, bound
with three broad hoops of silver and standing on three
massive silver claws; and there were some savory eggs,
deliciously embowered in their greenery of mustard and
cress, and a tinned tongue, tissue-papered in white and
red, and garnished with stars and discs and crescents as
though it had never known what it was to sleep in
darkness in an air-tight tin under Fussitter's counter; and
some beetroot, brimming in a blood-red lake of vinegar;
and whipped creams, and a trifle pudding, all set out on
snowy white damask amid an arctic glitter of glass and
silver and cutlery.  Except the cheese, which was a
Camembert, and went by itself on the grained side-cupboard,
where all the tumblers and wine-glasses had been
congregated before.

And they sat down to table.

Father Mostyn took his place at the head, in the
ecclesiastical high-backed arm-chair of oak, facing the beef
and the window, with the big buck-horn hafted carving-knife
to his right hand and the carving fork to his left
for insignia of office, each of them rearing its nose over a
monstrous cut-glass rest, shaped like a four-pound
dumbbell.  Pam sat on his left.  And the Spawer sat exactly
in front of Pam on the other side of the table; whenever
they raised their eyes they were looking at each other.
While they were drawing their serviettes across their
knees, Father Mostyn keeled abstractedly over the arm
of his chair towards Pamela with his eyelids curiously
lowered, as though he were trying to catch sight of a fly
on his nose, and named her in a spirit of gentle musing:

"... Pam ... dear child?"

Then Pam threw up her chin fairly and squarely and
fearlessly, after the manner of one who had nothing to
be ashamed of, looking into the Spawer's eyes without
flinching, first of all, and thence to the very gates of
Heaven over his shoulder and crossed herself, and lifted
her clear, bell-like voice in pronouncement, and said:

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost."

Whereupon Father Mostyn crossed himself too—with
easy familiarity, as though he were sprinkling surplus
snuff off his fingers; being a priest, and in the profession,
so to speak—his neck stretched out the while like that of
a Christmas Eve turkey, and his nose thrown up raptly
over the beef; after which he let his serviette slip through
his knees, and took hold of both arms of his chair, and
flung himself recklessly out over them at right angles,
first to one side of the table and then to the other, in
bland survey, like Punch delivering his immortal gallows
oration, and said:

"Pam, dear child....  What are you giving us?" as
though Pam had not reiterated every dish to him half a
dozen times that very night.

"... There are the herrings," she suggested, assuring
herself by a sight of them, with a hopeful slant of inquiry
for his Reverence's approval.

"Ha!"  Father Mostyn cast up recognisant eyes to
Heaven as though he had not understood this signal act
of mercy to form one of the items of Pam's grace, and
must needs now add a special acknowledgment.
"Beautiful! beautiful!  Pass them along, dear child.  A
plebeian fish at three a penny, but one of many virtues,
whose sole faults lie in its price and name.  Fortunately,
those are faults not likely to affect the epigastrium.
Wynne, my boy."  He received the dish from Pam's fingers
and transferred it magnificently over the roast beef
to the Spawer's side of the table; a gesture that made
rare caviare of it at once, "... let me persuade you.
Herring olives prepared according to the recipe of my
late maternal uncle, Rear-Admiral Sir Alexander Cornelius...."

And so they entered upon it, with little thin, crustless
sandwiches of brown bread and butter (Pam's making)
to accompany the olives, and the Spawer went twice
without shame,—just as Pam had arranged he should,—and
it acted beautifully.  You would never have
known she 'd risen from the table if you had n't been
watching to see what became of them.  And after that
they turned their eyes towards the beef with one accord,
and Father Mostyn uttered a dread "Ha!" and seized it
between knife and fork like an executioner, and whipped
it over and stuck the fork critically into the undercut,
holding his nose very high, and knitted at the brows, and
looking terribly down the sides of it through his lashes,
and drew the knife (another awful moment for Pam)
and melted in a rapturous smile as the blade sank easily,
out of sight, and said:

"Beautiful! beautiful! ... Cuts like a bar of butter,
dear child."

In such wise they embarked upon the beef stage, and
laid siege to Pam's succulent salad, with its tender, juicy
greens and its mellifluous cream sauce.  Then the pie
passed in turn, nobly supported by the savory eggs, and
similarly succeeded all the other items of the feed—(a
glorious procession)—the stewed plums, the custard, the
trifle pudding, the port-wine jellies, the whipped creams,
and the cheese, with the wherewithal to wash them down
and cleanse the palate for its discriminating duties—St. Julia
winking rosily in the tinted claret glasses by the
sides of Father Mostyn and the Spawer; simple lemonade
in a tumbler for Pam to put her lips to.

And all the while they talked.  At least, the Spawer and
Father Mostyn did.  Pam said less with her lips, but her
eyes were always present in the heart of the conversation—so
frankly and sweetly and freely communicative, and
with such beautiful brows of sympathetic understanding
playing above them that one never felt any need of the
spoken word.  Indeed, one did n't even notice it was n't
there.  That was because she possessed the unconscious
subtle faculty of extending her words through manner;
of perfuming them, as it were, with her own sweet,
ineffable identity, so that what had been a mere
brief-spoken monosyllable, unmemorable of itself, became
through her a complete sentence in physical expression,
memorable for some beautiful phrase of neck or lips,
or brows, or all of them together, perhaps, in one
melodious gesture.

And after they 'd saturated themselves through and
through with the talk of things musical till the girl's eyes
were wonder-worlds, swimming gloriously aloft amid
whole systems of consonant stars, and the priest was
a-hum in every fibre of him with fragmentary bars and
snatches of quotation under the gathering force of
musical remembrance, like a kettle coming to the boil.  After
all this they passed in procession over the echoing
flagstones into the far room, where was the little sprightly
old-fashioned spinster of a Knoll piano, exhaling still a
faint pungency of ammonia from its recent ablutions,
with new candles in its sconces and an open copy of Rossini's
Stabat Mater laid suggestively on its desk, and all
its yellow ivories exposed in a four-octave smile of seduction.

And here Pam brought those familiar etceteras of
hospitality with which the Spawer had already made
acquaintance; and filled the pipe as unconcernedly and as
skilfully as though she were a seasoned smoker; and
sliced the three rounds of lemon for his Reverence's
glass.

And they made music—glorious music—on the little
short-compassed upright.  They had the concerto, of
course—what was written of it—which Pam, nursing
intent clasped hands in her lap, with her head erect and her
red lips folded and her eyes aglow, adjudged more
beautiful the more she heard it.  Oh, what a glorious thing it
was to be a composer, and have one's head filled with
beautiful music in place of other people's ordinary
humdrum ideas!  And Father Mostyn passed a rhapsodical
hand over his shining scalp and said: "Ha! ... makes
one long for a few hairs to stand on end in tribute to it.
Such music as that seems somehow to be wasted on a
bald head."

And they had the A-flat prelude again, that sealed
Pam's eyes with the great round tears of remembrance.
And the Black Study they had; and some of Bach's
Englische Suiten; and bits of Beethoven, the Waldstein;
and the III; and part of the "Emperor"; and snatches of
Brahms—all just as they came into the Spawer's head,
with little illuminative discourses to accompany them—a
sort of running verbal analytic programme, as it were.
And Father Mostyn gave them reminiscences of Mario
and Grisi and Braham and the great Lablache, and sang
"I am no better than my Fathers," from Elijah.

Not a bit better, really—if indeed as good.

And the Spawer furnished humorous illustrations of
all the great players.  De Pachmann, with the high,
uplifted finger and exquisite smile; and the statuesque
Paderewski, sitting stonily at the piano; and the oblivious
Rubinstein; and the imperious Liszt; and the pedagogic
Von Bülow; all of them as funny as could be, with real
musicianly insight at the back of them; most felicitous
examples of instructive comparative criticism.

And Pam had her first lesson this night, and was quite
ready to begin the second when that was over; and there
seemed not more happiness in Heaven.





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.. _`CHAPTER XII`:

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   CHAPTER XII

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It was midnight when Pam breathed guarded good-by
over her shoulder to Father Mostyn and the Spawer
in the roadway, and let herself noiselessly out of their
sight through the post-house door.

Up above, in the bedroom that lay over the passage, a
rhythmic sonorous sound gave token that the postmaster,
at least, was enjoying the abundant fruits of blessed
repose.  In darkness Pam tiptoed to the little clean kitchen,
and cautiously lighting the candle that her own hands had
left ready for her on the corner of the dresser, held it
gently about her on all sides in final inspection, for the
observance of any little neglected duties that might be
the better for doing before she took her way to bed.  To
one side of the fireplace there was the little clothes-horse
standing—more, by right, a pony—gaily caparisoned with
clocked hose and plain; long stockings and short; grey
woollens; unstarched collars; and sundry inspiriting pink
and white frilled trappings, that should have given mettle
to the sorriest nag alive.  Through the internal brightness
of remembered music Pam's practical mind went out
instinctively to the stockings.  She set down her candle,
and ran them one by one like gloves over her left hand as
far as the foot, working her fingers within the hidden-most
recesses of toe and heel for any signs of the wanting
stitch.  Out of some dozen pairs it wanted in three
that forthwith did not return to the little clothes-pony, but
went over her left arm in token of unsoundness.  With
these dangling at her skirt she made quick, noiseless
tracks over the kitchen floor to acquire the necessary
paraphernalia of repair—for nobody ever recognised the
superiority of time present over time past or future
better than Pam, or, recognising it, put the recognition to
more practical account—and slipping a purposeful finger
through the ringed handle of the candlestick, prepared to
fetch worsted from the kitchen parlor.

She took the knob in her hand and entered naturally
enough, opening the door gently first of all, against any
grease-sputtering displacement of air, and keeping watch
on the candle's behavior as she brought it round from the
shelter of her bosom and passed it in front of her across
the threshold.  Quite two steps forward she had taken
with her eyes on the little yellow flame, before something
strange about the feel of the room plucked peremptorily
at her attention as though with live fingers, and
brought her up on her heel, gazing in front of her, to an
involuntary quick-drawn breath of surprise.  On the wool
mat, in the centre of the square table where they gathered
at meals, stood the lamp, still burning dimly, and in
the obscurity beyond the lamp, the blur as of a second
globe, where a human head lay bowed in the supporting
hollow of two pallid hands.

Head and hands of the schoolmaster, beyond a doubt.
How well Pam knew them; the long nervous fingers, that
always flew to his throat when he addressed her, as
though to throttle back the lurking dog of his dislike; the
high, bulging forehead, with the compressed temples and
the pulse in their veins; the whiteness and brightness of
the scalp where the hair should have been.  Oh, how Pam
had studied them times out of number, like some strange,
unlearnable lesson, trying to get them into her head and
realise what they meant, and why—but never, perhaps,
with her soft eyelashes fringing a greater perplexity than
when she looked over them to-night.  Never before had
Pam found him—or any other of the household—awaiting
her arrival when she returned from a late sitting with
Father Mostyn.  Was he troubled?  Was he ill?

It was but a momentary glimpse of him that she
caught, with head and hands together; but in that one
moment he seemed all these things.  The next, while Pam
was revolving in her mind whether she should speak his
name or cough, or rattle her matches, or depart more
softly than she had come—the attitude dissolved.  The
long spectral fingers slid downwards (so quickly that he
might have been merely drawing them across his cheeks
when Pam entered) and his body rose from the chair to
a standing posture.  He gave no look at Pam, though his
averted head showed recognition of her presence.

For a second or so there was silence in the room, Pam
gazing over her candle at the drawn white face—whiter
and more drawn than usual, it seemed to her—with the
guilty thought beating within her that once again she had
brought herself before this man unwelcomely.  Then,
seeing that she was the intruder, and that he, risen to full
height from the chair, showed no signs of addressing her,
or even of actively ignoring her, but stood passive, as
though she had summoned his attention and he was
simply giving it, without prejudice to any explanation she
might wish to make—begged his pardon (for Heaven
knows what) in a voice of infinite apology and contrition.

"I hope I have n't disturbed you..." she said.  He
bit his lip over a strained short "No."

"I did n't mean to.  I only came in for some worsted
... Emma used it last.  A grey ball with three needles
in it, the color of uncle's stockings.  May I look for
it? ... It 's by the Bible, I think."

Without a word he turned on his heel to the sideboard
where the big everyday reading Bible lay, and commenced
a silent search.  Something about the desolate
droop of his thin, threadbare shoulders and the weary
aimlessness of his seeking, sent (as his rear prospect
always seemed to send) a thrill of spontaneous pity
through Pam's heart.  Why she pitied him, or exactly
what there was about the shiny obverse of him to stimulate
the emotion, not for the life of her could she have told.

He was some considerable time with his coat-tails
turned towards her, and seemed, by the laborious stooping
of his shoulder, quagmired in his search, she
suggested—with such gentleness of breathing as would not
have rocked the flame of her candle—that perhaps
... if he would let her ... she might be able....

Immediately he spun round from the side cupboard as
though she had struck him, with the needles flashing in
his hand.

"Is this your worsted?" he said.

"Oh ... thank you so much!"

Her eyes corroborated the color in an instant, and she
started forward with grateful extended hand to relieve
him of the necessity for coming more than halfway
across the kitchen to meet her.

He took the words, but his eyes refused to admit the
look.  "No thoroughfare" seemed eternally writ up over
them.  Pam gazed a second at the stern intimation, and
then, cuddling her candle to her for departure,
turned—softly, so that he might not construe one single grain of
anger into her going—for the door.  Halfway there she
looked back irresolutely over a shoulder, hesitating
whether to speak or not.

"Your lamp ... is getting low," at length she ventured.
"I think, perhaps ... it may want a little more
oil.  Shall I refill it for you?" she inquired solicitously.
"The smell may give you a headache."

For answer he stooped over the table on both hands
and blew out the convulsed flame with two short breaths.
A thin, acrid column of smoke from the red wick
commenced to wend its way upward, like a soul in tedious
migration.

"I am going to bed," he said,

Pam's quick ear caught the sudden collapse of utter
weariness in his voice as he said it.  Something in the
sound of it smote her soul to pity, as though she had had
a momentary sight of his shoulders.

"You were not ... sitting up ... for me?" she
asked—begged would be a better word.

"Why should I sit up ... for you?" he asked her;
and his two hands went up to his collar.

"I don't know ... why you should," she said, plucking
her reply to pieces, petal by petal, in soft embarrassment,
as though it had been a flower.  All the working
of his lips, it seemed to her, could not conceal the
sardonic amusement her answer stirred in him.  Red shame
rushed up the slim column of the girl's neck and plunged
for hiding in the roots of her hair.  "... And of course
... you did n't," she hastened to add.

"Of course."

Whether he repeated her words in mere unconcerned
assent, or pressed upon them with the hard knuckle of
sarcasm, or was using them interrogatively, Pam could
not make sure, nor dared she ask, though she delayed
awhile with her eyes fixed for solution upon his face.

"I 'm glad you did n't," she said gently, and in silence
led the way into the little clean kitchen.  "You will want
a fresh candle," she said, putting her own down once
more on the dresser, and reaching the empty holder, that
by household consent was allowed to pertain to his
exclusive use.

Out of a drawer in the dresser she produced a piece of
newspaper; tore off a strip; narrowed its width by folding;
bound it neatly round the base of the candle; pressed
the candle securely into its socket; lighted it from her
own, and handed it—after its flame was sufficiently
established—to the waiting man.

He took it awkwardly and tardily enough, rocking so
long in silence on his feet before acceptance, with head
thrown forward and chin bearing heavily over his collar,
that for some moments Pam had doubts whether he was
not fast asleep and about to fall prone across the
outstretched candle and her.  But roused at length, as it
would seem, by her prolonged gaze of inquiry, he lifted
his head and extended an uncertain hand—a hand so
uncertain, indeed, that at the first attempt it went wide of
the candlestick altogether.  At the second, more through
Pain's management than his, thumb and finger closed
upon it and he turned to go.  The look of his dazed eyes
and the dry, white lips that rubbed impotently sideways
upon each other to shape a soundless "Thank you," sent
a great surging tide of solicitous alarm through Pam's
bosom.  She was after him in a moment.

"Mr. Frewin ... Mr. Frewin....  Are you ill?"





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.. _`CHAPTER XIII`:

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   CHAPTER XIII

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His foot was already on the first step when she urged
her bated voice of inquiry after him.  He stayed for
a moment so, as though he lacked strength to ascend or
purpose to speak, and then turned upon her very slowly.

"You ask that," he said, compressing his words
through bloodless lips, hard and set.  "Don't you know?
Can't you see?"

The fixed, meaningful way he looked at her, as though
his face were a written answer, and she could read it if
she would, and the strange, underlying emphasis of his
question, took Pam altogether by surprise.  Did n't she
know?  Could n't she see?  All the dread sicknesses
under the sun seemed to swathe him and envelope him in
their hideous mantles as she gazed ... a fearful kaleidoscopic
counterpane of ailments.  Which of all these had
her blindness overlooked?

Did n't she know?  Could n't she see?

"See what?" she begged, in the whispered hush of a
voice that besought an answer it scarcely dared to hear.
For, framed in the narrow dark inlet of the staircase,
with the candle casting corpse-hollows over his eyes, and
sinking his cheeks under shadow, and sharpening his
nose, and hardening his nostrils—to the girl's disturbed
imagination he seemed dead and coffined already.  "Oh,
tell me, please!—what I ought to see.  Oh, I am so sorry!
Is there anything you want?  Is there anything I can get you?"

"You know what I want," he said, and Lazarus, wakened
from the dead, might have spoken his first words in
just such a voice.

"*I* know what you want?" repeated Pam, falling back
a little dismayed before the directness of his charge, and
the black inability of her mind to meet it.

"... You," he said.

"Me?" said Pam again, more vacantly still, taking the
word from him, and trying it in turn, like a key, upon
all those sayings that had gone before, to see which of
their several senses it might fit and open.  Then, all of a
sudden she saw the door it opened, and the threshold it
led over, and let the key fall, as it were, from her hands,
and covered her face hotly with her ten small fingers.
"Oh, no, no, no!" she panted.  "You don't mean that."

She opened a place in her fingers to look at him
through, in the silence that followed, like a fawn staring
startled from out the high stalks of a thicket, and let both
hands slip downward to her skirts with the limp fall of
bewilderment.  To think this was the secret of his disfavor;
this the reason for all his anger, and all her
self-interrogations.  That he loved her.

He laid down his candle on the dresser beside her own,
and ran the finger of his left hand looseningly round the
inner rim of his collar, as though it had suddenly grown
tight about him.

"Why not that?" he said, in a voice so low and natureless
and hoarse that it might have issued from a man of
straw, for all the tone it gave.

"Because ... oh ... because of everything," Pam
told him, with troubled eyes and lips and fingers.  "I
never expected it.  It 's all so sudden."

"Sudden," he said.

Pam moved her lips in mournful affirmation.  It cut
her to the quick to hurt him.

"I 'm afraid so," she said, laying the words soothingly
over the raw in his soul.  "... Terribly sudden."

"... When it 's been going on ... for two years.
Ever since ... I came.  You call that sudden?"

"So long as that?" said Pam, in open-eyed amaze.
"Oh, I never knew it.  Indeed I did n't.  I had n't the
faintest idea."

He passed his hand across his forehead with a look of
pain.

"... And I thought I could n't keep it from you—even
when I tried.  I fancied you read me through and
through, and understood what I wanted to ask of
you—but could n't, till now.  You looked as though you did.
Did n't you?  Don't play with me.  Tell me.  You must
have known."

Pam shook a head of pitying negation.

"It was n't that I did n't try," she told him, "... for I
tried my best.  But I could n't.  I never thought
... you cared one little bit about me.  If I 'd thought you
cared for me ... there are lots of unkind things I 'd
never have done that I did do, without thinking.  I,
would n't have followed you into the room when you
were alone, and looked at you, and tried to make you
look at me, and spoken to you.  Never.  You 'll believe I
would n't when I say so, won't you?  All the time I was
only trying to make friends with you—that I was already,
though I did n't know it.  And all the time you thought
... that I saw what was the matter with you, and knew
why you would n't look at me, and what you meant when
you turned your back.  But I did n't.  Indeed I did n't.
Oh, how spiteful and cruel you must have thought me,"
she said, with the beautiful wetness of tears about her
lashes.  "And I did n't mean it for cruelty a bit.  I meant
it for kindness.  It 's all been a mistake from the first."

"Is it a mistake ... now?" he asked.

"A mistake now?" said Pam, and looked at him for a
moment; and then drew a breath, and looked at him
again; and drew another breath, and still looked at him;
while her lower lip broke loose and fluttered a little, like
a hovering butterfly, and stopped, and fluttered a second
time, and her lashes fell by an almost imperceptible
shade—less a falling of the lashes, indeed, than a falling of
something not definable—a thin, gauzy, darkening veil of
trouble, it seemed to be, over the very look itself.  "I
hope not," she said; but her voice and her eyes and her
lips belied the hope she spoke of.  "We understand each
other now ... don't we?"

"What do we understand?" he asked huskily.

"I thought you knew," Pam said, setting her gaze on
him, in intrepid wonderment to think he should comprehend
so badly, or so soon forget.  "I 've just ... been
telling you."

"I know nothing," he said, and then in a sudden husky
outburst of avowal: "There is only one thing I want to
know.  I 've told you what it is.  Have you nothing to say
in return?"

The unavailing exertion of trying to raise his
lead-heavy voice clear of a low whisper made him stop to
cough—the hard, dry cough that weeks of patient
nursing and nights of anxious solicitude had taught Pam to
know so well.

"Nothing ... that I should like to say," Pam answered
unsteadily.  "Nothing that you would wish to
hear me say.  I thought ... I 'd said everything.  Oh,
please ... don't ask me to say any more.  It might only
make things worse."

He swallowed time upon time in slow succession.

"And this is the end of all my waiting?"

"If you 'll let it, please, it is," Pam begged him, very
pleadingly for herself; very sorrowfully for him.

"I can't let it," he blurted after a while.  "You don't
know what you are asking of me.  I can't give you up."

"But I 'm not yours to give," Pam protested, with an
awed voice, at this unexpected assumption of possession.

"Whose are you?" he cried

"Nobody's, of course," Pam said, in meek submission,
"except my own."

"You could be mine ... if you would," he told her,
grappling with his throat again.  "Just for the saying of
a word you could.  I 've waited for you for two years.  Is
one word too much to give ... for two years' waiting?"

"Ginger waited for me longer than that," Pam said,
very simply.  "And I said 'No' to Ginger."

"Who was Ginger, to want you?" he exclaimed.  "You
could never have married Ginger."

"I did n't," said Pam quietly.  "But Ginger loved me."

"I love you," he said fiercely.

"Ginger loved me first," Pam maintained stoutly.
"And others loved me before Ginger.  If I 'd said to
them what they wanted me to say to them and what you
want me to say to you, there would never have been any
question of your asking me."

"Why did n't you let me die ... when I had the
chance?" he demanded bitterly.  "But you were kind to
me then.  You took advantage of me.  You were kind
when I was ill and could n't help myself.  Death stood as
near to me as I stand to you ... but day and night you
stood between us both and saved me."

"Oh, no, no!" Pam disclaimed hastily, in twofold fear
and modesty, shrinking before the acceptance of such an
obligation.  "It was n't I that saved you.  It was you
yourself that got strong and better.  I only sat by you
and did what little I could; but it was nothing at all
... really."

"Nothing at all," he said, and clenched his fist in
assurance.  "It was everything.  Why did I get stronger and
better—but for you?  Because you were by me, and
because I wanted you ... and could n't bear to leave you.
Look," he said, standing back from her suddenly, as
though to give her full view of his statement, "do you
know there were times ... times when I could have
turned my face to the wall and died for the mere wishing?"

"But you would never have done that," Pam whispered,
in hushed alarm.

"Why should n't I have done it?" he asked her,
"... when death was so easy and living so hard?  You alone
stopped me from doing it.  The thought of you and the
sight of you, and the hope of you.  Often and often I
was looking at you ... when you thought I was asleep."

"Sometimes I saw you," said Pam.

"... And making up my mind whether to die ... or
risk living ... for your sake.  But I never could die
... because of you.  And once, when you had been a
long while gone ... I said to myself: 'How easy to slip
off now ... before she comes back' ... and just as I
was wondering whether there would be time ... you
came in, and stooped over me and kissed me.  How
could I die after that?  Once I made up my mind
to kiss you back ... but my lips had n't strength.  You
saw them move, and asked me if I wanted a drink,
and I said 'Yes'; but I did n't.  And you cried over me,
too."

"I was sorry for you," said Pam.  "I wanted you to
get better."

"Are n't you sorry for me now?" he asked.  "... Now
that my mind is ill ... as my body was then?"

The terrible earnestness of his love troubled her.  Love
before she had witnessed in plenty, but never love like
this.  It was as though she stood with clasped hands
before some burning homestead that her own unintending
fingers had fired, and saw the fierce wind fan the flames,
and heard the cry for succor from within ... and could
do nothing.  Oh, it was horrible!  For a while they
looked at each other and said nothing, for each feared
speaking; he, lest he might divert Pam's answer; Pam,
because she had no answer to divert.

"Well?" he said at length.  "Have you nothing to say to me?"

Pam only shook her head.  What had she to say, and
how could she say it when her own great heart was
hammering away like a stone-mason in the place where her
voice should have been.

"Not even a word?" he said, with a broken sob.
"Won't you say ... you 'll try and care for me ... if
I can make you?  Is it too much to ask that?"

Pam put her hands to her face.

"Oh ... I don't know.  What am I to say?  What
am I to do?"

"... Do nothing," he said bitterly.

"But I want to do something," Pam protested
desperately—though her own shrinking conscience told her how
little.  "... And I don't say I won't try.  But perhaps
... I could never learn.  I don't know.  How am I to
know?  And if I say I 'll try ... and can't in the end
... what a dreadful thing for us both....  Oh, are you
quite sure there 's nothing short of love that will do?"
she asked, with the lameness that can get no further, and
wrenched her hands, and looked at him in helpless appeal.

"That means you won't try?" he said; and she could
see his hand close tight upon the dresser.

"Oh, no, no, no ... I will try!" Pam cried, charging
blindly down the open roadway of consent, for fault of
any other way to turn.  "... If you wish it, I 'll try.
But oh, please, it is n't the least bit of a promise ... and
you must n't ... must n't build on it.  And you must n't
try and force me to learn ... or be angry with me if
I 'm slow ... or can't.  Perhaps I can't.  Oh, it may
very well be that I can't ... for all my trying.

"... And even ... if I ever grew to care anything
for you ... in the way you want—and I dare n't think
or say.  It all seems so sudden and unreal.  It seems as
though I were dreaming it.  Last night—half an hour
ago even—I never thought you wanted to speak to me
or have anything to do with me at all, and now—you 're
asking me to try and love you.  And even if I grow to
care for you in that way (and I don't know.  Oh, you
must n't think I 'm promising) I should n't want ... I
mean it would have to be ... oh, for a long time.
Years, perhaps.  Longer than ever you cared to wait.  I
told ... somebody once, when they asked me—what
you 've been asking me, that I never meant to get
married.  And if I did ... it would be like acting a story to
them—as they said I was doing at the time.  And I 've
said 'No' to such lots of others too ... and now to say
'Yes' to anybody (and I 'm only saying half 'Yes'—only a
quarter 'Yes'—to you) seems, somehow, like breaking
faith.  It seems mean ... and unfair.  And anyway it
could n't ... could n't possibly be yet.  Could n't be for
ever such a long time.  Perhaps you 'd never want to
wait so long as that."

"Wait?"  He thrust out his hand desperately to shut
this dangerous back-door of her concession.  "With you
at the end of my waiting ... I would wait till the
Judgment Day."

The dreary, dogged patience of the man's passion
chilled Pam.  It rose up high in her mind like an
awesome black monument of Patience, and cast its great
shadow over the brightness of her life—on and on and
on interminably, out of sight to the dull sun-setting of
her clays.  If she could have recalled her words then.  If
she could have had the strength, the moral strength, to
throw him aside from her then and there—at never mind
what momentary cost to their feelings.  All her soul, she
knew, was striving impotently to cast off the encumbrance
of him—but the strength was lacking.  Strength
to be cruel; strength to be kind.  Because she could not
bring herself to deal the one smart blow that the moment
required with her own hand ... she was throwing
herself contemptibly upon the protection of the Future;
making herself the Future's ward, and trusting, in some
blind, unreasoning fashion, that her guardian would be
responsible for her when the time came, and do for
her what she had lacked the daring to do for herself, and
free her without consequence (if so needed), and deal
happiness all round with that lavish hand for which the
Future is, and has been, and ever will be, so extolled.

Wild, fatal fantasy of Pam's—that she shared in
common with every man, woman, and temporising child of
this self-deluded, procrastinating world.  For the Future
is that dread witch that, appearing first under the guise
of a sweet and amiable old lady, turns suddenly into the
red-eyed, horrid old hag of to-day.

But alas!  The compact was drawn and signed and
sealed.  What consequence that Pam imposed a hundred
feverish reservations and supplications, and qualifications
and amendments, and loopholes and contingencies upon
her little old lady in the signing—and seemed to be
granted them every one?  Into this little old lady's house
she signed herself for all that, and henceforth all her
goings and comings, and sleepings and wakings were no
longer her sweet own, as heretofore, but under the
authority and subject to the control of the little sweet
amiable old lady—who was only biding her good time (as
you may be sure) to snap into the horrid, red-eyed hag
we wot of, and fall upon Pam with the black venom of
her malignant nature.



All through the remaining hours till dawn and
daylight the cough of the schoolmaster rang out
monotonously, dull and muffled, from beneath the bedclothes like
a funeral bell, and Pam, the only other awake in that
household to hear it, lay and listened to its tolling
with great, wide eyes staring at the darkness of the
ceiling, and at the darkness beyond the foot of the bed, and
at the darkness where the door was, and sometimes
passionately into the smothered darkness of her own pillow,
and said to herself, with a wondering horror:

"When daybreak comes ... shall I wake?"





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.. _`CHAPTER XIV`:

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   CHAPTER XIV

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Green July, gliding smoothly on the noiseless axles
of its diurnal wheels, gives way at last to golden
August, and beneath the assiduous burning of the sun
the cornfields begin to brown like the crust of a pasty
under the brasing iron.  It is the mystic eve of harvest,
that consummation of the farmer's year, and all the
countryside is palpitating with it.  Everywhere the talk
is of cutting, and men, on meeting, cast anxious eyes
from each other's faces to the sky and ask:

"Will it 'owd [hold], think ye?"

And while this vast metamorphosis of color is creeping
over the land, and the countryside seems beating like
a breast towards the consummation of its great purpose,
Pam and the piano and the Spawer and Father Mostyn
grow daily into a bond of deeper sympathy, and the
wondrous ripening process, so visible in externals, is
going on no less surely within their own hearts.  On the
little cracked Vicarage piano Pam practises assiduously,
and such is her zeal for the labor, and such her sense of
loyal gratitude to the setter of it and her desire to fulfil
his instructions that, by sheer force of love alone, she
keeps pace with what he teaches and wins his admiring
praise for her progress.  Sometimes they gather at
Father Mostyn's, cutting into chicken-pies one night and
finishing them off another.  Sometimes Father Mostyn and
Pam walk up to Cliff Wrangham for the benefit of the
better piano, and compare the Archdeaconess's cookery—without
comment, and very kindly—and are set back by
the Spawer, filled with music and affection.

A state of things which greatly indignates the orphan
Mary Anne, who cries aloud to herself:

"Is there nawbody good enough for 'im at Cliff
Wrangham bud 'e mun gan 'is ways an' fetch 'em fro'
Oolbrig?"

And every morning, with the habit of second nature,
the Spawer goes forth and sits on the lane gate about
Pam's time, and feels a sense of emptiness somewhere—as
though he 'd gone without his breakfast—when she
does n't come.  But when she does, and he sees her hat or
her blue Tam-o'-Shanter sailing briskly along the
hedgerow, his released expectancy curls up into smiles like
stretched wire, and he strolls to meet her as though his
face had never known doubt, and accompanies her henceforth
to the end of her journey, so that the girl's brisk
walk, divided now between the two of them, is a gentle
amble scarcely quicker than Tankard's 'bus that daily
rumbled through Ullbrig.

Their communion on these occasions, as at all times, is
simple and sacred.  The perspicacious reader who has
been preparing for tender dialogues full of love and its
understanding will have to suffer the penalty of his
perspicacity, for the sweet trivialities of love are in no way
touched upon.  They talk of music; of struggles with
"flesh" of technique; of composition; of the meaning of
music—if it has any.  They talk of French, and they talk
French, of the recognised question and answer pattern,
till Pam gains quite a vocabulary of sea-coast words, and
could make herself understood intelligibly—and certainly
prettily—to any Frenchman on any cliff you like to name.
And they talk quite sincerely about the sea and the
blueness of it; and bend down their heads for the better
appreciation of this great round bubble of color; and draw
each other's attention to clouds, to bees, to butterflies,
and nameless insects fluttering by.  At other times, the
Spawer talks to her of his student life abroad and of his
present-day ambitions; the sort of glory he covets and the
sort of glory by which he sets no store.  And the talk is
of composers and schools of composers; and players and
schools of players—thick as shoals of herrings—till Pam,
who never forgets a precious word of what this deified
mortal tells her, but can reproduce its exact use and
inflection for her own hearing at any future time, is full to
the red lips with critical discernments and differentiations,
and could astonish any wandering, way-logged musician
who might, for the sake of illustration, be presumed
to find himself in the district, and open subject of
his own business with this sweet girl stranger under her
Government bag.

Sometimes, towards the end of an evening at Father
Mostyn's, the Doctor drops in upon them casually, introducing
himself with the invariable "Don't let me distairrb
ye"—though it is known he comes for whist.  Music
appeals to him about as meaningfully as a German band to
a stray dog; and being a Scotchman, he says so in the
fewest words wherein this hard truth can be contained, nor
ceases to manifest a lurking distrust of the piano until
they are safely squared round the card-table, and the
cards are being cut.  In his own Scotch way he is as fond
of Pam as can be, and on the strength of this tacit
affection asks her bluntly to do whatever he may happen to
be in need of at the time.

"Ye 'll hae to gie me another match, Pam," he says
unconcernedly, as he deals, without looking at her.  "A 'm
no alicht yet."

And when she offers it to him, already lighted, he
merely holds his pipe-bowl towards her from his mouth,
as a matter of course, scooping up his cards and drawing
vigorously, while Pam applies the flame, till combustion
is effected, when he draws his mouth away.

"Clubs are trumps," says he.

Pam does n't mind his disregard of her in the least,
for you see he does n't mean anything by it, being a
Scotchman; but she would enjoy these games better if
the exigencies of play did not always pit her against the
Spawer, inasmuch as she and he, being the two weak
members of the quartette, can never be partnered against
such past masters as his Reverence and the Doctor.
Eventually, since it proves itself the most equable division
of the table, she comes to be the accepted partner of
the latter, who does not hesitate to acquaint her, with
cutting directness, of any discrepancy in her play.

"What the deil made ye lead trumps, Pam?" he demanded
of her, in blank surprise, on one occasion.  "Did
ye no see me look at ye last time Father Mostyn led them?"

He is a typical hardy Scotsman, all sinew and gristle,
and raw about the neck, and thinks little—if indeed at
all—concerning dress.  For the most part, you will see
him bicycling about the roads in meagre knickerbockers
that were trousers when he first came to Ullbrig, blue
stockings, and heavy-soled boots, with the tags sticking
off them like spurs.  In other respects, he is a reader of
profane literature and avowed sceptic.  Between him and
his Reverence the Vicar is a standing feud of opinion,
which finds vent in many an argumentative battle royal.
At the end of one of these tremendous conflicts, that
would almost be hand-to-hand at times but for the pacific
whiskey-bottle between them, the Doctor rises to his feet,
buttons his coat-collar as a preliminary to departure, and
cries vehemently:

"Hey, mon, but there 's na driving sense nor reason
into ye.  Hand over the whiskey, and I 'll be gone.  Ye 're
as stubborn as Balaam's donkey."

"Ha! with the same authority, dear brother," his Reverence
answers blandly.

"And what authority will that be, pray?" asks the Doctor,
bending the stiff neck of the whiskey-bottle towards his
tumbler, as though it were his Reverence he had hold of.

"Divine authority, dear brother," says Father Mostyn.
"Divine authority."

"Divine authority," says the Doctor.  "... Wi' yer
meeracles.  Mon, hae ye ever hairrd a donkey speak?"

"Ha! frequently, frequently," murmurs his Reverence,
focussing a distant point of space through his eyelashes,
and waltzing softly, without animus, to and fro in his
foot radius.

"Ah 'm no speakin' pairsonally, ye understand," the
Doctor says, with a tinge of remonstrance for levity, "but
it will hae been in the pulpit ye have hairrd it.  Mon, hae
ye never read Hume on the Meeracles?  Are ye no conversant
wi' your Gibbon?  D' ye pretend to tell me ye are
ignorant o' such men as Reenan and Strauss, and Bauerr
and Darrwin, and Thomas Huxley?"

"Estimable people, no doubt, Friend Anderson," the
Vicar tells him imperturbably.  "... Estimable people."

"Ah doot ye 've read a wurrd of them," the Doctor
pronounces bluntly.

"So much the better for me, dear brother.  So much
the better for me."

"Mon," says the Doctor, exasperated by this equanimous
piety that all his own exasperation cannot exasperate.
"... Ye 're a peetifu' creature, an' ah feel shame
tae be drinkin' the whiskey o' such as you.  Ye go inta
chairrch and fill a lot o' puir eegnorant people wi' mair
ignorance than they had without ye, teachin' them your
fairy tales about apples and sairrpints, and women bein'
made oot o' man's ribs (did one ever hearr the like!).
Let's awa', an' mind dinna tek inta yer heid ta fall sick
this week, or it 'll go harrd wi' ye if ah 'm called."

"Ha!  We can die but once, Brother Anderson," the
priest tells him cheerfully.  "Even all the science and
medical skill in the world can't kill us more than that."

And so the moments of these four pass, and the harvest
hour approaches, inwardly and outwardly, until at
last ... one day...

But in the meanwhile, for all this life of external
happiness that Pam shared with others, she was serving her
silent apprenticeship in the house of the little old lady.
Even when he was furthest from her the schoolmaster
clung close to her mind.  Each time she laughed, each
time she looked into the Spawer's face, each time she
spoke with him she saw inside her—but as plainly as
though she had been looking at him in the flesh—the dark
figure of the schoolmaster regarding her in mute reproof,
with hands to throat and beating temples.  The brightest
moments of her happiness, indeed, threw this shadow
blackly across her mind like the gnomon of a dial when
the sun shines clearest.  Whenever she returned now
from Father Mostyn's or the Spawer's, he was always
there sitting up for her.  Heaven knows why, for they
had little enough to say to one another.  He never pressed
himself upon her, but by leaving himself to her good pity
she felt the claim of him tenfold—lacking the power to
withhold what, perhaps, on demand, she might have
summoned courage to deny.  Always he was dumbly set, like
those canvas collecting sheets on Lifeboat Saturdays, for
the smallest coppers of her kindness.  If she had not
looked into the larger kitchen before bed she knew he
would never have revealed himself, but she had not the
heart to ignore one as little courageous for the winning of
her love as she was herself for its defence.  At times the
thought of what the future had in store for her troubled
her so darkly that she knew not how best to shape her
present moments.  Therefore, in place of shaping, she
merely whittled—for every cut this way, a cut that; for
every chip off one side, a chip off the other; so that
though the rough wood she worked on wore nearer down
to her fingers, it assumed no shape.  Through fear of
having been too cruel one day she was constantly over-kind
the next; and then, what she had lacked to charge in
cruelty to him she charged extortionately to herself, paid
the bills in silence, and said never another word.  But
though she could meet these little daily expenditures,
there was a great bill slowly mounting, she knew, which
should of a surety one day be presented to her.  And who
should pay that?  Who should pay that?

While the music is at Father Mostyn's and the
Spawer's she feels to a certain extent in harbor against
the evil day.  But what shall happen when this harbor is
denied her, and for fault of its protection, she must sail
out into the open, unprotected sea?  What will betide her
then?  What is life coming to?

Alas!  She is soon to know.

One day....





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.. _`CHAPTER XV`:

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   CHAPTER XV

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One day the Spawer wakes up suddenly to consciousness,
like Barclay in the hedge bottom, and discovers,
as his friend Barclay has not infrequently discovered
before him, that he is occupying a strange and uncomfortable
position.  It was on a Tuesday when he made the
final effort and awoke definitely to an actual sense of his
location, but he had been blinking at it unseeingly for
some while before that.  The previous morning Father
Mostyn had taken leave of Ullbrig for his few days'
annual pike fishing with the Rev. the Hon. Algernon
Smythe Trepinway in Norfolk, and this sudden break in
the continuity of existence had served as an alarum to the
Spawer's long slumber.  He woke reluctantly, but with
purpose, took his morocco red bathing drawers, his towel
and his stick, and without pausing to any appreciable
length at the lane gate, plunged across the two fields
towards the cliff.

It was a glorious, steadfast blue day.  Not a cloud as
big as the puff of my lady's powder-box showed itself in
any corner of the sky.  No breezes, even of the softest,
filtered through the hot hedges, or cooled the parched tips
of the burning grass blades.  Without intermission the
sun poured his golden largess down upon the earth from
on high, so forcefully that wherever the sunlight rested,
it was as though a great hot hand were imposing its
weight.  Yesterday the harvesting had set in with a
vengeance, and now the whole air was a-quiver with the whir
of busy blades, whose tireless activity seemed the very
music made for slumber, and lulled all other moving
things towards somnolent repose.

The beach lay out dazzling in its unbroken smoothness,
like white satin, and deserted quite.  Not another footstep
than his own had been, or in all probability would be,
there that day to tread destructive perforating tracks over
its beautiful surface of sand.  Up and down, for something
like a dozen clear miles of coast, or so far as his
eyes could show him, he seemed, like a second Robinson
Crusoe, monarch of all he surveyed.  The true spirit of
the solitude of the lower Yorkshire coast is here.  There
is no elaboration to the picture; it is plain and lacking
detail.  Of foliage by the sea there is not a leaf, excepting
mere divisional hedges.  Fields in cultivation and out of
it run to the very edge of the cliff—a sombre cliff of soft,
dark earth, stained here and there to unprepossessing
rusty red, with trickling chalybeate streams, and showing
terrible toothmarks of the voracious sea, that feeds its
way inland on this part of the coast at the rate of a yard
a year.  Looking over the brink of it you can discern as
many as half a dozen paths, in various stages of subsidence,
that less than that number of years ago led people
along the cliff top as the path you stand on leads them
now.  In other places you may see huge slices of grass
land, descending like great steps downwards to the shore
in their progress towards ultimate devourance, while
warning fissures across the existing pathway show where,
perhaps this very winter, another step will be detached
and added to the never-ending stairway of demolition.

In a sheltered inlet, where the sea has swept up a thick
white carpet of bleached sand, the Spawer pitches his
bathing camp this morning.  On other occasions he has
trod down here more gladsomely; the sea, murmuring its
musical cadences upon a lonely beach, has not made
music to him in vain.  But for him to-day the sun is a
little dim, the sea a little jaded.  The inward content that
stood interpreter between his soul and his outward
worldly joyance is gone from him, and he stands somehow
like a stranger in the presence of strange things.
Here on the seashore, he has come to play a duet more
full of emotion, and more crowded with difficulties than
any he knows within the province of music, for it is a
duet with his own soul.

In a sense, dimly and vaguely, he has comprehended
for a day past, a couple of days past, at the most—Lord
help him—a week, that this duet was inevitable.  He has
been, indeed, since these several days, two men.  The
second was better than the first, but not much.  The
second of them held the strings of the conscience bag
(slackly, however) and rattled it ominously—though
more as a warning, if the truth were told—to give the
first his chance of escape.  In the heart of the second (if
heart it could be called) there lingered a sneaking sympathy
with the delinquent first, as for a younger brother.
And now, after a mutual game of hide-and-seek, when the
one would not look while the other showed, and the other
would not show while the other was looking, through a
kind of desperate conviction that something must be
done, they had sneaked their two ways down to the beach
this morning, prepared (though only badly) to declare
themselves to one another, and come to some
understanding, though whether this understanding should be
creditable or discreditable to both or to either was yet
unsettled.

By what subtle, imperceptible paths has he outjourneyed
the territory of that great happiness which seemed
so lately his, to find himself all suddenly in this
unpleasant no-man's land of the imagination?  By subtle,
imperceptible paths indeed.  By the touch of hands; by the
gazing of eyes; by the inflection of voice.  Time was, in
the early days it was, when he could look on Pam's
fascinating sprinkling of freckles with an eye as purely
interested, and as purely disinterested, as though they had
been the specklings of a wild bird's egg.  He had begun
by making a friend of her.  He had come ultimately to
regard her as a sister, to whom he had acted in all good
faith the strong, reliant, reliable, affectionate,
unemotional elder brother—who could have kissed her, and
thought no more of that kiss, nor prepared his lips for
kisses to come.  And now ... what was he going to
make of her next? ... of himself?  Who but a brother
can act the brother?  Who but a father—even though he
doddle benevolently on his legs and have respectable
white hairs—can be sure of acting the father to any
daughter not his own?  What are the sexes but phosphorus
and sandpaper for the kindling of love's emotion?
Already the phosphorus had not wanted signs of impending
ignition.  Just a very little more rubbing of this
friendly intercourse—a day or two ... a week at most
... and the flame would burst out for them both to see.
So here let him settle it.  What was he going to do?

He did not know what he was going to do....  There
were complications.

Complications of his own allowing, remember.  Why
had he not let it be plainly understood—as soon as his
relations with this girl grew—that he was a man with a
claim upon him?

Ah!  If only he had.

Why had n't he?  Had he shirked it?  If he had
shirked it, then he was indeed guilty.

He did not think he had shirked it ... at least, with
intention.

But the idea had come to him.  Come to him more than
once.  Did he not on one occasion at Hesketh's corner
make the resolve to tell the girl that he was going to be
married?

Yes.

Then why did n't he?

Because he could think of no expression at the time to
relieve the news of a certain primitive brutality—a blunt
statement quite out of accord with the moment and the
mood.

Thought must always be in some measure of accord
with the moment and the mood.  You could not say, for
instance: "Good morning.  What a beautiful day.  I am
going to be married."

But he had thought the same thought subsequently.

True.

Why had he not acted on it?

Partly for the same reason.  And then again ... it
seemed so easy in thought and so difficult in effect.  He
was frightened he might bungle it, and make it sound like
an unpalatable caution to the girl.  "Don't set your
aspirations upon me.  I warn you.  I am not for
you."  Faugh!  The idea—in this girl's case—was revolting.

Because, therefore, of a little unpleasantness on
account, he had run up a long score—prepared to declare
himself bankrupt when occasion arose, and involve the
girl in his own insolvency.  Was that it?

He had certainly avoided anything that might be odious
to the girl ... or painful to her feelings—but he
had had no ideas of involving her.  God forbid!

And the other?  The Absent One?  What had been
his feelings towards her?  Had he thought his conduct
such as to merit her confidence in him?

He had not thought it undeserving of her confidence.
Their relations were of long standing.  Before now he
had kissed some mutual girl friends in her presence.  She
had smiled.

Supposing he had kissed them in her absence ... and
she had come subsequently to hear of it?  Would she
have smiled?  Of course he had told her in his letters all
about the post-girl—and their present relations?

He had told her the postman was a girl.

Exactly.  But what sort of a girl.

Was there more than one sort of a girl?  A girl, it
seemed to him, was a girl all the world over.  The
definition was plain enough.

Had he said she was a pretty girl?

Why should he have said that?

Why should he have avoided it?

He had n't avoided it.  It was only one of the things he
had n't ... specified.  Why should he specify a "pretty
girl" any more than he should have specified an "ugly
one"?  Besides ... prettiness was all abstract, and
relative, and indefinable.  When we called a thing pretty we
only meant that it excited that particular degree of
emotion in our own mind.  Other people might decide upon
it as ugly.

Exactly.  Had he, by any chance, spoken of Cliff
Wrangham as a delightful corner of the world's end?

He believed he had.

And he had mentioned Father Mostyn?

Certainly.  He had alluded to him.

In affectionate and laudatory terms?

He did n't know about affectionate and laudatory
terms.  Perhaps he had.  He had spoken of him as he
bad found him.  Father Mostyn had always been kind.
In writing he had no doubt alluded to that kindness.

More than once?

Doubtless more than once.  Kindness was not such a
common quality that it would not bear a little repetition.

He had mentioned the Doctor.

Some of him.  His stockings, he believed, and his
strange happiness in speaking the truth.

How often had he met the Doctor?

Perhaps half a dozen times.

And the post-girl?

Let him see....

Exactly.  He could n't count the number.  He had
mentioned with some small degree of detail a man who
was but a cypher in his visit, and he had overlooked
altogether the figure which was its numerator, so to speak.

Suppose he had put the case, as it stood, before a
referee, chosen from the Sons of the World.  Suppose he 'd
said, for instance: There was a fellow once, engaged to a
girl.  The girl went with a maiden aunt by marriage to
Switzerland for the aunt's health.  It was arranged that
while they were there the fellow was to go into obscurity
by the sea-coast and complete some great compositional
work he had the vanity to think he could achieve, and
that, after the girl's return, either towards the end of
November or the early part of January, these two were to
be married.  But during this obscurity the fellow came
upon an altogether unusual sample of a post-girl.  She
was supposed to be derived from a family of importance;
had all the inherited gifts of a lady; the low,
musically-balanced voice; the symmetrical, graceful figure and
carriage; beautiful teeth and a smile like dawn.  Suppose
everything about the girl appealed to this fellow
tremendously.  Suppose they became ... well, call it friends.
Suppose he taught her music and French, and met her as
often as possible.  Suppose all his moments were occupied
in thinking of her.  Suppose the life he had left and
the life (presumably) he was going back to were receded
so far away that he could scarcely distinguish them, or
his obligations to them.  Suppose that the girl was to all
intents and purposes his little cosmos, out of which he
indited letters to the Other Girl—letters that made no
mention of the existing state of things.  Suppose, now, he
laid this case, just as it stood, before any man of the
world.  What, did he imagine, would that man of the
world decide upon him?  What would he think of him?

Another man of the world, perhaps.

Probably so.  And suppose this other girl had been his
sister, and he had been some other man, and the
circumstances were as they were, and some enlightened friend
had informed him of them.  Well?

On the face of it, he might be tempted to step in and
send the fellow to the devil.

And in his own case?

In his own case?  Summarising like that, without any
partiality, but condensed into a cold-blooded abstraction,
he supposed he might seem deserving of being sent to the
devil, too—if he were not there already.  Every case
looked black when it was formularised.  The facts had
accumulated without his perceiving them.  It was easy now
to go and roll them up like an increasing snowball of
accusation against him, but at the time they had seemed
slight enough.  When he had scribbled off the letters it
had been with a consciousness of the shuffle, but with the
inward resolve, clearly defined, to atone for it by a longer
letter next day, or some other day.

And he had done so?

Unfortunately, no.  Fate, there again, had seemed
against him.  But the intention had not been wanting—it
was the flesh only that had been a little weak.

In the light of present understanding, then, if by the
mere wish he could blot out not only the remembrance of
this weakness but the actuality of it, he would wish the
wish?

No reply.

Eh?  He would wish the wish at once—was n't that so?

Still no reply.

Perhaps he had n't quite understood.  Put it another
way.  Suppose, since the doings of these latter days were
not entirely creditable to him, when viewed dispassionately,
was he prepared to wish that he had never come to
Cliff Wrangham?

He could n't honestly wish that.  It was n't fair to
Cliff Wrangham or the Dixons.  He 'd had a very happy
time there and done good work.  Cliff Wrangham was n't
to blame.

Since Cliff Wrangham was n't to blame, then, would
he be prepared to wish that he had never come across the
post-girl?

He 'd have been bound to come across her.

Not if, for instance, she 'd been ill, and somebody else
had brought the letters.

He would n't wish anybody ill for the mere sake of
saving his conscience.

Supposing she had been away, then?

Away where?

Anywhere.

But she had n't been away, and so there was an end
of it.  He was n't dealing with what might have been, but
what was.

And what was?

He did n't know.  He only knew that he would n't wish
his worst enemy to be on the rack as he 'd been on it all
last night, and this morning.  He had n't slept a wink.

Why had n't he slept?

Because he could n't sleep.

But surely that was funny.

It was n't funny at all.  It was hell.

How could that be?  If he found now that he 'd been
taking a wrong moral turn, all he had to do was to turn
back.  His way was easy.

Was it?

It was ... if he were sorry he 'd gone wrong.  Was
he sorry that he 'd gone wrong?

Of course he was sorry.  The difficulty was he 'd gone
such a deuce of a long way wrong.

Ah!  Longer, perhaps, than he 'd said.

Not longer than he 'd said, but quite long enough,
without saying a word.  To turn all the way back, at this
stage of the proceedings—with explanation or
without—was a desperately hard thing to do.

If duty compelled it, nevertheless?

Why should duty compel him to do anything so unpleasant?

But surely that was a strange way to speak of a duty
which merely implied his obligation to the Other Girl.
Presumably, as things stood, he loved her.

Presumably he did.

He had come to love her of his own free will?  It was
not a case where he had been "rushed"?  There was no
solicitous mother or obliging sister in the case?

None at all.  Only he had had larger opportunity to
cultivate her acquaintance than in the general run of
affairs.  She was a distant connection of his by a remote
marriage, who, in view of her extreme personal connection
with the family, had generally ranked as a cousin.  In
the days when he had had prospects from his uncle they
were constantly thrown together, and it was in those days
that he engaged himself.  All the family looked with
favor upon the match, and even encouraged it.  Then this
wretched old uncle took it suddenly into his head to be
actively interested in the nephew's welfare.  Wanted him
to throw music to the winds as being unworthy of his
high prospects, and went the length of telling him in a
letter of six words or so to choose between music and the
mammon of unrighteousness.  Fool, perhaps, that he
was, he chose for music.  All his family rounded on him
at once—or such family as it was; thank God, there
was n't much of it—and wrote abject letters to the
mammon, telling him how headstrong poor dear Maurice was,
and how darling uncle must please give him time, and not
be too severe upon his wicked indiscretion.  Maurice,
dear misguided boy, loved darling uncle very dearly, and
would be shocked one day when he came to his senses,
and saw how deeply he had grieved him.

And the Other Girl?  Did she share the family reproaches?

On the contrary, she said he had acted nobly.  He
offered her her freedom, of course, as soon as he
relinquished the mammon, but she would not accept it.

Had she said to him, for instance: "Dear Maurice,
there have been times when I have been troubled to know
which of you I loved; you or your uncle's money.  And
now that the horrid money 's gone, I think it 's you."

Yes, she had said that.

Did he tell her that it was n't for beggars to be choosers,
and that if she cared to have a musical pauper she
could have him, and there 'd be nothing to pay but his
bills?

He believed he had made some witty allusion to that
effect.

What did he call pauperdom?

He called two or three hundred a year pauperdom.
With the assistance of a few pot-boiling songs under
somebody else's name, including, to his shame be it said,
a percentage of semi-sacred effusions with angels fluttering
in the treble, and organ obligato, he generally managed
to supplement this.  He also wrote a few elementary
teaching pieces for a certain educational firm, under the
reassuring title of Ivan Fedor Ivanowitch, which
returned him a pittance.  There was no demand for his two
symphonies or his orchestral suite or his first piano
concerto in *fa diese*.  That 's why he was writing another.
Altogether, taking one thing with another, his income
might be set down—except to the Inland Revenue—at
about three hundred and fifty pounds a year.  A man
could n't be much poorer than that, and talk, Heaven help
him, of marriage.

And the Other Girl?  Had she expectations at all?

He hoped not, for her own peace of mind.  She had
this aunt by marriage.  Perhaps she might be able to call
a couple of hundred pounds per annum her own some
day.  But it would n't be much more.

And how long had she been engaged to him?

Oh, he could n't exactly say.  Six or seven years.  It
had been an early and a lingering engagement.

Taking his statements into admission, one thing seemed
very clear.  He was under a strong moral obligation to
the Other Girl.

He had never denied it.

Perhaps not, but his actions—judged superficially, of
course—had shown a large tendency to overlook this
obligation.  However, let the past bury the past.  He saw
now the right way, and where he had strayed from it.
Henceforth, since his sole desire was to purge his spirit
of its temporary faithlessness, and gain grace to win
back his claim to the Other Girl's confidence, henceforth
his path lay clear.

Where?

Where?  Surely he had no necessity to ask that?

On the contrary, he did ask that.

But there could be no doubt in his mind.  Any way that
did not lead him back into the old temptation was the
right way.

If coming across the post-girl was temptation, there
was no way in this district that did lead the right way.

Then he must depart to where there was.

Leave Cliff Wrangham altogether?

Precisely.

Why should he leave Cliff Wrangham—that is, before
the Other One returned?  Was he an infant that he
must be packed off into the corner in disgrace, because he
could n't be trusted?

He had proved himself an infant by the mere fact that
he was no longer to be trusted.  In other words, he had
broken his trust.

He denied it.  He 'd broken nothing.

When a nursemaid, who 's been warned, lets a
child....

Oh, damn the nursemaid and the child, too!  Serve it
jolly right if she did.  He was n't a nursemaid.

Perhaps not.  Perhaps he was just a low, common
blackguard, after all.

Perhaps he was.

.. vspace:: 2

He had his bath, but the salt water was all unfriendly,
and there was no stimulus in its waves.  It seemed to
have deserted him at this hour of dark temptation.  In
ceaseless tussle the two of him returned along the sands
and slowly back to Dixon's.  Out of the drifting current
of reasonings two things at least seemed clear.  The
conscience-bearer was dimly arguing for departure; the
shuffling second self, that had been actively dodging
investigation all this while, was trying to invent
counter-arguments for delay.

The very life he was leading had become dear to him.
He had lost slowly the desire to regain touch with the
big centres of artistic activity, and seemed to be living
somehow a purer life, in which he worked solely (or at
least, thought so) for Art's own sake.  The ultimate
success of this concerto troubled him little.  Before, he had
been building much on it, as the most promiseful fruit of
his muse.  Now, if it were scouted, if he and all his
labors were scouted, there was the blessed sense of being
able to return here for solace and shelter.  The Dixons
would be sorry to lose him, he felt sure; glad to have
him back.  The Vicarage door would open as soon as his
figure came on to the vicarial territory in front of the
iron rails; the bland, beneficent hand of his Reverence
would receive him, like the lost lamb gathered into the
fold.  God bless the Vicarage!  His heart warmed, and
his eye—a little emotionalised, it might be, by the crisis
he was passing through—moistened as he thought upon
that smallpox-blistered door, and the happiness that had
been behind it.  And last of all ... there was Pam.
What a soft and soothing cataplasm she was for all the
soul's inflammations; for all the chafing irritation of
spirit brought about by contact with a rough world.  Her
breath was balm, and her voice like a soft south wind
blowing through the strings of a lute.  All her freckles
would cry aloud in welcome; her lips would disclose the
pure, milky greeting of those white teeth; her hands—that
he had, with amusement and exalted joy, watched
struggling in their dear, feminine tirelessness with the
contrary humors of Father Mostyn's keys—he knew what
those hands would do when she heard of his return.  They
would clasp themselves and go beneath her chin.  He had
not noticed her for nothing.  And then his mind went on
to the shortening of the days; to the harvest gathered; to
the crisp September; to the autumn, with its long, cosy
evenings in the Vicar's room, and the music; to the
winter; to Christmas; to the meetings; to the happiness; to
the sea....

And by Christmas ... perhaps ... he would be married.

Married!

Married and far away.  All these days would be but a
remembrance.  Father Mostyn and Pamela something
less, and something infinitely more, than the figments of a
dream.  He would be building up a new life for himself;
a new habitation for his soul to live in, out of new
interests, out of new ambitions (if he had any), out of new
environments.

Last of all, out of the mass of arguments and sub-arguments,
questions and cross-questions, considerations
and counter-considerations, in one of those sudden lucid
heavenly flashes of righteousness with which the soul's
lightning has power to pierce, at irregular and unexpected
intervals, the cloud of doubt, he received the inspiration
of resolve.  Departure, the Spawer decided, was the only
thing to save him.  The necessity was cruel, no doubt—to
the Ullbrig girl, perhaps, as well as himself—but in the
momentary lucidity of soul he had caught the glimpse of
this as his sole honorable path, and he elected now to
pursue it.  To make the requisite retractions and yet stay
on was out of the question.  He could not bring himself
to exercise those despicable economies of affection—palpable
retrenchments even—in his friendship with the girl,
lacking which, to remain in Ullbrig was not to stand still
but to advance.  No amount of mere passive rectitude
could check the evolution of facts and circumstances.
The world did not stand still because one chastened spirit
resolved to hold back from the general march of iniquity.
There was nothing for it.  He would go.

Then imagination, intoxicated with the virtuous bitter
draught he had drained, took wild flight into the future.
He was going, truly, but not for long.  Pam and this wife
of his that was to be should become as sisters.  He
pictured Pam's coming to visit them.  Long, glorious visits
they should be.  And he and Beatrice should return to
Cliff Wrangham.  They would make Cliff Wrangham
their summer residence, their winter residence, their
life-long residence.  Exaltation carried him to the pitch of
bigamy even.  In his wild desire to squeeze the last drop
of happiness from these deadly sweet berries of fancy he
was deaf to the voice of reason.  He scarcely perceived
whether it was Pam or the absent one that figured, in this
glorified vision, as his wedded wife.  At times, for all the
power he possessed to discriminate, it might have been
both.  Or perhaps, with fine prophetic oversight of
worldly institutions, he visioned a sublime state of
platonic bliss in which was neither marrying nor giving in
marriage.  For extreme righteousness knows nothing of
reason, nor does it argue.  Arguments are but the beatings
of its wings to gain impetus for flight, but the flight,
once attained, transcends all logic.  The sublime picture
of married felicity that the Spawer created would have
been the scandal of any decent, respectably constituted
community.  Had there been a dozen Pams, indeed, he
would have included them all in this spiritual harem, and
yet—repugnant as this indiscriminate scheme of domestic
association might appear to the many—there was no
taint of earthly impurity in his conception of it.

Fortified with this blest vision of a paradise as reward
for the pains of present righteousness, he swallowed a
hasty and a tasteless meal, and set off without further
thought or delay—lest the strength of resolve might in
any way leak from him before his purpose was
accomplished—down the Ullbrig road.  For he knew that his
composure was bearing a tremendous burden on its back,
and he feared, if he retarded too long, it might break
down, when ultimately he met the girl, into some
stammering, faulty, broken-backed, weak-kneed, incomplete
accomplishment of his mission.  If possible, he wanted to
drop across her as though by pure accident.  He did n't
want her to detect any traces of labored premeditation in
what he had to tell.  He held the manner of the
news-breaking roughly formulated in his mind, but he was
anxious lest she might discern, through any flaw in the
outer agreement of his smiles (just sufficiently tinged
with regret, he told himself, to be in keeping with the
subject of departure, but no more), the horrible
machinery, driven by a thousand heart-power, clanking
away inside him, and manufacturing this leave-taking to
pattern, like rolled steel.

He was so little sure of his capacity to execute his own
purpose that, through mere distrust of doing what he
wanted to do, he was almost ready to give the project up
and declare himself beaten before the battle.  And all the
while he walked onward he began to accumulate doubts
respecting the undertaking of such a delicate operation
beneath the searching light of day.  He had one revelation
of the girl's great eyes fixed solemnly upon his lips,
and watching him as he wallowed in his embarrassment,
and his soul flinched.  For a moment he had desperate
thoughts of return.  Then he sat, under the white flag of
truce, on a rail.  Then he moved slowly onward again,
with fixed eyes on Ullbrig, praying he might miss the
girl.  And with this prayer almost moving his lips, at
Hesketh's corner he met her.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI

.. vspace:: 2

She wore a great hat of coarse Zulu straw, trimmed
with white muslin and scarlet poppies, and a pale
cream muslin dress, beneath whose hem her neat shoes
and trim, black ankles showed themselves so demurely,
like sleek twin witches of seductive enchantment.  In her
left hand she carried a snowy-topped basket emblematic
of Faith, Hope and Charity—particularly this last—while
the thumb of her cotton-gloved right hand was tucked, at
the time of their recognition, into a green crocodile leather
belt.  She was just passing the corner, indeed, as she
caught sight of the Spawer, and had to fall back on her
heel to verify the impression; then she stood waiting for
him, swinging the basket in front of her skirt with both
hands, and showing the glad smile for a welcome and
unexpected meeting.  All the gloomy necessities of the
encounter were packed up and stowed away at the back of
the Spawer's being with the first slight shock of realisation.
Almost spontaneously he discarded his reflections
as though they had been impersonal and bearing no
reference to the girl before him, and advanced upon her
with the sunny face that seemed never to have known the
clouds of disquietude.

"How funny," said Pam simply, as he came near.
"... I was just thinking about you."

"I can see you were," he laughed.

"Can you?" asked Pam, smiling, but a shade incredulous.

"By your ears," he told her.

Pam put her fingers to them.

"It is the sun," she said, nipping a little crimson lobe
between cool white-cottoned fingers.  "Yours burn too.
Were you thinking about me?"

"Perhaps."

"Were you?  What were you thinking?"

"Tell me first what you were thinking about me?"

"I was thinking whether I should see you if I looked
up the Cliff Wrangham road.  But I never thought I
should.  And you?"

"I was thinking the same thing."

"Were you really?  Did you want to see me ... about
anything?"

It was the Spawer's opportunity to say what he had
come to say, but like a faint-hearted jumper, feeling he
had not bite enough for his purpose, he burked the
hurdle.

"I don't know that I wanted to see you ... about
anything," he answered, covering up his momentary
hesitation with a smile, "... but I was perfectly
agreeable to see you about nothing at all."

"Perhaps you 're coming to the post?" Pam hazarded.

"Nothing so reputable," said he.  "Fact is, I 'm afraid
I 've broken loose to-day.  I 'm on the laze."

"You lazy!" laughed Pam, in incredulous amazement.

"Oh, horribly lazy, dear girl," he said.  "If you don't
know that you don't know me.  It comes on at periods.
I can't yet decide whether my hard work is sheer activity
of a guilty conscience, or my laziness is the collapse of a
conscience too highly taxed, but the one follows the other
as night follows day.  I 've not done a stroke of work
since getting up.  This morning I washed myself and
bathed—you 'll say that's a good work done.  This
afternoon I determined to stroll inland and see if there was
anybody disposed to take pity on my sad idleness.  What
a pretty basket!"

Pam held it up for his inspection.

"May I lift the cover?"

Pam nodded and laughed, showing all her white, small
teeth in assent.

"Bottles," said he, taking a peep under the snowy
serviette.  "We 're well met.  Which way are you going?"

"I 'm going to Shippus," said Pam, with a little wistful
accent on the "I 'm," expressive of solitude.

"The very thing," said the Spawer.  "And we won't
touch them till we get there.  Not a drop.  Will you take
me with you?"

"Will you go with me?" said Pam, a light of desire
suddenly dawning in her eyes at his half-bantering
suggestion.

"If you 'll have me."

"I 'll have you.  But perhaps you would n't care ... it's
a sick call."

"I don't care what it is," said the Spawer, "so long as
it 's nothing catching.  Tell me it 's not smallpox and
I 'm with you."

"Oh, it is n't smallpox," Pam reassured him.  "It 's
only poor old Mr. Smethurst."

"Come," said the Spawer, relieved, "that does n't
sound so alarming.  I 'll risk it.  And are the bottles his
or ours?"

"His," said Pam, as the Spawer disengaged her of
them, and they commenced to walk forward together.
"Poor old gentleman.  There 's a lemon jelly and a bottle
of port and a bottle of whiskey.  Those are from Father
Mostyn—the very same that he drinks himself."  Her
eyes kindled luminously at the mention.  "Is n't it good
of him?  Nobody knows but me what lots of things he
gives away ... and what lots of things he does for
people.  He 'd do anything for anybody.  They don't
understand him in Ullbrig a bit.  I did n't always, but I
do now.  They talk about his house, and say it wants
painting.  And of course it does.  And they say he 's a
Roman Catholic, and gets paid by the Pope for every
conversion he makes; but that 's not true.  He 's nothing at
all to do with the Pope.  And then they laugh at him
because he goes down on his knees in church, but as he said
one day to Mr. Stevens (Sheppardman): 'You touch
your hat to me because I 'm his reverence the vicar, but
you 're too proud to bow to the Lord Jesus.'  And it 's
not a matter of what he does in church.  They ought n't
to go by that—and they can't truthfully, because they 're
never there to see.  It's what he does in Ullbrig.  If
anybody 's ill, it 's always him they send for, and he always
goes, whether it 's by night or day.  When they 're well
he talks about their hypocrisy and their sinfulness, and
about their pride—you 've heard him, have n't you?  But
when they 're ill ... oh, you would n't know him.  He 's
as gentle as a woman.  He looks at their medicine, and
feels their pulse, and smooths their pillow; and oh, he
talks so beautifully.  When little Annie Summers died of
diphtheria he sat up all the night after the operation,
keeping her throat clear with a feather (that was very
dangerous, of course, and he might have died of it), and
when she was dead her father told him: 'I 've never given
you a good word all my days, Mr. Mostyn,' and Father
Mostyn only shook his head and told him: 'Well, well,
John, give it me now.'  And when poor old James Marshall
was dying they sent for Father Mostyn, of course,
and James told him he was a bit fearsome he had n't done
the right thing in spending so much of his time at
chapel.  And Father Mostyn said: 'Make your mind easy,
James, there are no churches or chapels up there.'  Old
Mr. Smethurst used to go to chapel, too, when he was
well enough to go anywhere, but as Father Mostyn says,
we can't help that.  The wine will do him as much good
as if he had been to church.  And it was a long time ago.
He 'll never go there any more."

"Is he so ill as that?" asked the Spawer.

"He 's dying," said Pam.

The little tremor of her lip, and the sudden moistness
about her eyes—though he had witnessed these wonderful
manifestations of her tender nature before on many an
occasion—went to the Spawer's heart in the present
instance like an arrow.  Pam's tears were in everybody's
service.  Not idle tears, but tears that seemed the sacred
seal of noble self-sacrifice and devotion.

And to think he was so soon going to remove himself
from the soft-dropping springs of their sympathy.

"What a ministering angel you are," he said, looking
at her lightly enough, and yet—though Pam could not
know that—with a kind of tightness about the throat.

"I 'm afraid I 'm not an angel," the girl regretted.
"Not a bit of one.  I wish I were."

"On the contrary," he said, "wish nothing of the kind."

"Why not?" she asked.

"Because Ullbrig would miss you so.  Angels' visits
are few and far between, and when they come they don't
bring bottles.  Be what you are," he told her.  "A lay
angel."

"Don't you believe in real angels?" Pam asked him
ingenuously.  "Dr. Anderson does n't."

The Spawer smiled.

"Kindness is the greatest angel in the world," he said,
and looked at her.  "I believe in kindness."

"So do I," said Pam.

"And do you never, never get tired of doing kind
actions?" he asked her curiously.  "... Surely you
must."

Pam gave him a quick look and dropped her lip,
as though a little lead-weight of admission were upon
it.

"Sometimes I do," she admitted, and turned her face
away from him as though the thought of her own offend-ing
troubled her.  "But somehow ... kind acts always
seem to pay for themselves, don't you think?"

"Do they?" he asked hazily.

"Why, yes," Pam said, after a moment, just a little
shaken in her confidence by his question.  "The more you
don't want to do a thing, the more you 're glad when
you 've gone and done it—a kind thing I mean."

The more you did n't want to do a thing the more you
were glad when you 'd gone and done it.  How did that
apply to him?

"... Father Mostyn says you must beware of doing
kindnesses for the mere gratification of being thanked.
He says that's a deadly sin—one of the prides of charity.
There are a lot more, but that 's the worst.  What do
you think?"

"What do I think?  Gracious!" laughed the Spawer,
"I dare n't contradict his Reverence.  I think so too."

"But you!  You 're quite different from me," the girl
objected.  "I could n't be kind at all if it were n't for
Father Mostyn.  All my kindnesses have been taught me
by him."  Such is the power of loyalty and loving
adherence, that transfers its own virtues to the object of
affection.  "But you.  I don't think you can help being
kind.  Some people can't.  You seem to do things from
the heart somehow, as though they came naturally to
you; but me, I do all mine from the head, because I 've
been taught what things are kind and what things are
cruel.  And often I make mistakes too."  She was
thinking of the schoolmaster.  "But you never do."

Did n't he?  What were all his trumpery smiles and
petty kindnesses, his smooth words and minor generosities,
but little errors of excess in a grand sum of cruelty,
that had brought the total to an amount he dared
scarcely contemplate, and were compelling him this day
to cancel these labyrinthine workings of arithmetic by a
wholesale application of the sponge?

"That," said he, looking leniently upon her, "is because
your kindness, little woman, won't let you find flaws in
mine.  But there are flaws in it—great flaws."

"Where?" asked Pam, with the earnestness of a child.

"All over," said the Spawer.

"You have always been kind to me," said Pam.

"Don't let 's talk of that," he responded cheerfully,
affecting—double-dyed hypocrite that he knew himself to
be—a sublime disregard of such kindnesses as had been
his, which but served to illuminate his conduct in the
girl's eyes with letters of celestial gold paint.

"May n't I talk to you about it ... ever, please?" the
girl asked him.

"Oh, if it 's a question of pleases," he said, with
laughing concession, "I would n't deny you for worlds.  Talk
away, dear child."

Did he realise how much store the girl set by these
diminutive titles of affectionate address?  Did he know
that each time he called her "Dear child" and "Dear girl"
and "Little woman" (mere friendly substitutes for the
Pam he never used) her heart leaped up in responsive
gladness?  Did he know that each of these designations,
so lightly uttered by him, was a nail driven into the door
against his departure, and that door the girl's own heart?
Surely and truly he never knew it, or even our hero,
Maurice Ethelbert Wynne, for all his blackguardism,
would have shrunk from the usage of them.

"Now I don't know what to say," Pam said.

"Why ever not?"

"Because you told me to talk away."

"How like a girl!  Wants to do a thing until she 's
bidden, and then ... be hanged if she will.  You
contrary little feminine."

All the same, as soon as he adjured her not to mind,
but to say no more about it, she found plenty to say in a
sudden gush respecting his past kindness to her.  He had
been so good to her.  She had told Father Mostyn to be
sure and tell him how grateful she felt to him for all his
goodness....  Had he?  But she had been dying to tell
him herself too.  And somehow, whenever she had begun,
he had always turned her off so kindly that she had
never done any more than tell him that she wanted to tell
him, and never told him; but to-day, when he had spoken
about *her* kindness, she felt she must tell him about his.
There had been no reason why he should have been kind
to her.  He had done it all so beautifully ... that there
seemed nothing in it, and at times she 'd almost believed
that there was nothing in it either, and that it was just
happening so, and no more.  But when she 'd come to
look into it she saw exactly how much there was, and how
it could have happened otherwise—oh, quite otherwise—but
for his great kindness in preventing it.  Why had he
been so good to her?  It was n't—as he 'd tried to make
out—that there was anything to gain, because she 'd
nothing in the world to give him except her thanks—and
until to-day he 'd never even accepted those from her.
Father Mostyn had told her, as he 'd told her himself,
that he did n't give lessons to anybody else ... and that
she was his only pupil.  She 'd tried not to feel proud
about that, because it was no merit of her own, but simply
his own goodness; but she could n't help it.  Father
Mostyn said you might feel proud if your pride were
pride of loyalty—as pride in the Church, or in the
goodness of another—and in that way she 'd felt proud.  But
it was difficult dealing with prides; they got the better of
you somehow.  He 'd given her music because he said he
knew where to send for it, and could get it down
quicker—being known to the people—but that was just so that
she need n't have to pay for it.  And he 'd made her a
present of Erckmann-Chatrian's "L'ami Fritz" and "Le
Blocus," and a beautiful French Dictionary....

"Well," he asked her, "... where 's the goodness in that?"

"It was all of it goodness."

"Nothing of the sort, dear girl.  It 's all pure selfish
pride."

Oh, no, no, no!  Pam could n't believe that.

Oh, but she must believe it.  He 'd given her lessons
solely for his own pleasure—not hers—because teaching
her had interested him, and it was a sort of recreation.
And he 'd taught her French for the same reason, and
for the pride of being looked up to as a great French
authority.  And he 'd given her books and music so that
she might say what a kind, generous fellow he was,—oh,
she must n't make any mistake about the matter; it was
precious little goodness she 'd have found about him.  Oh,
he was a bad one at heart!

So, arguing agreeably on the subject of goodness
specific and general, they walked along the high-road
lane that leads to Shippus.

Thus they came at last upon a group of two or three
detached cottages along the roadside, white-washed and
blinding, with thatched roofs and tarred palings, and a
profusion of giant nasturtiums clambering over the doors
and licking at the window-sills with a great yellow-scarlet
blaze, as though the porches were on fire.  Here Pam
slowed up, and held out her hand for the basket.

"Shall you be long?" the Spawer asked, giving it to her.

"Perhaps you won't care to wait?" she suggested
wistfully, though offering him his liberation.

"Trot along," said he, smiling back refusal of the
proffered freedom.  "I 'll hang about outside for you.  Only
promise me you won't slip away by the back."

He smiled and raised his hat to her with that delightful
blending of familiarity and homage which had won the
girl's heart from the first.  There were points about his
kindness which she could not touch upon, even to him,
and this was one.  Other men might have made her position
unbearable, but he never.  The raising of the hat itself
meant nothing, for she knew it was an instinctive
recognition of her sex which accomplished itself, in his case,
even when the sex was adequately disguised beneath
harden aprons and masculine caps; but the action as he
performed it had none of the odious insinuating gallantry
to which the Saturday Hunmouth trippers had accustomed
but never reconciled her.  With no man had she
ever been so intimate as with this one; and yet no man
had ever so helped her to preserve her own modest self-respect.

Ah, Pam, Pam, Pam!  Do you see that queer little
hunched-up shadow, carrying a shapeless lump of a
basket, that keeps close by your side as you cross the road
and lay your finger upon the latch of the tarred wooden
wicket?  It is the little old lady, as plain as plain can be.
She makes no noise; her footsteps merge in yours; but
day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, she never
leaves you.  The time approaches when she shall rise up
in her hideous deformity and declare you a prisoner in
her dwelling.  And you shall gaze upon the features of
an altered world through wet windows of running tears.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII

.. vspace:: 2

Outside the Spawer strolled gently to and fro along
the white, staring roadway, stopping always a little
short of the cottages lest his constant recurrence in face
of the window might seem like an embargo upon Pam's
moments.  To a casual observer he looked, in his light
flannels and straw hat—tilted a little over his nose for
facing the sun—the typical figure of a summer lounger,
with no endeavor beyond indolence, and no thought above
keeping cool.  But within, his brain was busily clanking
and clamoring, like an overpressed newspaper office;
editing, sub-editing, inserting, deleting, putting all his
conduct into orderly columns and making ruthless "pi"
of it.  One item of intelligence alone remained stable
amid the vast jumble of worthless, inconsequential paragraphs:

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

   DEPARTURE OF THE SPAWER.

.. vspace:: 2

He was still pacing up and down the roadway, his eyes
engrossed in some systematic method of placing his toes,
engaged on the task of convincing himself that he had let
no real possible opportunity slip during their walk of
acquainting the girl with the inevitable, when the
atmosphere of a sudden lighted up, as it were, and he saw the
red poppies over the gateway, stooping somewhat at the
latch.

"What!  So soon?" he asked; and again, by the apparently
spontaneous mental process, he threw off his heavy
mantle of musing, and smiled as though he had nothing
to think of but happiness.  "Come!  You 've let me off
handsome."

Then he saw that Pam's lips looked a little troubled,
and her eyes sought his face with trepidation.

"It 's not that..." she said, watching his gaze like a
compass.  "... I 'm not done yet.  But they ... they
saw you were with me ... and ... and won't you
come in?"

"It 's awfully good of 'em, little woman," he said.
"Just tell 'em so, won't you?  But really, I don't mind a
bit.  In fact, I 'd rather be out here in the sun."

"I thought you would n't," Pam said, more to herself,
as though his reply constituted a refusal of something not
uttered, but in her mind only.  And still she stood; and
while she looked at the Spawer her eyes filled with that
sublime wistfulness of theirs that finds no translation in
words.  "That 's not all," she said, after a pause.  "I
have n't told you.  They know ... who you are."

"Jove!" exclaimed the Spawer.  "What a reputation I
have in this part of the globe.  If only it were universal."

"It's my fault..." Pam confessed.

"There 's no fault about it, dear girl," he made haste
to reassure her.  "On the contrary, it 's a jolly kind
thought."

"But I 'm afraid ... I told them it was you when they
asked if it was.  And they know how beautifully you
play."  Her eyes were absolutely sealed down upon his
now, so that not a flicker of their expression could escape
her.  "... And ... and poor old Mr. Smethurst said
there were n't many that could play like you.  And I told
him, indeed there were n't.  And I was telling him how
beautifully you did play ... and all of a sudden he said
he should just like to hear you play 'Sound the loud
timbrel' ... before he died.  Did I think you would?
And Mrs. Smethurst was frightened, and said: 'Oh, John,'
you must n't ask such things of a gentleman like that.
He does n't play to such as us.'  And he said, oh, so sadly:
'Nay, nay, I suppose I must n't.  But I feel he 'd do it if
only we dared ask him.'  And I did n't know what to
say ... because, of course, I know it's a dreadful thing
to ask you.  But I made a pretence of coming out to see
whether you would come in and sit down."

The Spawer wrinkled his brows.

"It 's not so much the asking," he said, with a perplexed
smile, "but it 's the doing, little woman.  Have
they a piano forte?"

"No, no."  Pam sank deeper into her trouble.  "It 's
only a harmonium ... a very old one.  I know it 's
a dreadful thing to ask you to sit down to a harmonium—and
a hymn tune too.  I 'd never, never have asked you
to do such a thing for myself—but for somebody else
that 's never going to get better again.  Sometimes it
does sick people you don't know how much good to have
their fancies gratified.  I offered to try and play it
myself, but he told me: 'You can play it and welcome
... but it won't be him.'"

"Little woman," said the Spawer, "no one knows better
than you what an act of martyrdom it is for a pianist to
sit down to a harmonium and humble himself to a hymn
tune.  But because it 's you that have asked me, for your
sake and through sheer pride—to show you how good I
am—I 'll do it.  It sounds good, but it's sheer, downright
pride, remember.  Only pride could get through with it.
Now; lead on, kindly light."

He took hold of her indulgently by the arm, and for a
few paces walked so with her.  To the girl that touch was
the crowning patent of his nobility and goodness; to him
it was so magnetically charged with the dangerous
communion of red, warm blood that he let go of it by slow,
imperceptible degrees, but with no less the feeling that he
was discarding a deadly temptation.  The warmth of a
woman's body is an enervating atmosphere to the moral
fibres of a man when that body is the object of his
renunciation, and his fibres are slackened to start with.  And
the proud illumination about the girl's eyes as she went
forward at his instigation was like the high, bright blaze
of a lighthouse for holding him prisoner to its beacon
against all the futile beating of his wings.

Through the tarred gate and under the trailing flames
of nasturtium Pam led him into the cottage of the dying
man.  It was a kitchen living-room they stepped into.
All about the threshold and nasturtium porch was enveloped
in its own stifling atmosphere of hot leaves and
baking—as distinct from the corn-scented suffocation of the
outer air.  The kitchen itself seemed congested with a
close, oveny odor; the accumulated smell of many meals
and many bakings, never expelled, and the peaty reek of
a place where the fire burns day in, day out.

In a high-backed wooden chair by the warm side of the
oven sat the dying man, not so nearly dead as the Spawer
had pictured him, perhaps, but obviously stricken.  He
sat, an old withered figure, with the strange inertness of
body characteristic of the aged and the very sick, alive
seemingly no lower than his head, which moved slowly in
the socket of a grey plaid muffler, wrapped about his
neck and tucked away beneath the lapels of his dingy
green-black coat.  There was a red cotton cushion
propped under his shoulders.  His legs, motionless as the
padded legs of a guy, and as convincing, looked strangely
swollen and shapeless by contrast with his white and
wasted face.  At their extremity a pair of lifeless, thick
ankles were squeezed into clumsy country slippers, whose
toes never once, during the course of the Spawer's visit,
stirred away from the red spot on the hearthrug where
he had at first observed them.  The invalid's breathing
was the labored wheezy usage of lungs that bespoke
asthma and bronchitis, and the hands that clasped the
arms of the wooden chair might have been carved in horn.
A couple of crooked sticks placed in the projecting angle
of the range showed his extremity in the matter of
locomotion.  To the Spawer, whose experience with the dark
obverse of life's bright medallion was restricted, and
whose acquaintance with death and death's methods was
more by hearsay, as of some notorious usurer, the picture
was not a pleasant one.  He had rather been left out
in the pure sunshine with his own tormenting thoughts
than be brought face to face with the actual draught that
all men mortal must drain.  And yet, he told himself, this
was the sort of thing that Pam was almost daily sacrificing
some portion of her young life to; giving generously
a share of her own freshness and healthfulness and
vitality to keep burning these wan and flickering flames.
Wonder of wonders, the magic chalice of a woman's heart,
that can pour forth its crystalline stream of love and
comfort and consolation, and yet not run dry.

An elderly woman, in a print dress, whose hands were
nervously fidgeting with the jet brooch at her throat, and
who seemed employed in watching the door with a smile
not devoid of anxiety, curtseyed with painful respectfulness
at the Spawer's entrance, and dusting the surface of
a wooden chair, begged him to be seated.  If he had
lacked Pam's assurance that his presence was coveted he
might have almost reproached himself for entering at
some inopportune moment.  A great air of formality
seemed to enter with his advent, and stiffen all about
them—he felt it himself—as though they were on the
brink of some important ceremony with whose procedure
they were unacquainted, like Protestants at High Mass.
He took the chair, however, with the utmost friendliness
and thankfulness he could assume, and tried to sit down
upon it with a pleasant air of relief, as though it were a
welcome accessory to his comfort, and he were grateful.  He
was very anxious, for his pride's sake, to do Pam credit.

"Ah!" he said, seeming to welcome the discovery of the
fire as something, in these chill times, to be glad for, and
addressing himself to the sick man, made pleasant allusion
to it.  "You keep a bit of a blaze, I see," he said.

"Ye 'll 'a to speak up tiv 'im a bit, sir," the woman
instructed him deferentially.  "'E weean't a 'eard ye.  'E 's
gettin' that deaf it 's past mekkin' 'im understand at
times."

The man's head turned slowly in its grey woolen socket,
as though he had caught the fact of his being in question,
but was out of the reach of the inquiry, and seeking
by the petition of his eye to be informed.

"'E 's speakin' about fire, gentleman is," the woman
told him.

"What fire?" the sick man asked, in a frail, piping
voice—a voice that a three-days' chicken might almost
have challenged.

He asked the question mechanically, with his eyes on
the Spawer, but his interest lay somewhere beyond the
borderland of earthly things, as though his mind, through
much solitude of wandering, had strayed in advance of
his body towards the bourne of them both, and was
recalled to the flesh with increasing difficulty.

"Kitchen fire," his wife explained to him.  "Fire i'
grate yonder."

The man followed the line of her knotted, bony forefinger,
and let his eyes fall on the wasted red cinders, so
symbolical of his own condition.

"Ay," he said, after a moment, when it had almost come
to seem that the connection between finger and fireplace
was quite lost.  "Fire 's a bit o' company to me.  We 've
been good friends a goodish piece noo, but ah s'll not
need 'er so much longer, ah 'm thinkin'."

"Ye div n't know what ye 'll need," his wife admonished
him, with the sharpness of personal anxiety.  But
to the Spawer she added, catching at her brooch: "Cough
troubles 'im a deal o' nights noo.  Doctor says 'e misdoots
'e 'll see another winter thruff.  'E 'd seummut to do to
get thruff last."

The sick man knew, with the dumb instinct of a dog,
that his case was being discussed.  He fastened his eyes
on the Spawer's face to see whether it would give him
any clue to the words that were being uttered.  His wife's,
by experience, he knew would tell him nothing; but a
stranger's might.

"Ah 'm about at far end," he piped, in his placid,
piteous harmonic of a voice, that issued between his lips
with a sound like the blowing of a cornstraw.  "Ah 've
been a sad, naughty slaverbags i' my time, bud ah 'm done
noo.  It's 'arvest time wi' me, an' ah 'm bein' gathered in,
ah think.  Doctor 's patched my bellows up a deal o'
times, bud they weean't stan' mendin' no more."

"Why weean't they?  Ye 've breathed a deal free-er
last few days," his wife tried to instil into him.  "It 's 'is
'eart as well," she told the Spawer.  "Doctor says it 's
about worn out.  Ay, poor man, poor man!  What a
thing it is to sit an' watch 'im gan, ah-sure.  An' 'im so
active as 'e was.  Bud cryin' weean't alter it, for ah 've
tried, an' it 's no use.  It 's Lord's will, an' we mun just
be thankful 'at 'E 's spared 'im as long as 'E 'as, wi' me
to look after 'im an' see 'e gans off comfortable.  There 's
monny 'at is n't blessed so well as that."

The sick man fastened his eye on the Spawer again.

"Ye come fro' Dixon's?" he said inquiringly; and when
the Spawer gave him an illuminative "Yes"—"Ay," he
said, through his thin lips.  "It 's long enough sin' ah
seed 'im.  Mebbe ye 'll do me the kindness to gie 'im mah
respecks when ye get back.  Monny 's the time 'im an'
me 's met i' Oommuth market an' driven wum [home] i'
Tankard's 'bus together....  Ah 've been nowt bud
trouble tiv 'er sin' day she wor fond enough to tek me, an'
she would n't 'a tekken me then, bud ah begged ower 'ard.
An' ah 'm nowt bud trouble tiv 'er noo."

"Ay, an' ah 'd tek ye agen lad," the thin, worn woman
told him, with an assurance that was almost fierce.
"Ne'er mind whether ye 're a bad un or no.  Ah 've
nivver rued day ah tekt ye—though ye 'd gie'n me twice
trouble ye did.  Ah mud 'ave looked far to fin' a better,
an' then not fun' [found] 'im.  Let ye be as drunk as ye
would, ye nivver gied me a bad wod nor lifted 'and
agen me."

"Nay, ah nivver lifted 'and agen ye," the man assented.
"Ah 'ad n't need.  Bud that 's little to my credit.  Ah
trailed ye thruff tribulation.  What time ye was n't
workin' to mek good what ah 'd wasted ye was weepin'
an' waitin' o' me.  There 's scarcelins a Saturday neet, at
one time, ye set oot wi' a dry eye."

"Ay, bud ye nivver stayed away ower Sunday," his
wife claimed, with pride.  "Ye was allus back an' to spare
when Oolbrig bells got set o' ringin'.  An' it's not ivvery
man's wife about this district 'at can say same of 'er 'usband."

The sick man listened to her, and a pale, wintry smile
flickered across his face and over his frost-nipped lips.
Years ago, perhaps, it had been a smile as full of
sunlight as the Spawer's own, and dear to the woman's heart.
Perhaps her soul had pined for that very smile, and drunk
of its remembrance, in the dark hours that clouded her
life from time to time.  The sick man turned his eyes
upon the Spawer, while yet the feeble ray illuminated them.

"Ah did n't chose so badlins," he said, with a tinge of
the dry humor that sparkles mirthfully in the men of these
parts like the crackling of blazing twigs under a pot.
"Nay, ah got best o' bargain when she fastened 'ersen.
Chosin' a wife 's same as chosin' a mare or owt else, an'
there 's a deal o' ways o' chosin' wrong.  Don't tek
notice o' way a lass gans on tiv you, if ye want to pick a
good un—for they 're all t' same when they 're carryin' on
wi' a man.  Good uns an' bad uns acts alike then.  Div n't
tek a woman 'll 'at fin's ower much fault wi' 'er neighbors—syke
a woman 'll fin' plenty wi' you when she 's gotten
ye fast.  Ye want to 'ave a sharp eye when ye gan
coortin'.  There 's some on 'em 'at gans coortin' by neet,
'at scarcelins knows look o' their lass by day.  That 's no
way.  Don't tek on wi' a lass because she carries a 'ymn
book.  Onny lass can carry a 'ymn book.  Tek one 'at 's
gotten all 'er 'ymns i' 'er 'eart.  Don't trust yersen tiv a
lass 'at wastes all 'er time i' runnin' after ye.  Think on
it 's 'er feythur's time she 's wastin', 'appen, an' when
she 's gotten ye she 'll waste yours.  Ay, an' try an' pick
a wench 'at dizz n't mind doin' what she can to mek it a
bit brighter for them 'at 's gannin' quick down shady side
o' life.  'Appen she 'll do t' same when it comes tiv your
ton [turn]."

All these things the Spawer promised to bear in mind
when the time came, with the despicable hypocrisy that
assumed, as a cloak, the smiling improbability of any such
occurrence.  Cad that he felt himself, he dared not look
at Pam, seated apart on a chair by the door leading into
a small scullery beyond.  Like Peter he kept denying—by
inference, at least—the facts of a case that would so
unpleasantly involve him.  Like Peter, each successive denial
smote him to the heart; he wept in spirit over his own
spirit's weakness.  And yet, as he asked himself very
naturally, even as he held his smile towards the old man,
and studiously away from the girl that fulfilled (either
in actuality or in the guilty similarity set up by his
soul) every condition of the old fellow's warning—was
this the proper moment to declare to her what he had to
declare to her?  Could he for the first time acquaint her
with facts for which she was all unprepared before
strangers?  No, no, no.  Later on, he swore it, he would
fulfil his afternoon's mission.  He was merely a musician,
he told himself, using destiny as his fiddle, tuning the
strings of circumstance to the tune needed of him.  So,
catching sight of the little despicable harmonium for the
hundredth time, with the suddenly sparkling eye for a
revelation, "What," said he, in accents of surprised
pleasure that even deceived Pam—(though he dared not have
thought it)—"a harmonium?"

The old woman whipped off its meagre tippet of oilcloth
in a twinkling, and displayed its poor double octave
of discolored celluloid with a toothless smile of proud
possession.

"Mester bought it," she said.  "He was allus fond of a
bit o' music."

How was she to know, poor soul, the strickening effect
that fatal use of the diminutive had on the sensitive fibres
of the Spawer's nature?  Not from his face, surely, for
he smiled pure sunlight.

They dusted the keys for him, and a chair, and put up
the fragile desk, that subsided like a schooner before the
blast, with its masts bending, and the Spawer sat down
and did his best.

Heavens, what a best!

The very tone of the instrument that cried out under
his touch shook his soul and almost frightened his fingers
from the keys.  So raucous it was; so noisily sanctimonious;
so redolent of blind musicians; of street-corner
meetings; so unblushingly bald; so callous; so unsensitive;
so ostentatious; so utterly awful.  Every nerve,
fibre, and tissue of musical organization was offended;
it was a crying offence against every instinct of musical
art.  And all the while, as though the soul itself were not
being sufficiently punished by humiliation, the body was
being subjected to the physical indignity of working its
legs like a journeyman scissors-grinder.

Ye gods! the tragic absurdity of it all.  To musical
natures less cultured, to senses less susceptible than the
Spawer's, there would have been the rising of throats
and the wetness of tears during this scene, for, truth to
tell, it lacked none of the elements of moving pathos and
tragedy.  The dying man; the care-worn woman; the
girl with the compassionate lips; the musician bending
over his task of devotion; the hymn tune evolved into
harmony by his shaping fingers from the low humming
of the girl's lips:

   |  "Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea;
   |  Jehovah hath triumphed, His people are free..."

the half-drawn blind—so soon to be drawn down to its
full; the sun beating on the window and on the red-tiled
floor....

Not one witness in a thousand, drawn independently to
consider the scene, would have pierced to the heart
of the pathos, and grasped through the tearful confusion
of their sympathies, that perhaps the most beautiful
focus-point of emotion was in the seated figure of the
musician, castigating his musical soul with biting thongs
for the sake of one girl and a dying man, and showing no
sign.

And what recompense of moral gratification did he receive
in return for his act of artistic abnegation?  Little
enough, it must be confessed, that the Spawer could
discover.  The old man looked older, he thought; the old
woman's prefatory smile of appreciative pride had been
quenched by the music, and her attitude when he turned
round upon her was the incomprehending silence of respect.
All her face, so to speak, had fallen to pieces like
an over-shortened pie, with no concentration of interest
to hold up the crust of its expression.  Perhaps the very
harmonies with which the Spawer had clad the naked
melody of a hymn tune had so baffled their decaying,
primitive hearing that they had failed to recognise it in
its new garb.  He had done better, possibly, to play the
melody out for them with one finger.  Pam's face alone
compensated him.  She, he knew—and was glad to know—was
too much awakened to the scope and magnitude of
music to have derived anything approaching personal
pleasure from a crude performance such as this; but she
had realised what nausea it must have been to him, and in
the light of a sacrifice alone she had rejoiced in his
achievement.

Well, however, the achievement was over, and they
were ready to go any time now.  The old woman
replaced the oilcloth over the harmonium with a look of
relief (or so the Spawer thought, but he thought wrong),
and Pam was just opening her lips to suggest departure
when the old man piped out in his faltering treble:

"Ay, bud ye 'll gie me a chapter before ye gan, lass,
weean't ye?"

Pam turned a troubled eye part-way towards the
Spawer, as though it were accompanying a thought of
hers on its own account; but she stopped it before it
reached him, and dropped submissive hands.

"Would you like me to?" she asked gently.

"Ay; ah s'd tek it kindly if ye would."

"You don't mind?" she asked the Spawer softly; and
with his assent, readily given, "I will," she said.

"Gie 'er the Book, lass," he ordered his wife; and the
careworn woman lifted it from beneath a pair of folded
spectacles, and delivered it reverently into the girl's
receiving fingers.

"What shall I read you?" Pam asked, setting the book
on her knees, and turning over the pages, now backwards,
now forwards.

"Ah 'll 'ave that bit o' John," he told her, "about
mansions an' such-like, if ye 've no objections."

"Is that the fourteenth chapter?" Pam suggested
inquiringly.  "Did n't we have it last time?"

"Ay, an' we mud as lief 'ave it this," he decided placidly.
"It 'll be none the wuss of a time or two.  Book 's
not same as other things.  There 's allus seummut fresh
in it for them 'at gans tiv it wi' a right 'eart.  Ah s'd 'a
done better if ah 'd ganned tiv it when ah 'ad use o' legs
Lord gid me.  It 's ower late to larn me to walk straight
i' this wuld noo, but 'appen ah s'll be about ready to
scrammle along to next, when time comes."

"The fourteenth chapter of the Gospel according to
St. John," Pam announced, as signifying that she had found
the place, and smoothing down the page with her soft
finger, lifted her voice and read:

"Let not your heart be troubled....  Ye believe in
God, believe also in me.  In my Father's house are many
mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you.  I go
to prepare a place for you."

When Pam said: "If it were not so ... I would have
told you," one felt it must be so indeed.  Such lips could
never lie.  And as the girl's clear voice rose and filled that
little kitchen—so compassionate, so truthful, so natural—the
full sublimity of the picture of a sudden swelled up
in the Spawer's soul and mounted to his throat.  The
ingredient elements of the scene were unchanged, but now
how exalted.  He saw, in a flash, as though his spiritual
eyes had been opened, the true pathos of the picture:
the dying man, seated so motionless in his chair, with his
faded blue eyes gazing into Heaven through the blind;
the worn woman, the better portion of whose years and
loving energy the man was taking to the grave with him;
the sweet, purifying sunlight bathing the world outside;
the girl with the lips of celestial compassion, drawing old
truths from the battered and thumb-marked Bible, distilling
them anew in pure liquid sound, and dropping them
so coolingly into the overheated kitchen of death.  All
these he saw—acutely with his inward vision, dimly with
his material—and wondered, as he saw it, that the girl
could proceed so courageously and so unfalteringly on her
consolatory path.  He himself would have fared along it
badly, and knew it.  But it was not the last time he was
to marvel at the girl's self-possession when circumstances
demanded, and perhaps this second time he would
remember it even better.

"Ye 'll tek liberty to call agen, mebbe," the old man
invited him as they stood finally for departure, "... if
ah 'm not mekkin' ower free to ask ye; but it 's a lonely
road when a man draws to yend of 'is days.  Busy folk
can't reckon to be treubled wi' 'im—an' i' 'arvest an' all.
Ah wor no better mysen when ah 'ad my faculties.  Ye 'll
be stayin' wi' Dixon a goodish while yet, mebbe?"

At the direct question the Spawer's resolution spun
round and made as though to turn tail.  There was just a
slight pause—quite inappreciable to the others about him,
but painfully magnified to himself—while he struggled
whether to ignore the opportunity or seize it like a man,
and sign irrevocably the bond of his departure.

"Perhaps..." he was quibbling with the reply even
yet, while speaking, not knowing whether to evade or to
grapple with his chance.  Then he grappled suddenly,
but always with that frank, pleasant smile of his that
showed no inkling of an inward perplexity.  "... On
the other hand," he said, "... it 's possible I may be
going any time now—any day even."  He sensed rather
than saw the quick turn of the girl's eyes upon him, and
knew, too, in what kind of mild, protesting surprise she
was looking at him.  She could not credit that he should
first communicate such an important piece of intelligence
to strangers, without having prepared her by a single
word, and was wondering sorrowfully whether it were
not an excuse to evade any promise of visiting the old
man again.

"It all depends," the Spawer explained, throwing his
explanation over the truth of the matter like a pleasant
nebula, "... on a letter.  I 'm expecting to hear.  One
can't stay for ever, you know," he added amiably, "even
where one 's happy."

"Nay, nay," the old man acquiesced mournfully.
"When a man comes to my years 'e fin's that oot tiv 'is
sorrer.  Well, well; ah awpe [hope] when ye think fit to
change ye 'll change for t' better, young gen'leman, an'
ah thank ye for yer company an' yer kindness."  He
turned the faint flicker of his long-ago smile upon Pam,
like the sunlight stealing over an autumn landscape.

"Pam 's not likely to change yet a bit," he said, with a
sense of comfort in the thought, as though the girl were
a true staff to rest on in time of trouble.  Pam shook her
head reassuringly.  "Nay, Pam mun 't change yet a bit,"
he admonished her.  "She mun stop an' see t' old man 's
time oot, ah think.  'E weean't keep 'er so long noo, but
'e 's a selfish old chap; 'e dizz n't want to part wi' 'er no
sooner nor need be.  She 's been as good tiv 'im as if
she 'd been 'is own bairn.  Ay, an' better.  There 's not
monny bairns 'at 'ud 'a done as much—an' said as little.
Nay, nay; they 'd 'a telt 'im 'e was a treublesome old feller
long sin'.  Good-by, lass; good-by—an' gie my respecks
tiv 'is Rivrence when 'e comes back."

His eye kindled momentarily as the girl laid light
fingers on the horny right hand and stooped and kissed him.
But the light of this died out of them as soon as he had
done speaking, and the pressure of her clasp relaxed.  As
they passed out of the kitchen his gaze followed them
dimly from afar, seeming to inquire who were these
figures departing, and whence came they and what their
errand, and in what remote, unintelligible degree their
presence concerned himself.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVIII`:

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   CHAPTER XVIII

.. vspace:: 2

For a short space the Spawer and Pam walked along
in silence, but sharing the same thought, as though
they made joint use of an umbrella.  The stillness of a
great Sunday had fallen over them; like communicants
of the Blessed Sacrament of Charity, they walked away
a little hushed, each treasuring the remembrance of the
other's goodness; each trying to retain undissipated those
elusive sky-colors of exaltation that at length must melt
and fade away, however carefully cherished, into the dull
grey of daily life.

And between here and the joining of the roads at
Hesketh's corner the Spawer was pledged to sign the
document of departure.  In two odd miles of green-bordered
laneway he was to waft all their charitable illusion
on one side with the rude hand of resolve, like the
intrusive fumes of rank tobacco, rather than the blessed
clouds of incense, and make a clear path for his shuffling
feet to walk in.

He stole a look down the side of his nose at the girl by
his elbow.  If her clear face had been a window, and he
a contemptible urchin whose purpose was a stone secreted
in the palm of his hostile hand, he could not have put it
behind his back with greater shame or remorse when she
looked up at him.

"Hello!" he said, drawing up in their equable stride
with a fine pretence of awakening consciousness to the
trend of their steps.  "Where on earth are we hurrying
off to so fast?"

The girl drew up too, and sought his face inquiringly.

"Home ... are n't we?" she suggested, with a gentle
stirring of surprise at his need for the question.

"Are you so anxious to get rid of me?" he asked.

"I?  Oh, no ... I was n't thinking about that."

"Let 's think about it now, then," he prompted agreeably.
"Truth to tell, little woman, you 've made me feel
such a very good little boy—so smug and pious—that I
dread going back to the corrupt and naughty world yet a
bit.  I feel I only want just a little time for my wings to
grow.  So don't spoil an angel for a penn'orth of tar.
Give me a chance to become a cherub, that 's a dear girl.
What do you say to a turn as far as the cliff at Shippus?
I 'm not sure that I shan't be able to fly by the time we get
there.  Don't stand in the way of my flying, please."

Pam stood swinging the empty basket against her
skirts, with a hungry look towards Shippus and a lingering
duty-pull towards Ullbrig.  Inwardly, ah! if he 'd
only known how she was dying to accept this invitation
without demur.

"I don't know ... I should like," she admitted, and
asked: "What time is it, please?"

"Ah, what a girl for strict time it is, to be sure," the
Spawer made answer banteringly, pulling out his watch.
"Always one, two, three, four; one, two, three, four.  But
strict time 's not always music, piccola mia, don't forget
that.  And music 's like life, no good at all without a little
'tempo rubato.'  Five o'clock, dear child—and there 's a
green fly on your chin."  He stooped forward, put his
lips towards it, and puffed it lightly away.  What a pretty
chin it was, seen so near too, and how almost like kissing
it it had seemed—though not quite.  Ah, not quite.
(What would she have said if he had, now?)  "There,"
he exclaimed, as the green fly floated out into space,
"... excuse my taking the liberty of blowing, but I
was n't sure of my touch.  I did n't want to defile your
chin with a murder, by accident.  Well, what do you say?"

"Five o'clock 's rather late," was what the girl said,
but there was as little backbone in the suggestion as in
the body of a sawdust doll.  "I 'm afraid ... tea."

"The very thing," the Spawer decided.  "Let 's have
tea at Shippus together, and walk back like giants
refreshed.  Come; what do you say to that?  I say
beautiful! beautiful!  What do you say?"

Apparently the girl said "Oh!" and having said that,
seemed able to say no more.

"Very well, then," the Spawer declared, artfully taking
the "Oh!" for assent.  "Come along and let 's tell 'em to
put the kettle on, and be sure to give us tea-leaves out of
the canister."

He took possession of the basket again, that she released
into his hands as token of submission to his will.

"You won't ... lose the cover cloth, though, will
you?" she besought him, when he showed a tendency to
swing it too freely.

"I 'll stuff it in my pocket," he promised her, suiting
action to his words.  "And then I shall be sure to have it
safe with me at Cliff Wrangham when you want it."

Then slowly and happily they retraced their steps towards
the sea.

Being a Tuesday, and harvest-time to boot—the sacred
Sunday feeling of silence covered Shippus too beneath
its beneficent mantle.  Moreover, week-days are the only
Sabbaths that this place ever knows.  As soon as the
church bells of Ullbrig announce to the landlady of the
Royal Arms (which is four fifths of Shippus, as everybody
knows) the hour of divine service, she throws open
the dingy business door, and listens for the welcome
rumble of the first brake load of travelers who have driven
out the thirteen odd miles from Hunmouth to be supplied
with the drink that would be denied them (by the devout
act of a Protestant and religious Government) at their
own door.  There is nothing at all royal about the Royal
Arms except the name.  It is disclosed with the remaining
few cottages of Shippus at a quick turn of the road—an
irregular, dirty-washed building—presenting, apparently,
nothing but back doors.  Indeed, there is no front
entrance at all, that I know of.  And the Spawer approaches
the Royal Arms and orders the Royal Arms to put the
kettle on and lay the table for two, with ham and eggs
and anything else they think likely to tempt an invalid.
And the Royal Arms, which is the austere-faced lady
who looked sternly at them on their arrival through the
small-paned window of what might be the scullery, after
suggesting that he should accompany her to the hen-run
and pick his fancy, promised tea faithfully in twenty
minutes.  She could also promise it in fifteen, if he liked,
but not faithfully.

On a backless bench, close by the cliff edge, Pam and
the Spawer sat together in blessed community of spirit,
and solaced their souls in the blue sea before them.  The
sun, sinking behind their backs, cast their two shadows
far out on to the sands below, above the black silhouette
of the cliff.  Right out to sea, on the straight, blue line of
the horizon, a ship stood up in snowy purity, like an
iceberg.  Over one corner of the sky a smudge, as though a
finger dipped in soot had drawn it across the azure, broad
at its base, thinned away to where it joined itself by a fine
thread to the funnel of a distant steamer.  The chalk
cliffs of Farnborough rose up above the water in white
marble, and the little alabaster finger of the lighthouse
showed clear, like a tiny belemnite.

And after they had spent their twenty minutes in contemplation
of the scene and wandered to and fro a little along
the trampled margin of the cliff, they retrace their steps
and make their way into the tea-room of the Royal Arms.

It is a long, low-ceilinged room, that promises little in
the way of table luxuries, and keeps its word.  A great,
bare table runs up the centre of it on trestles, looking like
a crocodile; scaly with the involute rings of many glasses,
and discolored with the spillings of many liquids.  At
the far end, in a corner by the window, is an aged
piano—more aged than any the Spawer has ever come across, he
thinks.  He gives an exclamation of amused greeting
when his eyes first fall upon it, and throwing up the lid,
shakes hands with it most affably.  Probably it has never
known respectability since the hour of its birth—or at
least since it went into the world from the factory.  It
has been a pot-house creature—changing from pot-house
to pot-house, from vaults to cosy, from cosy to
smoke-room, and from smoke-room to private bar—until its
landing here from Hunmouth three years ago.  It has the
cracked, dissipated, nasal voice of a chucker-out,
accustomed to hurl vile-chorded epithets against a roomful of
rowdy soakers, and knows nothing of tune, never having
heard any.  But such as it is, it is a distinct discovery and
an acquisition to the present company.

"My good fellow," the Spawer tells it, "it is plain you
know nothing of my friends Brahms and Beethoven—to
say nothing of Chopin.  Later on I must certainly
introduce you.  It would n't be fair to them to leave you
unacquainted when such a fine opportunity offers."

But for the present they take their places at the end of
the crocodile table, where a cloth has been spread, with a
pewter tea-pot stand; a glass bowl of some very azure
and crystallised lumps of sugar; a dried seed-cake, set
out on a tri-colored tissue paper doyley; some treacly
marmalade; some butter; and a meagre miscellany of
cheese-cakes.  Ah, how different from Pam's cooking
and Pam's management, all these—and yet, under the
circumstances, quite enjoyable too, as a sort of super-exalted
jest.  An under-sized girl in a full-sized apron, who
tilts the end of a big tray at such an angle upward, in
front of her, to sustain it at all, that she appears, on
approach, to be walking on her knees, ministers to their
needs.  She gives Pam an oppressed greeting, for Pam
knows her and she knows Pam, but her eye is mainly
occupied with the Spawer.  She is visibly impressed with his
importance, but the impression, like all else about the
Royal Arms, does not run to superfluous courtesy.  When
he addresses a remark to her that she has not heard, she
tilts up her chin, sideways on, and screwing her lips to
inquiry says: "Eh?" or "M'm?"  When he asks for a
knife she demands: "En't ye got one?" and when he
removes his elbow to look, sees for herself he has n't, and
tells him, "Ah thought ah 'd setten two," as though that
explained everything.  The Spawer thanks her liberally
for all she does for them, but never once can he succeed
in forcing a "Thank you" from her in return.

But it 's all very jolly and entertaining.  Pam pours
out the tea.

"Sugar and cream mine for me, dear girl," the Spawer
bids her, "while I tackle the ham."

"How many do you take?" Pam asks him.

"As many as you like to give me," the Spawer tells her.
"I promise I won't complain."

"I 'll give you one and a bit, then," Pam says.  "Then
you can come again if you like."

"How good of you," says the Spawer.

And altogether they are very happy indeed.  They eat
part of their ham and eggs with dreadful deadly Bengal
metal forks, and cut them with leaden-looking knives,
bone-hafted, that are warranted "Real Sheffield Steel,"
without compromising any particular maker by name.

And they urge each other to fresh helpings of the dried
seed-cake, that probably began its public career last Bank
Holiday; and partake of the fly-blown cheese-cakes, so
great is their exaltation.  At times too, those necessary
words are almost upon the Spawer's lips.  The moment
seems propitious.  Only let him swallow this mouthful,
and he will tell her ... he will say to her:

"Dear girl..."

Then the Dear Girl smiles, or the Dear Girl turns her
head, or the Dear Girl forestalls his words with words
infinitely more desirable, or catches his eye, and sends it
back with as guilty a feeling as though he were a
top-story lodger trying to sneak down the staircase for a
bucket of coal, and intercepted with his nose at the door
and the bucket in his hand.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XIX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIX

.. vspace:: 2

And meanwhile, as he removed himself more completely
from the girl by resolve, they came closer to
each other in spirit.  At the piano against the window,
looking out upon a poultry-run and the profile of three
meagre swing-boats, the Spawer sat down and made
music, and the music—even from this cracked, tin-plate,
pot-house piano—seemed to sum up all the goodness, all
the charity, all the kindness, all the happiness of the day;
give it a pure and hallowed expression, as the night's
thanksgiving prayer gives blessed articulation to the
hidden processes of the soul.  It was a mantle, this music
that the Spawer made, enfolded about them both.  Their
two lives, at this moment, were silver streams of content,
that met in melodious estuary, and flowed henceforth with
one broad current towards the infinite.

Ah!  Dangerous state of exaltation this, when souls
seem severed from the body, and feel no clog of their
fleshy burthens binding them to sordid earth.  When
spirits are so emancipated from the material that a breath
can almost blow them; when life seems to have lost all
root in worldly soil, but is merely the blessed sweet odor,
hovering above the blossom of existence.  While the
Spawer played the sky deepened.  It seemed to descend
like a beneficent angel from heaven and clasp the swing-boats
in a celestial embrace, so that they slumbered with
the deep peace that comes from above.  Pallid harvest
stars opened places for themselves in the curtain of blue
dusk and peeped down upon the scene.  Night threw
down her lawny veil of mist, that wound the world
dreamily in its filmy folds and hid the realities of
existence.  The life of toil and labor, the life of matter and
the life of fact—these lives were no more, they were
merged in a delightful life of dreams.  To think was to
do.  Activity was merely a beautiful unfolding of the
soul, delivered of all gross physical exertion, like the
expansion of a cloud or the dreamy convolution of a puff
of white steam.  Pam and the Spawer were no longer
flesh and blood; they were the disembodied souls of
themselves.  They were their own thoughts, disencumbered of
the flesh, merged delightfully into each other, and moving
by volition amid a world of dreams.  Everything that lay
about them was symbolised into sublime moral truths,
into doctrines of love and charity.  All the world, all
their doings, were dreams.

They dreamed they left the piano and bought more
tea-biscuits at six a penny, and wandered forth (without any
consciousness of legs) to redeem their promise to the
donkeys.  After much wandering, they dreamed they
found them and fed them.  Divine symbolism of love.
And the girl dreamed she kissed their noses and said
many good-bys.  Kissed the donkeys' noses?  Did she
really kiss *their* noses?  Or were these kisses, cashed
upon the donkeys' noses, but the kisses of love and
happiness drawn upon the bank of universal love about them,
and paid into the treasury of their joint content?  And
she wound her soft dream arms about the donkeys' necks.
But in this nebulous state of bliss, where all thoughts, all
actions, all love, and all happiness seemed shared in
common, and indivisible, like the particles of gases that
shift and move and change their relative positions, but
do not alter their substantial bulk, it might have been that
her dream arms wound about the Spawer's dream neck.
They dreamed their way to the cliff edge to take farewell
of the sea, that lay out with a silver-grey sheen upon its
blue depth.  On the same seat they sat again, with their
backs to the contracting shapelessness of the Royal Arms
and the west, whose dusky cheek the setting sun tinged
to crimson like the blush of a beautiful Creole.  The
penetrating eye of Farnborough looked out at them from
across the water, took stock of them and closed itself once
more.  Anon it looked this way again, to see if they were
still there, and there they were.  Many strange scenes of
love, in all love's aspects, has the far-seeing eye of
Farnborough witnessed in its day, by the side of the water
along this coast.  What it does not know of these
emotions—as well as of the comedies and tragedies of
death—is not worth knowing.

They dreamed, these two did, that they rose again and
wandered a little along the cliff line.  They dreamed they
saw a faint phosphorescent pallor away over the water,
and the Spawer dreamed he said:

"It is the moon.  Let's see it rise."

So they dreamed themselves on to another seat, and sat
together and watched the moon push its red rim, like the
edge of a new penny, above the misty horizon.  And they
watched it turn to gilt as it rose and threw aside its veil of
mist, and mount up at last like a beautiful goddess with a
fair white body.  They dreamed themselves back to the
old bench once more, at the head of the zigzag steps, cut
in the face of the cliff for descent to the beach.

"Let us sit down here a bit," the Spawer said; and they
dreamed they seated themselves.

The eye of Farnborough looked out searchingly for the
bench, and found it at last, with this twain on it, and said
"Aha!" and winked itself out again.  In the growing
light of the moon the girl's silvery face shone forth from
the shimmering mist like a planet.  Was he going to tell
her here what he had to say? ...

Or was he going to wind his arms about her and kiss
her, kiss her, kiss her?  Would she resent? or would she
melt into his embrace like a drop of water in strong wine?
Ah, torture of temptation.  St. Anthony scarce suffered
by comparison with this.  The moon, the sea, the vastness
of the night, the stars, the winding mist, the
exaltation—rising up like fumes from their communion of this
day—were all commingled in his soul, making his
emotions infinite.  He was a poor weak mortal, suffering the
Olympian passion of a god.  One moment his arms were
almost about her—though he never stirred.  The next he
was holding up his purpose like a burning crucifix before
his passion's eyes ... and all the while the girl sat with her
face to the moon, and he with his face sideways upon hers.

Then the prolonged silence woke the girl to a sense of
something impending—that sense, so fine and subtle in
her sex, that tells it, by one quick touch, as of an antenna,
what man must exercise all the processes of his reason
to discover.

"Shall we ... be going back?" she suggested, part
rising, with a tentative hand upon the seat, for she felt
the silence as the dangerous filaments of a web that was
being woven about her for some sort of captivity.

"Oh ... if you are tired of this..." he responded.

"I am not tired of it," she said.

"Let 's stay a little longer, then," he proposed.  "Shall we?"

"If you like..." the girl said.

The submissive rustle of her sinking back sounded like
a sigh.  They were very dreamy the two of them.

And again the temptation of St. Anthony commenced.
What devils were struggling for possession of him?
Why was he delaying matters?  Every moment threw the
girl more upon his hands.  He had only to drop his voice,
to whisper, to put out his dream arms, to enfold her, to
stifle her lips under dream kisses....  And with what
object this?

Ah!

Love is no analyst; does not profess to be; does not
want to be.  Pure love and love unworthy are one and the
same at the crisis.  Whether the flame is the flame of an
evil incendiary or the spontaneous flame of pure affinity
... it is all one when it burns.  She was there; there by
his side.  There to be taken ... or there to be left.
Should he take her?  Should he leave her?  And while he
temporised thus with the devils, before ceding the keys of
his inner soul ... the girl was on her feet again.

"Perhaps we ought to be going ... don't you think?"

Fool that he was.  The moment was by again.  This
was no time for his arm.

"Plainly ... you are in a hurry to be rid of me."  His
laugh was infectiously frank and free.  "Am I such
poor company?"

"It 's growing late," the girl said, evading the
dangerous quicksand of his question.  "I 'm afraid
... they 'll be wondering what's got me, at home."

"Ah, is it such a naughty girl as that?  Don't they trust her?"

"They don't know where I am.  I did n't tell them."

"Do you always tell them?"

"Not always...."

"Good girl.  She shall have a white mark for telling
the truth."

"But ... this afternoon I did n't know ... that I
was coming here.  They may be anxious."

"Suppose we walk as far as the other seat before going
back.  Would that make them very, very anxious?"

"Perhaps we might walk as far as that ... if you wish."

And they walked—a whole legion of devils in attendance
upon the man.  The searching eye, gazing keenly
along the cliff from seat to seat, found them once more
at the second, and blinked knowingly.  "The old, old
comedy," it told itself.  But for all that, it was not quite
the old, old comedy of the true Shippus sort.  The devils
were practically in possession of the dream-Spawer's soul,
but the dream-Spawer was so completely detached from
the real Spawer's body that no physical manifestation
took place.  The dream-Spawer, floating to and fro above
the small, pitiful, carnal presentment, like a balloon in
oscillation, wound dream arms about the girl, pressed
dream kisses upon her lips, felt her own dream arms wind
celestially about his neck; suffocated all remorse, all
scruples, all purpose, all resolution, beneath kisses soft
and seductive as the roseate clouds of a July sunset
... but there was no contact with the earthly Spawer.  All
this the vast dream-Spawer did, but the small earthly
Spawer beneath stood still and looked at the sea.

And a little later the searching eye from Farnborough,
stealing a sly glimpse at the second seat, said a sudden
"Hello!" and gazed in unconcealed, wide-open surprise.
"H'm!" it reflected, in a tone of considerable disappointment.
"So they 've gone at last.  Sorry I could n't see
the end of that business.  Wonder where they are now."

But it had other little episodes to keep its eye
upon—Merensea, Farnborough, and even Spathorpe way—and
could not afford to waste time in useless regrets.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XX

.. vspace:: 2

The crisis was over, but the danger of relapse
remained.  The dream had not been broken, it had
merely been prolonged.  Slowly or suddenly, the awakening
was bound to come.  Every step of the homeward road
that they took was unwinding their dream like a skein of
worsted.  And now, incredulous as it may seem, with the
homeward end in view, the Spawer recommenced to apply
himself, by a kind of feverish rote, to the preparation of
the task that he had been so ready to cast down.

They passed the group of cottages where—ages and
ages ago, one blazing August afternoon—they had called
to visit a dying man.  He would be dead now.  The
Spawer had troubled his last moments with a hymn-tune
on a cacophonous harmonium that emitted a discordant
clamor like a flock of geese in full prayer; and the girl
had read him a chapter out of St. Mark—or was it
Matthew or Luke?—John perhaps.  What a pious, smug-faced
fellow he had felt himself in those days.  Almost
fit for heaven.  And in these!  He gazed, with the girl,
at the little yellow square of light as they passed, that
showed where the scene had taken place, and thought of
Now and Then.  All the air was saturated with moonlight.
It looked too thick to breathe.  A great exhalation
rose up from the pores of the earth, tremulous as a
mystic bridal-veil worn on the brow of Nature.  The
hedges swooned away on either side of them.  The sky
drooped dizzily.  Sounds, filtered and languorous,
percolated through the supernatural stillness, with a strange
distinctness and purity.  The cries of children at play,
robbed of all earthly meaning and wondrously tranquillised,
as though uttered from the far-away abode of the
blest; the barking of dogs; the call of shepherds; the
coughing of sheep; the lowing of cattle; the unexpected
cry of birds; the beating of metal on some distant anvil,
like the ringing of an angelus bell; the slamming of
remote gates—all spiritualised and purified, as though
they came from one world, and these two occupied
another.  There was a melancholy and solitude about the
earth that made them feel as though they were among
the shades; as though they were dead (very peacefully),
and the sun would never rise upon hard realities again;
but as though, from now henceforth through eternity,
their souls might wander in misty moonlight.

And still they walked, and still he had not told her.
Still his soul was divided in conflict between the desire to
relapse himself to the dream and the necessity to meet
that promissory I.O.U. of honor which he had given to
himself.  All the time he was practising overtures; trying
phrases in his mind by which he could approach the
subject casually, without allowing the girl to perceive the
degraded tortuous trail over which he had been crawling
to it on his moral belly all this morning, and all this
afternoon, and all this evening.  From the thick moonlight, as
they walked, other shades detached themselves of a
sudden, as though they had but that moment been fashioned
out of the tremulous mist, met them walking more
slowly, and were absorbed into the mist again on the
Shippus side behind them, like ink-spots in blotting-paper.
Silent couples, walking wordless and sometimes
apart, but wrapped in their own amorous atmosphere,
and always with that strange, lingering communion of
step, that concentration of purpose, as though a magnet
were drawing them forward in slumber.  And already,
here and there, through the hedges and through branches
of distant trees and in the moonlit sky, were gleaming the
dull yellow of blind-drawn casements and the scintillating
beams of naked lamps that betokened Ullbrig.

And still he had not told her.

A bat, fluttering blindly over the dusky hedgerow and
steering itself erratically on its course like an uncertain
cyclist, flew almost into the girl's face and wheeled off
abruptly, so that she felt the waft of its wing on her
cheek and gave a little cry of surprise.

"What is the matter with you, dear girl?"  The
Spawer turned quickly at the sound.  "You have n't
twisted your foot?"

"No, no."  The girl held up a face of reassurance in
the moonlight.  "It's nothing ... only a bat."

"And what did the naughty bat do to her to frighten
her so?"

"It did n't frighten me really.  I thought it was going
to fly in my face.  It startled me at first ... that's all."

"It was a bad, wicked bat to fly in her face and startle
her at first."  He took hold of her arm.  At the touch of
that round, warm, live member all the blood in her body
seemed to jump to issue with his, and combine, as though
one great pulsing artery fed them both.  "Come along,"
he said lightly, striving with his voice to palliate the
tremulous danger of their union.  "I won't have this dear
girl frightened.  I will take care of her."

She made no demur, either to his words or to his
touch, but came along by his side; so warm, so wonderfully
alive, so spiritually silent.

"Will she trust him to take care of her?" he asked her
softly.  And after a moment: "Will she?" for she had
not answered a word.  She said "Yes" very faintly, with
the faintness of happiness.

"It is a good girl," he said caressingly, "... and she
shall be well taken care of."  He pressed confidence into
that supple trunk of arm.  "But she must try and be as
kind to me as she can ... now."  He waited to give
her the opportunity of asking him, Why? but she did
not.  She was in the ethereal state that takes everything
for granted.  "Because ... well ... because she
did n't believe me this afternoon.  She thought I was
only telling tarradiddles.  Now did n't she?  But it
was n't tarradiddles at all, at all.  It was something far
worse than tarradiddles."

He felt the sudden thrill of awakening alarm run
through her; but still she said no word, asked no
questions, left everything to him.

"What does the good little girl say?" he asked her—oh,
so lightly!  With his hand on her arm, with the pain
of parting quite merged in the warm consolatory current
of their common blood, penance seemed a light, a
meaningless thing.  What was departure but a delightful
occasion for kisses and comfort ... till the dread
moment came?  The good little girl trembled a little, he
thought, but said nothing.  "Does n't she say she 's sorry?
Come, come.  Surely she 's not such a heartless little girl
as not to say she 's sorry?"

This time the girl twisted a swift, startled face of
inquiry towards his own half-bantering smile.

"I thought..." she began, and stopped with the
abruptness of fear.

"Yes, yes; I know you did," he laughed.  "I told you
so.  You thought I was just telling a great big fib, did n't
you? ... because I did n't want to bind myself to the
ordeal of any more harmonium."

"You don't mean ... you 're going away?"

"Should you be very sorry?" he asked her.

She did not speak, but seemed, in the moonlight, to be
looking at him as though she were trying to absorb his
meaning, to see if there were any other sense below the
surface of his words.

"Are you really ... going?" she asked him, after a while.

The intentness of her look and the wondrous depth of
her great eyes—stirred now to troubled speculation—sent
his purpose reeling aslant again.

"Ah!"  He gave her arm a protesting squeeze.  "She 's
not going to give her sorrow away until she 's quite sure
there 's genuine necessity for it.  She 's a very wise and
very cautious little woman.  She wants good security
for any small advances of commiseration.  If I did n't
know for certain that her name was what it is ... I
should be inclined to think they called her Rachel or Leah
or Abigail or Zipporah—with something of Benjamin
or Isaacs or Ishmael about it.  Never mind.  I will trust
her with my gold watch, and she shall give me what she
likes on it.  Yes, little Israelite ... it was the truth that
this unfortunate Gentile spoke this afternoon.  He knows
it was ... because he does n't speak it so often but that
he can tell the taste.  He 's been loafing about happily
for a long time ... but the eternal policeman Destiny
has given him the office to move on, and it
seems he 'll have to move.  It 's no use getting cross
with the law.  Is she sorry for him now, this little
Usurer?"

"But you 're not going away ... at once?" she asked
him, in a startled voice.

"My gracious!  What an out-and-out extortioner she
is," the Spawer exclaimed, with an assumption of
admiring tribute.  "She won't advance me a cent of sympathy
until she knows the term of the loan.  If I say I 'm going
at once, she 'll give me a better price of pity than if the
advance is to drag on over an indefinite period of weeks."  He
made pretence to throw his chin in the air and laugh
with pleasure.  "Honestly, little Rebecca," he told her,
looking down once more, "I don't want to humbug a
penny more out of you than you think you ought to give.
At present I can't say when I go ... whether I have to
go to-morrow, the day after, the day after that ... or
next week even.  It all depends on a letter.  I 'm a
condemned man, under indefinite reprieve."  He paused for
a moment, balancing whether he should say the next thing
on his mind.  "As a matter of fact, little woman...."  He
turned his face towards her with the engaging air of
candor that seemingly could not deny itself.  "... It 's
no use trying to stuff you.  You 're too sharp to take a
dummy watch with the works out, or a gilt sixpence.
So ... as it 's not a bit of good trying to be anything
else ... I 'll be frank with you.  I 'll tell you a secret.
It 's a big one—all about myself.  Do you think you can
keep a secret?"

"I 'll try," said the girl, with her eyes fixed
apprehensively on his lips.

"Well, then..." he said.  "I 'm in your hands.  I 'm
going to do a very silly thing."

Did a tremor of apprehensive pain, like the very ghost
of a shiver, run up the arm that he held?  or was it his
own mind, that through a feeling of sympathy sought to
attribute its knowledge to hers?

"You 'll think me a frightful ass, no doubt, when I tell
you what it is.  Can you guess?"

The girl seemed to concentrate her look upon him, but
whether the true answer had flashed across her mind, or
whether the flash of divination merely served to dazzle her
and make her ignorance still darker, so that she looked
for enlightenment from him, he could not tell; but she
said "No," and gave up his riddle with a shake of the
head.

"I wish you 'd guessed," he said.  "It throws it all on
to my shoulders.  Now I shall have to hoist the confession
up like my own portmanteau, and perhaps look a
bigger ass than ever, with my knees all bent under it.
Anyhow, here goes—one, two, three ... I 'm going to
be married.

"Well?" he inquired, after a pause.  "Won't you say
you 're sorry now?  It 's all my own silly fault, I know,
and I deserved to be married for being such a fool ... but
still—can't you squeeze one little drop of pity for me?"

"Are you really going to be married?" asked the girl.
She spoke in a very level and, it struck him, a very
unemotional voice.

"Great goodness, little woman," he exclaimed, "what
an unbelieving Israelite you are!  Do you think I do a
wholesale and export trade in tarradiddles?  You did n't
use to suspect me before, even when I told you I was a
great composer.  Won't you believe me now, when I 'm
willing to confess myself an awful idiot?  On my word
and conscience, then ... I 'm going to be married."

"I hope ... you 'll be very, very happy," said the girl.

For her, he thought the words and the wish somewhat
prosaic.  At this moment she lacked one of those beautiful
little emotional touches with which she could illuminate
the simplest saying to poetry.  Her voice, soft
though it was, and so full of sympathetic interest, yet
struck him with a painful feeling of matter-of-fact.  He
and his marriage seemed suddenly stuck up in hard,
unpoetic affirmation, like the tin price-shield in a pork-pie.
The subtlety of artistic suggestion was altogether lacking,
all the romance was gone.  The thing he had wished
delicately hinting at, a mysterious romantic melody for
*celli con sordini*, to suit the orchestra of the evening and
of their mood, was become a commonplace tune for a
drunken cornet to play outside a public-house door on
Saturday night.  All at once he began to feel that the
coverlet of dreams was fast slipping away from him.
The moonlight was clearer: the hedges harder in outline.
In spite of the hand that lay on the girl's arm, as though
to retain that part of the dream at any rate, they were
no longer spiritually united.  There was an intangible,
invisible, impalpable something between them as keen as
the sword of flame at the Gate of the Garden of Eden.
Like many another martyr before him, in his crucial hour
the roseate illusions that had fortified him to his purpose
were floating away from him now, and leaving him only
his actual senses to realise externals and apprise him of
the horrible pangs of suffering.  Before, he had been
temporising at the stake; trying the rope to see how its
bondage felt, without allowing the cruel loops to cut into
his flesh; posturing as martyr before the girl in mind
only—but now he had made the girl a participant of his
purpose.

And the worst of it was that he must profess that the
parting meant nothing so very much to either of them.
He must not insult the girl by suggesting that his going
affected only her—that she would deeply feel the loss of
him who felt her loss so little that he was leaving her for
another.  And yet!  And yet!

O Lord!  And yet!  All his present life was but a
meaningless series of disjunctive conjunctions; words of
contingency and speculation; ifs, buts, supposes,
peradventures, perchances, and the like.

"I say ... you 're very silent, little woman," he
remarked, after a while.  "Don't be hard on a fellow
because he 's down on his luck.  You 're not offended with
me, are you?"

"Offended with you?" she said.  "Oh, no, indeed.
What should make me offended ... with you?"

He made believe to laugh.

"Well, I don't know what should.  Only ... perhaps
because you 're disappointed to find that I 'm just as much
an ass as any other man.  Oh, music 's nothing to do with
it, believe me.  A man may play like an angel on the
piano—as I do—and yet play as giddy a goat as any on four
legs, in real life, as I 've done.  But what 's done is done.
I was younger in those days, perhaps.  All the same, I 'm
not too old for a little sympathy.  Say something to me,
won't you?"

"I hardly know what to say," said the girl.  "I was
trying to think."

"Say something to give me a little courage, then," he
suggested; "something to strengthen my knees a little.
You don't know how white-livered and weak-kneed it
makes a man feel when the marriage noose is round his
neck, and he seems to hear the bell tolling, and sees the
chaplain getting out his little prayer-book, and knows his
hour 's approaching to be launched into eternity."

Even to himself he recognised how beautifully his
words were serving the purpose of concealing truth with
truth.  No girl on earth—certainly not the girl by his
side—could have probed his utterances, in that candid
voice of his, and said: "You are speaking the truth.  You
are going to this wedding like a weak-kneed cur, and all
the time you are trying to cling to me for comfort and
consolation—and yet trying not to demean yourself in
my eyes by letting me know it.  I am the girl you love,
and you are trying to experience the pleasure of my love
vicariously; by proxy, as it were.  If I were in the other
one's place, and she were in mine, not all the waters of
the world would keep you apart from her."

No, no.  His smiling, semi-serious words were like a
rosewood veneer over deal wood, and there was no
penetrating them.

They were close on Hesketh's corner now.  He had
told her all, and he had told her nothing.  Words—hundreds,
thousands, millions of words were still wanting to
make the parting as it should be.

And all at once he felt the power of the dream returning;
the impulse to take the girl in his arms; to kiss her;
to tell her that he was but jesting, and that he loved her
above everything and everybody in the world; pawn all
his future, with its honor and duty, for the pleasure of
that one glorious avowal.  How could he let her depart
out of that empty leave-taking without a word, a sign,
when his heart was like a vast sea, and she the spirit
moving on its waters?  Even as he thought of it his
fingers tightened possessively upon the girl's warm arm;
his lips dropped persuasively; the words seemed to rise
to his mouth as easily as bubbles to the surface of water,
for the mere thinking.

"You have not said ... you are sorry I am going
yet," he told her.  "Are you sorry?"

Did the girl tremble?  Her face was turned away from
him.  Was she laughing or was she crying?

"Are you sorry?" he asked her again pleadingly, conveying
by inflection what he wished her answer to be; his
lips lower towards her still.

"Yes..."

He caught the word, but it was more like a shiver—as
though all the tissues of her body had conspired to give it
tremulous birth, like the whispering of a tree.  Her head
was still turned from him.

"Very sorry?" he pressed her.  "Tell me.  See; lift up
your face..."  His own face sank lower, as low as the
hat brim.  "... You are not crying?"

He released his hold of the girl's arm, slid his hand
about her and drew her to him by the waist.  Into that
warm socket she yielded submissively, like a child into its
cradle.  She was his now; his in all but the asking.  They
were still walking, but their walk was the ghostly stepless
progress of a mist moving across the meadows.  The
dream was back again, and the gloriousness of it.  He put
out his left hand, with the basket hanging from its wrist,
and took the girl's soft warm chin to pull it gently
towards his lips.

"Pam..." he said.

Out of the yellow moonlight, or out of the denser substance
of the hedges, or out of the earth at their feet, was
shaped suddenly the motionless figure of a man.  Whether
he had been there from the first, or had come there by
approach, or had overtaken them, appeared not.  As though
he were a black pestle in an alchemist's mortar, he seemed
deposed there, without movement or volition of his own.
At sight of him all the dream was precipitated in sediment
of actuality, that fell down to the ground in fine,
imperceptible residue, like the shattered particles of a bubble.
The Spawer's arm slid to his side, and they dropped
apart several paces, guiltily.

"It is the schoolmaster," Pam said, awakening out of
the sleep with a voice of sudden terror, under her breath.
"... I must be going."

The Spawer commenced to hum, and craning his neck
up to the moon as though he were aware of this orb for
the first time, made pleasant allusion in a clear,
uncompromising voice to "A jolly fine night."  The man was on
Pam's side of the road.  As they reached him the girl
stopped.

"They have been looking for you," the man said.

"I am here," Pam answered, in her old clear voice.

The man did not move.  He remained there motionless,
seeming to take the words as an intimation that she
would accompany him.  Pam held out her hand for the
basket that the Spawer was swinging with an assumption
of negligence and ease.

"Thank you," she said.

The dark figure of the man embarrassed all speech.
The Spawer handed the basket over into her hands
without a word.

"And the serviette..." he said, drawing it from his
pocket.

Pam received it from him and thanked him again.

Then there was a slight pause.

"Good-night!" she said.

"Good-night!"

They shook hands with a strange and ludicrous politeness.

Had they been naughty children, and this stranger the
angry parent of one of them, they could not have parted
under a deeper cloud of ignominy and disgrace.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXI

.. vspace:: 2

The "Good-night" so soullessly inflected, that the girl
gave to the Spawer with her tepid fingers of politeness,
was to her the leave-taking of all her happiness.  In
joy she was an orphan.  Her heart was choking her as she
surrendered herself to the sombre shadow in the roadway;
the black anchor that seemed to hold her fast now
at the end of an iron cable.  If she could have died then,
in her mingled agony and shame, sorrow, mortification,
and sickening despair, she would have wished it.  For
a while no word was spoken.  She and the gloomy figure
of the man walked towards Ullbrig together, very far
apart, without looking at each other, almost as though
they were ignoring each other's presence.  A great silent
wall of division rose up between them, a barrier of
disgrace, on the shady side of which walked Pam.  Through
all this silence was going on a mighty struggle.  The man,
with throbbing neck and veins of whipcord in his forehead,
was desperately striving to find his pretext to scale
the barrier or break through and speak to the girl on
ground of common understanding, but a sense of shame
for what he had seen withheld him.  Great waves of
heat and cold swept him alternately.  That which he had
witnessed chilled him with a horrible fear for the terrors
of that which he had not witnessed, and yet fired him to
torrid anguish.  That embrace that had struck him sickly
to stone in the roadway ... was it the beginning, or was
it the end?  Had the girl been playing him false all
through?  With the magnified doubts of his class
concerning the evil magnetism of musicians and the
slackness of their scruples, his heart was wrung with horrible
apprehensions as to how far the Spawer possessed this
power, and how far he had used it.  Was this girl—whom
he loved with a pure, blind, white-heat passion—was she,
while scorning his approaches, so deeply infatuated with
the visitor from the Cliff that she coveted rather to be the
temporary toy of the one than the honored wife of the
other?  The doubt stung him to the quick.  He wanted
to speak, yet dared not for fear his words might betray
this thorny crown of his torture.  Oh, what he would
have given to know the history of that walk from Shippus
to Ullbrig; what would he not have given to be able
to wipe it out of all their lives and memories as though
it had never been.

"Let me ... carry your basket," he said awkwardly,
after a while.  He tried to round his voice mentally
before using it, to file down its roughness of emotion; but
it came out hoarse and unequal in spite of him.

To the girl, troubled with her own personal misery
and the gnawing misery of speculation as to how much
of her weakness he had witnessed, and what he was
thinking of her, and the acute irksomeness of his
presence at this crisis of her life, when she sought only
solitude, the mere relinquishing of the basket seemed like
another surrender.  She clung to it in spirit, as though it
were a straw on the black waters of her foundering.

"It is nothing ... thank you," she told him.  "I can
carry it."

He felt the resistance to his offer, and the motive that
urged it, and the blood swept up about his head again.
The girl, though she did not look at him, saw the hands
go up to his throat.

"You were ... not carrying it ... before," he hazarded.

"We are so near home."  The girl hesitated, and there
was a tremble in her voice.  "You may carry it, if you
like," she said, and handed it to him.

"Thank you."

He took it from her with an awkward scuffle of
untutored politeness.  Even as he felt the pride of the
possession he felt the shame and degradation of it too—to
walk by the side of her as the Spawer had done; to carry
her basket as the Spawer had done; to try and delude his
poor, anguished soul with these fragments of a banquet
to which he had been an uninvited spectator (a guest
never), and make himself believe he was in some sort
enjoying her favor.  Ah, poor fool! poor fool!  By his side
walked the phantom figure of the Spawer, communing
with the girl, and his miserable guard of flesh and blood
was powerless to prevent it, or intercept the messages of
remembrance passing between them.  Ah, if he could; if
he could.  All his life was bound up in the girl.  He had
wrestled for her in body and soul.  On his knees he had
prayed for her, begging God to give her to him, to incline
her heart, to soften her, to pour into her breast the grace
to love him.  He had got out of his bed to pray for her
in the sleepless night-time when she ... had been
dreaming-of this visitor, perhaps ... And now.

"Have you been fair to me?" he asked her suddenly,
in a low drenched voice.  The words rushed up to his
mouth on a tide of hot blood.

The girl had felt the imminence of the attack.  She
had been, in spirit at least, a participant of the man's
agony; had felt the blood rushing up again and again
with its impulsion of speech.

"What do you mean?" she asked faintly, and turned
her head aside momentarily, as though to the gust of a
strong wind.

"Have you been fair to me?" he asked her again.

For very fear he dared not alter these words that he
had once uttered and was sure of, lest the alteration
might involve him too much.

"I have not been unfair..." she said.

She put out the defence like an arm that almost recognises
the justice of the blow aimed, and makes no real
effort to ward it.

"You have been very unfair," he said hoarsely.  "You
know you have been very unfair.  Even your voice betrays
you."  He was on the point of calling upon his eyes
for corroboration of her unfairness, but he stopped
himself with an effort that the girl heard and understood.
"You made me a promise," he said.  "One night ... what
did you promise?"

"It was n't a promise," the girl protested.  "I never
promised you anything.  I told you I dared not promise
... and I could n't promise ... and I did n't promise."

"It was a promise," he said again.  "If it was n't a
promise ... it was your word, and I trusted your word.
You said there was no bar to my loving you.  You told
me ... and you know you told me, that I might go on
loving you, and try to win ... your esteem.  All this
time I have been believing you and your word....  Are
you going to tell me now that I 've misjudged you?"

He spoke very rapidly and jerkily and hoarsely, as
though he were himself ashamed of this necessity to put
his thoughts into words and hear them.

"I only said it because ... it was because you pressed
me so hard.  You would not take my answer.  You
looked so ill."  The slow stream of tears was trickling
through the broken pauses of her speech.  "It was you
that put the words into my mouth.  You told me it would
kill you if I said there was no hope.  How could I say
there was no hope?  I could n't; I could n't.  You forced
me to say that you might go on loving me ... but I told
you it was n't a promise."

Her tears were running with her words now.  She
wept for herself and for this man.  The thing she had
been dreading, it had come to pass.  She was an Ullbrig
hypocrite, a deceiver, a faith-breaker, an actor and a
worker of lies.

Ah, miserable little sinner, whose only sin perhaps, had
she known it, was the sin of an overflowing, over-generous
heart ... her day of reckoning was upon her now,
and her tears were bitter.

They walked along in silence for a step or two.
Though the man by her side was burning to burst forth
in a fiery Etna of denunciation and reproach, to subjugate
her and gain dominion over her by the sheer conflagration
of righteous anger, he dared not, lest she might
admit his charges, confess herself a sinner, and own
an unconquerable disregard of him.  To be allied to her
by an indefinite hope, frail as a silkworm's thread, was
heavenly compared with the blank severance of despair.
He was a retainer upon her favor, and must keep his
place.  What authority he held, to assume authority over
her, came from her.

"You told me ... I might love you," he said, straining
his voice to breaking point in his fierce desire to hold
it steady and keep its control, "... that there was no
other bar—no other bar.  Have you been making a mock
of me all this time?"

"No, no."  He knew the girl's two hands were together
in their agony of protestation, but they both spoke
with their faces unturned, each looking before them
fixedly.  "Believe anything of me ... but that," she
begged him.  "I have never mocked you.  I would never
mock you."

He hesitated a moment, and then:

"Are you ... making a mock of yourself?" he asked her.

The question shook her first like a wind, and then
stilled her suddenly.

"What do you mean?" she asked him.

"Are you making a mock of yourself?"

They were at the first of the houses now, in the little
high street, and there were figures moving about between
them and the Post Office; figures that might stop; figures
that might speak; figures that might peer into her
tear-stained face when the light of some yellow window
shone on it.

"I cannot go on ... like this," she said, with a half-sob
and a shiver.  "I 'm not fit to meet anybody.  Let us
turn back."

They turned back, facing the moon.  The girl walked
with her white, troubled face set before her, glistening
under its tears, like a second moon.  The man, stealing
one covert look at it, saw that no resumption of this
subject was likely from her quarter.  She was in the
clairvoyant state of trouble that would have led her to Shippus
again, unchecked, without a word.

"You say you have not made a mock of me," he took
up again, in his monotonous, tightened voice, "... but
you are making a mock of somebody.  Who is it?  Is it
yourself?"

"Why am I making a mock of somebody?" the girl asked.

"Is it fair to yourself?" he said, and his voice grew
tighter and tighter, "... to be taking walks down the
Shippus road ... at night ... with a stranger?  You
know ... what sort of a reputation the Shippus road
has at night-time.  You know what sort of company
... you are likely to meet ... what sort of company you
have met to-night."  His voice so constricted about his
throat that it seemed like to strangle him.  "Is it fair to
yourself ... putting me out of the question altogether
... that you should give people ... give them the
opportunity of saying ... saying things about you?"

The girl had no answer but the faster flow of her tears.
She knew well enough that he had spoken no more than
the truth.  Judged from an external standpoint, she
looked no better than her misguided sisters—farm
wenches and hinds' lasses—that wandered to their shame
by the hedgerows under the shades of night.  And for
this, and all her other delinquencies, and all her other
sins, unhappinesses, and penances of suffering ... she
wept.

"I think too much of you ... ever to risk bringing
you within reach of people's slanders.  I would rather cut
my hand off ... than that I should hear you spoken
lightly of.  To me ... your character is more sacred
than my own.  I would guard it with my life if need be.
But what is it ... to others?"  The reins of his passion
slipped his grasp a little; the girl's tearful endurance
encouraged him to speak more forcibly.  "What do men of
towns care for the character ... of a girl?  They come
to-day and they go to-morrow.  What does it matter to
them whether they leave shame ... and broken hearts
behind?  A girl's heart is a plaything for them ... and
when they have broken it ... they throw it aside.
There are plenty more hearts to be broken in the big
cities."

Like all others of his untraveled kind, he had the wild,
generic idea of cities and of the large places of the earth
as being seats of sinfulness and iniquity.  Wickedness
filled them and saturated the dwellers therein.  Outside
Ullbrig, and the little bit of Yorkshire contiguous with
which he was acquainted, the rest of the world (of which
he had the fleetingest personal knowledge) was Sodom
and Gomorrah.  All the men who came from afar, and
had the faint traces of fashion about their raiment, were
men of danger; ministers of the world, the flesh, and the
devil.  Perhaps, in his own narrow track of ignorant
bigotry, he was not so very far from the truth after all; but
it shocks one's cosmopolitan soul to have to subscribe to
such tenets.  Not because of what they contain, but
because of the uncatholicity of the formula—a very stocks,
indeed, for the confinement of one's belief.

"What does it matter ... to him ... whether he
makes you food for people's tongues?  All he cares about
is his own pleasure and gratification.  The attentions
... of such a man ... are an insult in themselves.  He will
know you down here, for his own purposes ... will
flatter you ... will walk with you; but would he know
you in the towns?  Would he walk with you ... before
his fine friends?  No, he would not.  He is treating you
as though you were a rose by the roadside, to be plucked
and cast away the moment he is tired of you.  Your
friends are not his friends.  You ought to see it
... and know it.  You have no right to be associating
yourself ... with a man whose acquaintance ... is so
ambiguous.  Does it matter to him that you are seen with him
... along the Shippus lane by night?  Does he care
whether you are the talk of every corner and gateway?
Does he ask for you honorably ... as I do, and seek to
guard your reputation by every means in his power?  No,
no.  When your name has become a byword he will go
back to his fine ladies and forget all about you."

"It is not true.  You are wrong," Pam struck in
tearfully, catching at the breast furthest away from him and
pressing under it with her rounded hand as though to hold
up her weak and trembling body, "... wickedly wrong.
You have no right to say those things ... and I have no
right to listen to you.  You think ... because ... because
you saw us at Hesketh's corner, and we were together....
But you are mistaken.  He met me ... as
I was going to Mr. Smethurst's, quite by accident, and
went with me.  And then ... we had tea ... at
Shippus together, and music, and stayed to watch the
moon ... and came back.  It was every bit my fault.
He does n't know anything about Shippus lane ... and
I thought of it, but I dared not tell him.  How could I?
He has been kinder to me than anybody else in the
world—except Father Mostyn.  He is a gentleman, and I know
it as well as you ... and so does he.  Is a gentleman
wicked because he 's a gentleman?  All the things
he has done for me ... he has done without ever
taking advantage of his kindness by a single word.
Other men have done things for me ... and asked
me to love them or marry them at once.  He has
never played with my heart as you say, or tried to
make love ... or make me unhappy.  He is too proud
to do such things.  You are wrong ... wickedly wrong.
Because ... you love me ... you think everybody
loves me.  He likes me ... but he does n't love me.  I
wish he did.  Oh, I wish he did!  But I 'm not good
enough for him ... and I know it.  There has never
been any question of his loving me.  He is engaged to
marry somebody else ... and he may leave Ullbrig any
day.  When he told me he was going ... I was so unhappy
that I began to cry.  I could n't help it.  I did n't
think he would notice ... but he did ... and tried to
comfort me.  And then ... then ... you were there
and saw.  And I love him," she said, almost fiercely—certainly
fiercely for Pam—"I love him.  I love him, and
I tell you.  Because he has been kind, and taught me
things, and played to me.  I love him in the same way I
love Father Mostyn.  What if he would n't walk with me
before his friends?  He has walked with me so kindly
here ... and made life so happy for me ... that it
will be like death without him.  Oh, I wish I were dead
now!  I wish I were dead now that he 's going!"

And turning aside by Lambton's gate, close on Hesketh's
corner, she laid her two arms upon the top rail,
and lowering her forehead, poured forth her wet sorrow
into the loose folds of her handkerchief, with her back
upon the man.  He stood, mortified and helpless, while
the girl's figure shook in the silent agony of wringing
forth her tears.  Even from her grief he was shut out.
He could not touch her, could not solace her, could not
draw near upon her.  He was but a beggar, permitted by
her bounty to sit at the gate of her heart; a wretched,
love-stricken leper, whose confessions of homage were as
unpleasant to her as the sight of raw wounds.  And now
she had turned the tables upon his whining reproaches.
It was he that stood guilty, not the girl—and yet his
guilt was mingled with an exultant sense of triumph too,
at the news she had told him.  The Spawer was going;
this evil weaver of charms was under order of departure.
Till then he would hold his tongue; bear with the surging
of his love.  When once this stumbling-block on the
pathway to the girl's heart was removed he could renew his
approaches—fill the void, even, that this stranger should
leave in it.

"I was actuated ... only by desire for your happiness,"
he told Pam, after he had suffered her to weep
awhile without interruption.  "What I have said to you,"
he tugged at his collar, "has been said ... through love
and for love."

The girl raised her head, wiped her eyes with the damp
ball of her handkerchief, and put it away into her pocket.

"Let us go back," she said.  And not another word
passed between them that night.

"'Ave ye brought 'er back wi' ye?" Emma Morland
called, coming to the passage end by the big clock, to
inquire of the schoolmaster when they entered by the front
door, and catching sight of Pam: "Goodness, lass, where
'ave ye been to all this time?  We was beginnin' to think
ye mud 'a gotten lost."

"I went to take Mr. Smethurst ... his wine," Pam said.

The schoolmaster passed through into the little kitchen.

"Ay, bud ah s'd think 'e 'll 'a drunken it all by this
time," Emma exclaimed, with not unkindly sarcasm.  She
had a reputation, even well deserved, in the district of a
tart tongue when occasion called for it—which it
frequently did—but to Pam her asperity was something in
the nature of a loving shield.  She could say the hardest
and flintiest utterances to Pam, and yet convey the sense
of kindness through them.  Her hand, indeed, was bony,
but its grasp was tender.  "An' 'ow did ye find t' old
gentleman?  No better, ah s'd think."

"No."

"Nay, 'e 'll nivver be no better i' this wuld, ah doot.
They gied ye yer tea, it seems."

"No-o."

"What!  En't ye 'ad it, then?"

"Yes, thank you, Emma."

"Where?"

"I had it at Shippus."

"At Shippus.  Well, ah nivver!  Did ye gan by yersen?"

"I met Mr. Wynne."

"An' 'as 'e been wi' ye all time?"

"Yes."

"'Ave ye onnly just come back?"

"... A little while ago."

Miss Morland's opinion was expressed by a pause.

"Come in an' get yer supper.  It 's all sett'n ready."

"I don't want any supper ... thank you, Emma."

"Not want yer supper?  What 's amiss wi' ye?"

"Nothing.  At least ... I have a headache."

"Ye 'ad n't a headache when ye started."

"It 's the heat.  It was very hot in the sun.  Where 's
uncle?"

"I' t' parlor."

"And aunt?"

"Ay."

"Say good-night to them both for me ... will you, Emma?"

"What ... are ye away to bed?"

"I think ... I shall be better there."

"That 's soon done wi' ye, onnyways."

Emma came closer and took a keen glance into the
girl's eyes.

"Ye look to me as though ye 'd been cryin'," she said.
"'Ave ye?"

Pam pretended not to hear the question.  Moreover,
she was quite prepared to cry again at the slightest
opportunity.  Emma took her by the arm.

"You 're all of a shake," she said, and held the girl
under scrutiny.  "Pam lass," she said, and dropped her
voice to a terrible whisper; "there 's nowt ... nowt
wrong wi' ye?  Ye 've not been gettin' into trouble?"

"Emma!"

Pam shook herself free of scrutiny with a burning face
of repudiation.

"Thank goodness!" Emma said devoutly.  "Bud it
can 'appen soon enough to onny on ye."  Emma testified
freely at all times to the frailty of her sex, from which
weakness, however, she dissociated herself, as a woman
possessed of the superior lamp of wisdom and common-sense
kept always burning.  And indeed, it shone so
conspicuously in her window that any bridegroom of
burglarious intentions would have been singularly intrepid
not to have been scared away by such a plain indication
of this virgin's alertness.  "Onnyway," Miss Morland
decided, "... seummut 's come tiv ye beside a 'eadache.
'As 'e been sayin' owt tiv ye?"

"Who?"

"Either on 'em."

"How can you, Emma! ..."

"'Ave they?"

"No...."

"Ay ... bud ah 'm none so sure."

"Good-night, Emma."

"Good-night, lass."

But before the others in the parlor Emma spoke with
happy unconcern:

"Come yer ways an' let 's 'ave supper," she said, with
her head through the door.  "Pam weean't be wi' us;
she 's ganned to bed.  Ah telt 'er she 'd better.  Lass 's
gotten a 'eadache, plain to see, wi' trampin' about i' sun
this afternoon-lookin' after other folks' comfort.  Ah
div n't want 'er settin' to, to side things away when we 're
done.  She would, for sure, if she set up.  Ah 'd to say
good-night to ye both for 'er, she telt me."

And that same evening, during a moment of the schoolmaster's
absence, the shoemaker delivered himself of a
strange remark to his wife and daughter.  He was
struggling with the big black Book at the time.

"'Ave ye noticed..." he inquired, in a confidential
undertone, and gazing at Emma and his wife over the
thick silver rims of his spectacles, "onnything about our
Pam, latelins?"

Emma Morland looked up sharply.

"What sewd there be to notice?" she asked, as though
the idea were charged with the sublimated essence of the
ridiculous.

"Div ye think ... there 's owt betwixt 'er an'..."
he jerked his thumb in the supposed direction of the
absent one, "t' schoolmester?"

"Div ah think stuff and nonsense!" Emma Morland said.

"Ay, bud ah 'm tellin' ye," the postmaster insisted.
"Noo, mark mah wods.  Ah 've watched 'em a goodish
bit o' late, an' ah 've seed a little o' seummut when they
did n't think there was onnybody to see owt."

"What 'ave ye seed wi' ye, then?" Miss Morland
inquired sceptically, but with a sharp eye.

"This much," the postmaster told her.  "Ah 've seed
'em talkin' together a dozen times when they did n't use
to talk one.  Ah 've knowed time when they 'd set i' a
room while clock ticked round almost, an' them nivver
say a wod—or they 'd gan their ways oot after a while,
mebbe.  Watch an' see if they 'll set i' a room aif a
minute noo wi'oot speakin'?  Ay, an' ah 've seed 'im kickin'
'is 'eels about passage end for 'er, when 'e did n't think ah
knowed owt about 'im, an' she 's come down tiv 'im i'
end.  Ay, an' ah 've tekt notice on 'im when she 's ganned
out o' room.  'E 's all of a fidget to be up an' after 'er,
an' get a wod wi' 'er on 'er way back.  Ay, an' 'e sets up
for 'er when she comes back fro' Vicarage.  It 'll be a
rum 'un if 'e wants 'er—an' ah 'm ready to lay 'e diz,
onny time.  Ah div n't know as all could wish better for
'er, so far as my own inclination gans.  'E 'd mek 'er a
good 'usband, an' 'ave a good roof to gie 'er, bud ah 'm
jealous t' General 'ud 'ave to be considered.  An' ah 've
my doots whether 'e 's man to think ower much about
syke [such] as schoolmesters."

"T' old 'umbug," Miss Morland ejaculated—though
whether in reference to the schoolmaster or the General
or his Reverence the Vicar, would be a difficult point to
decide.

But the subject, temporarily suspended by the entrance
of the schoolmaster himself, took deep root in the family
imagination—deeper root, still, indeed, in the well-nourished
soil of Miss Morland's common-sense, and testing
the hypothesis by what she had seen of Pam's conduct
to-night, and finding it in accord, she prepared herself to
wait and watch events with an eye as keen as that of one
of her own needles.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXII

.. vspace:: 2

Up rose the sun in the morning as though nothing had
happened, and spinning over the red and thatched
roofs of Ullbrig, took stock of the harvest fields, the
wheat in sheaf and stock, the oats outstanding; measured
the work to be done with a jocose eye as though he had
said "Aha!" and rubbed his hands in anticipation of a
glad time.

Into Pam's bedroom he peeped—prudently, through a
corner of the white blind—and found the girl open-eyed
upon her bed; thrown across it transversely in abandonment
of disorder, with her moistened handkerchief clasped
like a snow-ball in one hand.  It had been a night of anguish
and unutterable torture.  She had wept, she had prayed,
she had resolved, she had renounced, she had slept—at
once the mere fact of sleeping had awakened her—she
had tossed from pillow to pillow, turned them incessantly
to find some coolness for her fevered cheek; she had
risen, and watched from her window the slow arrival of
day; had seen the firmament of stars sliding away in the
west, like the giant glass of a cucumber frame.  The
doings of the day before were a delirium.  In her dreams
the schoolmaster, the dying man, the Spawer, Emma
Morland, the tea-room at Shippus, the donkeys, the
moon—were all mixed up in a horrid patchwork mantle of
remembrance.  The Spawer was going.  There would be
no more music; no more French; no more walks and
talks in the morning; no more evenings at the Vicarage;
no more evenings at Cliff Wrangham.  In the days when
they had touched upon this final parting with the light
inconsequence for a thing far distant—as people speak
of death—she had entered into schemes for the continuance
of all the studies that he had inaugurated.  She
should go to Hunmouth for piano lessons.  She should
have conversational French lessons *chez* M. Perron,
whose brass plate and dirty windows she had seen often
on her visit to Hunmouth.  Ah, but that was when the
Spawer had been with her.  It had been bitter-sweet at
times to dwell on future sadness, with the warm hand of
present happiness to take hold of, as a little child likes to
peer round the bogey-man's corner, holding tight to its
mother's fingers.

Now!

Ah, now!  All was different.  She wanted to die.  Life
was n't worth living any longer.  Now she knew for
herself the feeling that the schoolmaster had suffered and
told her of: the dull undesire to live, the carelessness of
existence, the agonies of hopeless despair.  She knew it,
but it made her pity him no more.  The thought of him,
sleeping within a mere yard or two of her, through a
couple of frail thicknesses of bricks and mortar, filled her
with horror and repugnance.  All the night through his
cough had come to her at intervals, telling of that one
undesirable companion of her sleeplessness.  She was
being left to him.  Like a shadow now he would dog her
steps.  And with the instinctive fear that he would finally
overcome her, in spite of all, that she would drift
powerlessly to him, for lack of anchor to hold her firm, or
impulse to move, she shuddered tears into her pillow, and
clenched the coverlet with tightened fingers.

For there was only one man in the world for her, and
he was going.  She loved him; she loved him; she loved
him.  She knew that she was not for him or he for her;
that he was above her on the ladder of life, treading
cruelly upon her fingers, as it were, without knowing it,
and she too proud to cry out; that this love of hers could
never be consummated.  But she loved him for all that;
drove the sharp knowledge of it into her shrinking soul
with the vindictive pleasure of a spur.

She knew now, now that he was going and it was
ended, that she loved him with all the love of which her
soul was capable.  Would he have had to plead at her
skirts ... as the schoolmaster had pleaded?  No, no,
no!  She knew it.  She would have kept him waiting no
longer at the door of her heart than at the door of the
Post Office itself.  Had he just come to her and looked at
her, and said "Pam" ... oh, she would have known.
She would have known and gone into his open arms without
shame, like a bird to the nest.  But she was not for
him; never had been; never would be.  She had no anger
against him because she was smitten.  He was above all
anger.  She had no silly impulses of passion to declare
herself deceived; no reproaches because he had never
before pronounced himself a man pledged.  Her own heart
had been so pure that it saw no impurity in his.  Even
when he had put his arm about her and drawn her to him,
and uttered her name and looked at her ... there was
nothing in that to cast dishonor upon the other girl.  It
was only that he had detected her suffering, had
understood that she was weeping and unhappy at his
departure ... had put his arm about her to give her
comfort, as though she 'd been a little child.  It was a
beautiful act of tenderness and compassion ... nothing
more.  Poor girl! poor girl!  She was sick with the
misery of love, that, not knowing whence came this
sudden sorrow, multiplied causes without end; shames,
ignominies, degradations.  Even the scene with Emma
Morland, that would have slipped away from her like water
off the breast-feathers of a swan, had her heart been
sound, was branded now into her remembrance with the
sear of red-hot iron.  Emma's look; her inquiries; the
grasp of her hand; the drop of her voice; her anxious
whisper—somehow, wretched girl that she was, she
seemed in some fashion to have deserved them; to be
guilty of some great unknown shame; to be a lost sister,
sinking like sediment through the clear waters of life to
its dregs, touching here and there as she descended.  The
day was full of terrors for her; the morning meeting
with Emma and with the schoolmaster; the facing of her
uncle and her aunt; their solicitude about a headache that
had never been.  More Ullbrig hypocrisy to wade
through; more shame of lying and untruth.

From her bed she rose at length, a soulful picture of
trouble; replaced the fallen pillow and drew up the blind.
An echo of its sound of cord and creaking roller reached
her faintly from elsewhere, with a muffled cough, and
telling her that her own activity was being duplicated by
the ever-vigilant shadow, struck pain across her mouth.
The slide window was already part open, but she flung
it to its extreme width, and resting her hands upon the
white-painted sill, put out her head with red lips parted,
and tried to air her bosom of its close, suffocating
atmosphere of trouble that she had been breathing and
rebreathing all through the hours of this night.  Down
below, under a thin attenuated mist, lay the little
patchwork kitchen garden of potatoes and onions and peas and
kidney beans, and the dingy vegetable-narrow frame,
like a crazy quilt.  And beyond that, away to her left,
rolled out the fields in the face of the sun to Cliff
Wrangham ... where he was.  From her place she could
distinguish the misty shadow, like a frost picture on a pane,
that proclaimed Dixon's.  How often, in the days that
were gone, had she opened this casement and looked just
so across the fields, and said to herself: "Will there be any
letters for him this morning? ... and shall I see him?"  But
now she looked across and said: "I dare not see him.
God send there may be no letter this morning."  All the
world looked strange to her.  It seemed that her eyes, like
the eyes of an infant, were not yet trained to correct the
images formed upon her retina.

Poor girl! poor girl!  She had been so happy once.
So very happy with her six shillings a week, and no
desires beyond the desire to be at peace with her neighbors
and return good for evil.

At last she lighted her little oil stove, that had once
been the supreme of her ambition throughout a month's
saving, and set her can of bath-water to boil.  Every
morning she made the complete ablution of her body ... and
in summer sometimes twice.  In this respect, at least,
there was nothing of the Ullbrig hypocrite about her.  As
Father Mostyn told the Spawer, and more than once, for
Pam was a subject to his liking:

"Ha! different class; different class altogether.  No
mistaking it.  You can trust her inside and out.  Does n't
dress herself first and then put a polish on her face with
a piece of soapy flannel, taking care to rub the lather well
in.  Ha! that 's our Ullbrig way.  Leave the neck for
Sunday, and rub the soap well in.

"But, thank heaven, that 's not Pam's way.  Can't mistake
it.  Has the instincts of the bath.  Tubs herself like
an officer of dragoons.  No mistaking the derivation of
that.  It does n't come from the people; it's a pure blood
inheritance; a military strain.  She keeps her body as
clean as her mind.  You could put her in a duchess's
bed, and her grace need n't be frightened of going in
alongside of her.  Ha! beautiful, beautiful! the grace of
cleanliness that is next to godliness.  Her body would
almost get her into heaven."

And indeed, St. Peter is scarcely the man I take him
for if he would n't.

Leighton's Psyche unwound herself from long veils of
diaphanous drapery on the brink of a marble bath, and
immersed herself in azure water without soap—so far as
the artist indicates in the picture.  Pam's setting was a
big, round, sponge bath, scrupulously enamelled white by
her own hand; she did not stand pensive by its side, as
though wondering whether to-morrow or the day after
would do as well; she unwound herself from no sensuous
mists of lawn; she held an active-service towel in her
hand, rough like a tiger's tongue, and in place of the
diaphanous draperies the steam from the hot water rolled
and curled and licked about her lovingly as she poured it
into the bath, and tried it with fingertips of no
indecision—but she was Psyche for all that.  Her body was as
sleek and supple as the picture Psyche; her flesh, where
the sun had not browned, was as white as alabaster and
as sound as a young apple; her limbs as shapely as any
that Leighton's brush could have given her.  When she
stood up, with her firm, round bosom thrown out, and
dipping the big Turkey sponge into the wash-basin of
cold water, pressed it to her with both hands as though
she were hugging the desire of her heart, while the water
slid down her snowy torso, tinged with warm glow of
pink now, like marble, and ran, still clinging about her
limbs and body, to her feet; and dipped again, and
again pressed, and again and still again, till the water at
her service was exhausted, she was the best, most beautiful
type of English girl; unforced in growth, but developed
gradually in pure air and pure thought; not one
member of her corporeal republic in advance of the other,
or of herself; all of them, indeed, reserved in their
development rather than in advance of it, but awaiting only
the ripening.  The beautiful picture of a girl on the
threshold of womanhood, and waiting in all chastity to
be called, without any indecorous rush to be in advance
of the summons.  Ah, girls, girls, girls!  Always anxious
to be women.  Do not struggle so inordinately to be ripe
for the market.  Do you think man is such a poor judge
that he does not know the merits of green fruit, or so
witless that he does not know the dangers of the ripe?
Keep your thoughts and bodies green, like oranges for
shipment, for indeed you are perishable fruit.

The stimulus of the bath restored to some extent the
freshness of the girl's mind, and gave to her sorrow a
cleanly, less bedraggled emotion.  From her eyes she
swilled away all traces of the night's tears.  Thank
Heaven, she renovated very easily; a porcelain girl could
not have ceded the dust of trouble more completely.  She
showed no redness about the lashes; no swelling of the
lids; no dark hollows above the cheek-bone.  Her flesh
had not sickened in the least.  A little press of the
fingertip on its plumpness, and lo! it sprang back alive and
responsive, like a cushion, with a little pink blush at the
salutation; it did not respond with doughy sluggishness.
Her lips had lost none of their fire of ruby; they had not
consumed at all to grey ash; there was no dryness to
show how great the flame had been, no withering like the
dried leaf of a rose.  Moist and elastic they looked as
ever; the beautiful downward pull about their corners—as
though an invisible Cupid were trying hard to bend
this bow of his—might be more divinely accentuated, but
that would only be to an acute observer who, holding the
secret of the girl's sorrow as we do, searched keenly upon
her face for the outward signs of it.  Her cheeks were
still as smooth and creaseless as ivory; her brow like a
tablet on which nothing evil could ever be written.  The
same old Pam she looked and seemed to everybody but
herself.  Ah, if only one's mind would wash like one's
body—what blissful sinners we could be.

And with the strangely awakened desire for cleanliness,
the feverish thirst of a mind to counteract by outward
purity its inward contamination, the desire even to change
all the old garments of yesterday's turpitude, to invest
herself in a new atmosphere, to give herself a new mind
and a new body and a new environment, if she might,
she drew on her legs black cotton-silk stockings of the
sort she wore on Sundays; buckled them with the best
pretty blue silk garters of her own making (Emma had
a pair like these too), clad herself in linen of snowy
white, unfolded from her neat store in drawer and
cupboard; and hid all this dazzling envelopment under a
pretty pale print frock that could have stood up of its
own cleanliness—cool and fresh and rigid as an iceberg.
And round her throat she clipped a snowy collar, and
tied it with a crimson bow of silk.  To be cool and clean,
and be conscious of it.  Let the mind burn, if it will, so
long as the body does not reproach us.

Thus she was clad at last, and came forth to face the
day, diffusing little wafts of cool print and white linen at
every movement of her body; little breaths, fresh and
unperfumed, smelling of nothing but young girlhood and
cleanliness, that the nostril curled gratefully to inhale and
retain, as reviving to the spirit as puffs of breeze blown
into some burning valley from snow-clad mountains.

Slowly the early hours of the day wore on, and shaped
themselves, outwardly at least, to the semblance of all
other days that had gone before.  Days in Ullbrig are as
alike as pennies.  This might have been yesterday,
or a day out of last week, or a day out of last year.
Only the change in oneself and one's outlook told of the
relentless passage of time.  They sat at breakfast in the
second kitchen, this strange assortment of table company.
The girl, like a star plucked from heaven, cleansed
with the dew, and exhaling the freshness of skies and
dawn; the postmaster, with his genial honest face of
shrewd stupidity, brown as snuff and wrinkled like
morocco leather, who cut bread with his knife and thumb
and shoved it home with the haft, making a pouch of one
cheek while he talked out of a corner of the other; who
stirred his cup with the noise of a grindstone, and looped
his thumb round his spoon while he drank to prevent its
slipping down his throat.  Mrs. Morland, with her
relaxed face of maternal good-nature, like a well-buttered
muffin, who looked as though she lacked the energy for
long-sustained anger, which, in truth, she did.  The
vigilant Emma, sitting bolt-upright, as a sort of human cruet,
vinegary and peppery—whose acidulated conversation almost
lent the zest of pickles to the meal.  And last of all
the schoolmaster, peering ruminatively—not to say
furtively—into his plate as though it were a book he pored
over.  When he masticated there were muscles that
worked in his temples and imparted an air of grave,
cerebral activity.  His cough troubled him this morning,
and his face bore the haggard evidences of sleeplessness.

No word of allusion to last night's matter passed
between these two, but the constrained silence of each
towards the other was like a finger laid inexorably upon
this page of their past.  He was present when the
postmaster inquired of Pam about her headache, but
recorded no expression of sympathy.  Perhaps Pam's
crimson blush deterred him; but he lingered, brushing his hat
in the passage before departing for school, and when
Pam happened to make a journey into the front parlor
he interposed himself by the door against her return.
Pam finding him there, still brushing his hat as though
he were an automatic hat-brusher, stopped in the
doorway coming out, and stood before him without
speaking—not angrily or resentfully or reproachfully—but
decidedly with the unhappiness of awakened remembrance
upon her downcast face and trembling lip.

"I only wanted..." he began, in a low voice, almost
inaudible, "... to tell you.  Last night I—I said
things to you ... that perhaps I ought n't to have said.
I can't remember now exactly what I did say, but I 'm
... I 'm very sorry I said anything."

Pam told him it did n't matter the least bit.  He
was n't, please, to trouble.

"I did it for the best," he explained, "... at the time."

Pam said ... she was sure he did.  He was n't,
please, to think about it.  It appeared, however, the only
thing he was capable of thinking about.  He seemed to
have a difficulty in tearing himself away from it; brushing
his hat the while.  It is fortunate school started when
it did, or he would have worn all the remaining nap off.

"Will you please try ... and forget what I said to
you ... and forgive me?"

Pam said ... she had forgotten already.  A shade
crossed over his face to think that she should so soon
have forgotten words that had been so vital to him at the
time, but the forgiveness that accompanied it relieved the
momentary disquietude.

"I hope..." he suggested—and in the pauses he
brushed his hat fiercely—"... that it will make ... no
difference to us.  I hope we shall be ... as we ... as
we were before."

Pam hoped so too, an invalid hope that walked slowly,
and touched the walls of silence for support as it went.

"Noo," said the postmaster triumphantly, in the clean
little kitchen, holding up a hand to enjoin attention, and
jerking his thumb violently in the direction of the parlor
door, whence the brushing of the hat and the low
murmur of voices could plainly be heard.  "What did ah tell
ye?  There they are agen, whisperin' an' mummelin'.
As soon as ivver 'e got agate wi' 'is 'at i' passage Pam
started to be after 'im."

"Sh!  Be still wi' ye, then," said Miss Morland, going
nearer to the door.  "Div ye want to mek 'em think we 're
listenin' tiv 'em?"

But even while she spoke the sound of the hat-brush
ceased, and the subsequent shutting of the front door
announced that the schoolmaster had departed to his
duties—having told Pam that after this morning these
duties would be at an end until harvest was over.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIII

.. vspace:: 2

Half an hour later the mail cart rattled up before
the two-fold Governmental door over the big round
cobbles, and the fiery figure of James Maskill, red and
shining like a new-boiled lobster, fresh from his sun-bath,
invaded the Post Office, blowing the sweat off his mouth
on to the floor in a fierce "Bf-f-f!" with a shake of the
head, and slammed the letter-bag on to the counter in a
strenuous but not aggressive greeting.

"Noo," he said to the postmaster, mopping his face at
him with a red handkerchief, and "Noo," again to Pam,
mopping the inside of his cap.  "Mah wod!  Bud it 's
gannin' to be warm to-day, before it's done."

"Will you have a drink, James?" Pam asked him.

At the sight of that ominous bag, so full of deadly
inertness and possibility, her heart had thumped her like
a stone in a box.  Yes or no; yes or no; yes or no?

"What of?" James asked her straightway.

"Of ... of ... what would you like?"

"Nay ... 'appen ah 'm best wi'oot," James decided,
a great mantle of modesty falling over him at this
suggestion of choice.

"Not if you want one, you 're not," Pam said.

Her fingers were burning, and her heart was dreading
the opening of the bag.  Was there?  Was n't there?
Was there?  Was n't there?  She put her hand to her
side again.  James only thought she slackened the grip
of her belt.

"Ah could do wi' un," he admitted reluctantly, "so far
as that gans."

"Milk ... would you like?" Pam suggested.

"Nay ... ah mun't mix 'em," he declared oracularly,
and licked his parched lips with a smack of apprehension.

"Mix what?" Pam asked.

"Ah 've 'ad one ... o' t' road," he explained.  "Bud
'appen yon barril 's thruff by noo.  She wor drawin' a
bit thick last time ye asked me."

"Ye 're best wi'oot, Jaames Maskill," came the voice of
Emma Morland, from the interior of the Post Office,
"... this time o' mornin'."

"Ay, ah think ah 'm, mebbe," said the postman, plunging
hands into his pockets and screwing up his mouth for
a broken-hearted whistle.

"Gie 'im a glass o' lemonade," said the voice again.
"'E can 'ave that an' welcome."

"Will you have a glass of lemonade?" asked Pam.

"Ay, ah 'm willin', if it suits ye," the postman acknowledged.

A hand appeared at the inner door holding a lemonade
bottle and a thick tumbler (the latter looking as though it
had once held marmalade in Fussitter's window), and a
second hand, when Pam had possessed herself of these,
held forth a boxwood lemonade opener.

The postman drew forth the effervescing liquid thirstily
into his profounds, with his red chin mounting up step
by step as though it were going upstairs, and a great
fizzling sound from within as if he were a red-hot man,
and let the glass rest on inverted end upon his lips for a
space, to make sure it had yielded its last drop, and set it
down on the counter with a great breathed "Ah!" of
appreciation, holding his mouth open while the sparkles
needled his inside.

"Noo let 's away," he said, "... or we s'll be 'avin'
old Tankard prawtestin' us to Goovinment agen."

He said this because Pam had already opened the bag
and was sorting the letters with quick, nervous fingers.
Those for James Maskill's district went to the right hand
of her; those for her own to the left.  Her heart began
to beat furiously.  Now the impulse seized her to spread
out all these letters over the counter and to furrow with
both hands among them for the letter she feared to find.
She knew by an instinct so strong that she never for a
moment questioned it, what characteristics the fatal letter
would possess.  In her mind's eye she saw, with such
clearness that her actual eye could scarcely add aught to
the confirmation, the thin foreign envelope, the green
stamps, the familiar superscription.  She went cold and
she went hot.  Her ears burned, and there were strange
noises opening inside them like whistles and hummings,
as though in protest to the insupportable outer silence,
the imperturbable calm of the Post Office.  But the
postman was watching her, and the postmaster from his high
deal stool.  It seemed as though they were all three
silently concentrated upon the appearance of that fatal
missive.  Her emotions hastened, delayed, evaded, shuffled,
ceased; but before these two onlookers her fingers
went on regularly as clockwork.

Right, left.  Right, right, right.

Left, left.

Right....

Left....

James Maskill, watching her, thought she hesitated
there for an almost inappreciable moment, as though she
had detected her fingers in blundering, and expected to
see her transfer the letter from her own pile to his.  But
she had not blundered.  No, no; she had not blundered.
The distribution of the envelopes went on again apace,
as though she were dealing hands from Fate's pack.
Left, right; left, right; left, left, left.  She allotted the
last letter, and pushed James Maskill's budget towards
him across the counter with a heroic smile, enough to
make his eyes water.  It was the smile such as a dying
martyr might bequeath to those she loved, and by whom
she had been loved.  All was death and the coldness of
it underneath, but at times like these death, coming from
within, drives out the soul from its earthly tenement,
and as it lingers on the threshold of the flesh before
departing, the flesh is glorified.  Many smiles had Pam
given the postman in his time ... but this one clung to
him—so far as anything seemed to him—that she might
almost love him.  That smile accompanied James Maskill
throughout his morning's round.  Ullbrig, looking
beneath its blinds and through its muslin curtains, and out
of the cool, gauze-protected windows of its dairies at
the toiling figure of the postman—hot, perspiring, and
dusty—could have little imagined that he was the carnal
receptacle of a smile; that he held Pam's last look
enclosed in his secretive body as though it had been the
precious pearl and he the rugged oyster.  But so it was.
He scarcely noticed the shining of the outer sun, to such
extent did the internal brightness light him.

And meanwhile, while James Maskill fed his heart
upon that one smile and thought what a treasury of bliss
it would mean to possess the possessor of it, the possessor
walked along, a miserable bankrupt of happiness.
Scarcely another smile remained to her.  She had given
him that one, but it was about her very last.  Under the
broad brown strap of her letter-bag she strode, with her
lips locked and her soul as far away from her eyes as
though the body were a house in the hands of the bailiffs;
the key elsewhere; the occupants dispersed.  For all the
sun beat upon the red poppies in her hat till the straw
cracked again and planted burning kisses on her neck,
she was almost cold, from her feet in their black
cotton-silk stockings upward.  Once or twice even, she could
have shivered for a thought.  And the burden of the bag!
Strange that one letter should make such a difference.

All about her the harvest was in full swing; the reapers
whirling from seen and unseen quarters like the chirruping
of grasshoppers.  The morning's mist was quite absorbed;
the scene was as clear and detailed as one of
those colored Swiss photographs, with a blue sky,
showing perhaps here and there a little buoyant white cloud
floating cool and motionless in it, like ice in wine.
Towards Garthston way the moving sails of the self-binder
beat the air above the hedges.  Half a dozen fields
distant a pair of red braces, crossed over a calico shirt,
struck out clear and distinct as though the whole formed
a banner.  Now and again she heard "Helloes," and
looking, saw remote figures hailing her through their
trumpeted hands.  When she raised her own hand in
response they made semaphores with the twisted bands of
straw or shook rakes in the blue air.  It was not many
harvest fields that would have liked Pam to pass along
the road without noticing them.  From their side of the
picture they saw the scarlet poppies dancing
lightheartedly on their errand, and took the friendly uplifting of
the girl's arm for token of the smile they never doubted
would be there.  If they could but have seen the smile
of their blissful imagination at close quarters—a mere
strained drawing back of the lips—as significant of pain
as of pleasure, it would have furnished them with ample
material for their harvest-field converse.

Ah, yes.  She was very sick and wretched and unhappy.
All the natural spring was out of her step.  She
wanted to walk flat-footed, with both her hands hanging
and her chin down; but by sheer resolve she held her head
high, and broke the dull concussion of her step with that
lissom responsiveness of toe which was now the vanished
inheritance of her happiness.  She did not want to meet
him ... this morning.  She did not feel equal to it.
She prayed, as she walked, that she might have this one
good favor bestowed upon her in her trouble: the
blessed privilege of avoiding him.  Without the culminating
straw to her sorrow, the letter in her bag, she could
have met him ... perhaps ... with some amount of
courage and confidence.  But now ... to have to be
the bearer of what she bore ... and repeat all the
history of her misery in this summarised form; to give him
the letter ... be witness while he read it even; hear him
tell her definitely that he must go ... that all was over!
Oh, no, no, no!  It was too much for her to sustain.  And
she did n't want to break down before him again.  She
did n't want to degrade herself in his sight.  It was one
thing to shed tears at a sudden intelligence ... but it
was another to be always shedding them.  If she showed
tears again ... he would suspect her.  Had he been
another girl she could have wept her weep out upon his
shoulder.  That was admissible between girls.  But
because he was a man ... she could not weep.  There
were no friendships possible between men and women;
it was love or nothing.  She must just let her heart
break—if only it would—in silence and solitude.

All in thinking upon her trouble, her step, accommodating
itself spontaneously to the mental retardation of
her progress, grew slower and slower.  The nearer she
came to Cliff Wrangham, the more time she needed to
prepare herself.  If possible she must try and slip round
through the Dixon's paddock, cut across the stackgarth,
and leave the letter with one of the twins—if only she
could come upon them—without being seen.  They would
be sure to be somewhere about.  Then she tested her
stratagem by all sorts of contingencies.  Suppose Miss
Bates came upon her instead, and asked her to wait
... for any letters in return.  Suppose ... he was out in
the lane ... waiting anxiously for the very letter she
so feared delivering.  She might leave it at Stamway's,
and ask Stamway's if they 'd let Arthur drop across the
fields with it ... as she was in a hurry to get back.
And she would give Arthur a penny.

And now her step was slowed almost to a standstill.
George Middleway even could have run her down.  All
the activity was up above; there was none left for her
legs.  Already she was past the halfway house in the
little elbow of road before you get first sight of
Stamway's.  It is a part enclosed; except from the immediate
fields, which were untenanted, she could n't be seen here
in the pursuit of wasting Government time.  The next
turn would bring her into sight again; she would be
under the eyes of Stamway's; Dixon's would be able to
follow her progress henceforward, all but a yard here or
a yard there, to the paddock stile.  Before she came into
public view again ... she ought to think; she ought to
make sure.  And one cannot think, standing erect in the
roadway like a scarecrow.  It looks suspicious, even to
the suspicious eye of self—that at these times suspects
everything.  Instinctively she drew into the shelter of a
hospitable gateway.  There, at least, she could profess
for her own satisfaction that she had succumbed to the
midday lassitude; was listening to the music of the reapers,
with her arm over the rail and her foot on one of the
lower bars.

Was the past a dream? ... or the present?  Had the
Spawer ever been? ... or was he ever going?  Which
was easier to realise?  The joyousness of then or the
misery of now?  Should she wake up to discover that all
her unhappiness was a nightmare, that there was no
question of the Spawer's going, no dread of a letter?  She
dipped her hand, almost unconsciously, into the bag to
see if, perchance, the whole affair was an unsubstantial
fabric of fancy.

Ah, no!  No fancy; no fancy.  She had not wakened
yet.  There were the two letters at the bottom of the bag;
the one for Stamway, the other ... it came out with her
hand.  She had not wilfully drawn it, but it seemed to
cling to her fingers.  Oh yes, how well she knew its
motley of stamps and postmarks; how well the
superscription in that familiar feminine hand.  She held it
before her eyes, and gazed at the writing as though she
would have wrested the invisible scribe out of it; called
up the astral body of the girl who, in these shapely lines,
and all innocently and unknowingly, had dealt her
happiness such an irreparable blow.  Who was she?  Where
did she live?  When, where, and how had he met her?
Did she love music?  Had he taught her?  Had he taught
her French?  Was she beautiful?  Ah, she was sure to
be.  And a lady.  That would be a fashionable way of
affixing the stamps.  And young.  Rich too, perhaps.
She must be, for poor people could not afford to spend
long holidays in foreign places like this.  Assuredly the
writer of these words did not tramp the country roads
with a bag over her shoulder for six shillings a week.

Something white and moving grew into the corner of
her unconscious eye as she gazed in absorption upon the
fatal envelope—a cow or a horse or a sheep or a cloud,
over the hedge line.

But no; it was not a cow.  It was too erect for a cow;
too tall for a sheep; too progressive for a cloud.  There
was a patch of color about it too, somewhere.  Cows
did not wear ribbons, or sheep or clouds.

It was a figure; the figure of a man; a man in white;
a man in flannels—the Spawer.

All at once her dormant consciousness awoke with a
start to his imminence, as though her eye had been giving
no warning of his approach all this while.  She turned
round, and a great spreading sickness of guilt took hold
of her.  Her blood seemed rushing all ways, like an
anthill in confusion.  The hand with the letter dropped
suddenly, as though it were a wounded wing.  It was the
right hand that held it now, and the bag was on her left
side.  Had he seen her?  Could she pass it into the bag
without notice.  He was horribly near ... and looking
at her.  Her heart pitched downward like a foundering
vessel into the trough of her fear.

Into the pocket at the back of her her guilty hand
crept, trembling and craven, and lay there, in its thief's
refuge, burning unbearably like the firebrand of her
infamy.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIV

.. vspace:: 2

The hot sunlight about the Post Office was savory
with the smell of Yorkshire pudding—you might
have almost imagined that it was the house itself
a-cooking—when Pam returned, beneath the sling of the empty
letter-bag.

On other mornings she would take her way in through
the two-fold Governmental door; announce her arrival
in musical pleasantry to the postmaster in his little
shoemakery; hang up the flabby letter-bag on its peg behind
the counter; pop in upon Emma Morland, if she were at
work in the trying-on room, to commend her diligence or
express surprise at the amount of the work achieved, or
ask in what way she could be of assistance; give a look
into the little clean kitchen to feel the pulse of the oven,
and proffer herself for some kind service to her
aunt-by-courtesy, as red as boiled beetroot, and fitting her
clothes as tightly as if she 'd been a bladder set before the
hot grate.  But this morning the girl made no parade of
arrival.  She drew nearer to the house by the shadow of
its walls, and let herself meekly in through the
spick-and-span household door—white painted, with fashionable
brass knob and knocker—that gives entrance between the
twelve-paned parlor window beyond the scraper and the
smaller eight-paned window of Miss Morland's trying-on
room, whose austere starched curtains (drawn in primly
at the pit of the stomachs with pink sashes to reveal the
polished oak cover of the sewing-machine, and sundry
dress fabrics in course of construction, casually
displayed) always proclaimed any particularly sacred rite of
disrobement proceeding within its sanctuary by being
discreetly pinned.

Whereat, though man's religious fibres might be stirred
to their utmost, it was useless his stopping to spell out the
familiar capitals of Emma's card with all the earnestness
of the anxious (and short-sighted) inquirer after Truth.

Up to her bedroom she stole, a soft-toed figure, by the
best Sunday staircase, with white holland over the
carpet.  If she were dead they would bring her down this
staircase in her coffin.  She wished she were dead.  She
was dead in all but the flesh—and in truth she looked but
the phantom of her former self—but the ghost of the girl
that had gone out this morning.  All the color was struck
out of her blanched cheeks as though a hand had smitten
them white, and no blood returned to reproach the blow.
Her eyes were fixed in front of her whichever way she
walked; it seemed something horrible had been stamped
upon them and set over them for seal.  Her lips were
hard and rigid; wax-work lips, artificially colored, upon
a wax-work mouth.  It looked as if such a mouth could
never open in speech; it was a mold, a cast, struck off
the face of grief.  Slowly, but very surely, the old Pam
was being squeezed out of her bodily habitation.  As a
house in the hands of new tenantry loses its old outward
characteristics and takes on new features of blinds and
curtains and window-palms, so this body of Pam's in the
hands of its new possessor was beginning gradually to
display evidences of the invisible occupant that, hidden
behind its walls, wrung fingers and wept, and spent its
moments in the torturing austerities of self-examination
and penance.

... Once in her bedroom, the hardness fell off the
girl's face as though it had been stucco; the hidden
occupant came to her trembling lips, looked out of her eyes,
gazed forth upon the outer world, as an escaped prisoner
might, full of horror of his position, and dreading every
moment the summons that should announce his discovery.
But there were no tears this time.  Tears are but the petty
cash of woman's trouble account; the noisy silver and
copper, which make a great jingle, are parted with and
never missed.  Pam's trouble was no longer in silver and
copper, not in gold even.  It was in silent bank-notes.  All
the tears in the world could not liquidate such a liability.
One might as well attempt to compound with a handful
of irate creditors out of the loose coin at the bottom of
one's pocket.  Besides, it was not sorrow now, it was
horror.  In trouble women weep; but in horror they stare
with open eyes, for fear the thing dreaded may come
upon them when they are unaware.  So children, who
rain tears at a dog by day, will lie abed silent at night,
with their great, dry eyes fixed upon the darkness, and
fear to cry or close them.  Tears, scalding tears, were all
about the hot lashes of the girl's eyes; but into her eyes
themselves they did not enter.  Like a thief she had
stolen round her own door; like a thief she pressed it to,
with a hand over its sneck, and shot the little catch under
the lock; like a thief she listened—she, who had feared
nothing before but herself and her own conscience;
feared everything now.

The big grandfather's clock downstairs went
"Br-r-r-r-r!"  It was a way he had; he meant nothing by
it; but it sent the girl's hand to her bosom this morning as
though she had heard in the sound the announcement of
her whereabouts to the world at large.  Now she strained
her ears for the sounds of feet, the calling of her own
name, the approach of pursuers ... but there came
none.  Only down below were audible the muffled
intermittent click click click of Emma's industrious machine;
the tapping of the shoemaker's hammer; the sound of the
little kitchen poker thrust energetically through the bars
of the grate to rouse the sleepy fire to its duty by
Mrs. Morland; the clash of saucepan lids and the jangle of a
pail.  Satisfied that her entrance had been unobserved,
and that the clock's warning had been in vain, she
unslung the post-bag from her shoulder and hung it over the
foot of the bed; removed her hat of red poppies, and laid
it on the chest of drawers.

What had she come for?  For a moment even she herself
seemed scarcely to know, standing by the bedside
with dangling head as though she had been some wild
driven creature fleeing for refuge, of which now, in
possession, she knew not to make what use.  Then as she
stood, her right hand crept round to the back of her,
found the entrance to her pocket, burrowed its way out
of sight into its depths like a mole; delved there for a
while, lay still, and came forth into the open, dragging
its prize—something white and square and unsubstantial,
that crackled resentfully under the holding.  An envelope;
a letter.

In the stillness of death the girl held this helpless prey
of her fingers under gaze and stared at it.  She did
not read.  It was no act of curiosity.  It was the horror-struck
stare of a face that had been seeking confirmation
of its guilt and found it.  She did not look at details of
writing or of the address; she fastened her great eyes
upon the thing in gross—the four inches by three of her
everlasting turpitude.  She had not given it to him.  Into
her pocket it had gone; in her pocket it had stayed.  She
had stolen it.  She was a thief; a thief; a thief!

On her soft, clean bed she threw herself and lay face
downwards, without a tear.  In her grief, as in everything
else that she did, she was beautiful.  Her light dress
of print gathered under her and wound about her body
as she rolled, and outlined the supple firmness
of her figure with something of gusto in the task.
In abandonment there seemed no bones in it; it
was supple as a salmon; as lissom as a wand cf
green lancewood.  Backward or forward, this way,
that way, it looked as though you might have bent
it and broken nothing—not even its heart.  Her ankles,
dear indices to a fascinating volume, so sleek and tight
and flexible, lost nothing by their encasement in black
cotton-silk; into the little soft leather Sunday shoes her
feet fitted like a hand into a glove; press your thumb and
finger anywhere and the leather would gently resist you.
Poor little shoes, that had walked so happily in their time,
how very still and lifeless they lay now, side by side on
the white counterpane, with their soles still fresh and
lemon-colored, turned pathetically towards the foot-rail.
This burden at least is too heavy for you, little patient
smugglers.  And little arms that had swung so blithely;
how resistless you are now.  Many lovers have sought to
be enfolded within them in their time, but you have
repulsed them all.  Now is come a lover whom you cannot
repulse.  They shall clasp him, unresisting, and he shall
enter them.  Shame is your lover.  He has been in your
waking dreams all this night past, seen dimly and
distorted.  Now you have him face to face.  Lie still in his
arms and be mute before the hot caress of his kisses.
Your Gingers and your James Maskills, your doctors,
your parsons, your schoolmasters, your Jevons, and your
Steggisons have sought you in the flesh, but this lover
has found you through the spirit.  Now that the spirit is
surrendered the flesh lies prone enough.

Poor beautiful flesh.  Even Shame's kisses cannot
corrupt the beauty of it.  In this moment of its weakness
and surrender, if the Spawer could but be witness of you,
it is probable (only you do not know it) that your defeat
would gain you the victory.  For the weakness of a
woman is her strength, and to see beauty so overthrown, by
a lover less relenting than himself, rouses a man's best
instincts of honor and protecting chivalry.

But the Spawer is three good miles away, and cannot
enter damsels' bedrooms as the sun does.  Perhaps, as
human nature is constituted, it is well.  If you cried on
him he could not hear you, and with that label of your
guilt between your fingers, though you knew he could
hear you, you dared not cry.

Poor child!  Poor child!  So young, so beautiful, and
so wicked!  So dreadfully, horribly wicked!

To say that she thought would be to convey a wrong
impression of her state.  Thought, like her eyes, was
wide open, but it did not think—any more than her eyes
saw.  It stared—stared fixedly, without blinking, at the
consciousness of her great wickedness.

Dreadful images passed over the darkened curtain of
life, like the pictures of a magic-lantern.

In Sproutgreen a poor girl had taken some clothes that
did not belong to her.  Only a bodice (very much worn),
an old skirt, a vest or two (she was badly off for vests),
and some stockings.  She had not meant to take them,
she said ... but all the same she had taken them, and
they had sent her to prison.

That picture showed on Pam's screen too.

She had not meant to take it.  No, no; but she had
taken it.  Why should n't she be sent to prison?  Why
should the one poor girl be made to suffer and she go free?

A man in Hunmouth had stolen a leg of mutton from
a butcher's shop when the butcher's back was all but
turned.  If he 'd only waited a moment longer or set off
a moment sooner all would have been well.  But his wife
was starving and he was in a hurry.  He wanted the
mutton ... it was noble of him to risk himself for a dying
wife.  But the law recognises no nobility in theft, and
sent him to prison.

That picture showed on Pam's mind too.

She was n't starving; there was no excuse for her,
even of pity.  She had stolen something she did n't want.
She was a thief, unworthy to receive the weight of
honest people's eyes.  Looks now, the lightest of them,
smiles and glances, were all insufferable burdens
deposited upon the bowed shoulders of her shame.

Poor girl! poor, unhappy girl!  Wrong from first to
last.  Seeing the world upside down.  Cast forth from
the cool leafy oasis of hope into the burning desert of
despair.  If she could have taken but one peep into the
man's heart the rain of blessed relief would have fallen
in abundance; she would have kissed that dread letter for
token of her forgiveness; would have risen, smiling in
glory, like the sun through April clouds.

But she could not see.  These two souls, surcharged
with their vapors of unshed trouble, that only needed to
come together to combine and pour forth all their misery
in one great shower of gladness and rejoicing—these two
souls lay asunder.

While the girl stared dumbly into the blackness of her
pillow, the man gazed with the vacant stare of a harmless
idiot over Dixon's first gate.  If his state had been
hopeless before, he told himself, it seemed doubly hopeless
now.

To be sentimental by moonlight was one thing, but for
a man ostensibly in the marriage-bespoke department to
manoeuvre a wide-awake girl into the laneways of emotion
was a very different thing indeed.  All their yesterday's
sentimentalism was so much trade discount knocked
off their relations; he was at cost price now, and
something under.  The whole time of their interview this
morning she was unmistakably trying to shake him off;
had been inventing urgent reasons why she must be
getting back; had n't a word to say for herself beyond
transparent excuses to get away; could n't say what she
was going to be doing this afternoon; could n't say what
she was going to be doing to-night; could n't say whether
she should see him to-morrow; could n't say, apparently,
whether she 'd ever see him again; had almost torn
herself away from him in the end.  What was he to
think?  What was he to say?  What was he to do?

He was a sick man now, and no mistake.  His very
internals tormented him, as though he were a storm-tossed,
drifting ship, and he saw land and the girl receding
from him hopelessly on the horizon.  How to reach her?
How to get back to her?  How still to save himself?

Alas, during these moments of wounded love and pride,
for the Other One!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXV

.. vspace:: 2

In one swift headlong descent of crime Pam had
suddenly arrived at the awful pitch of robbing Her
Majesty's mail.

She had vague terrorised notions of the penal code and
the shameful penalty of her crime, but her horror for
what the world would inflict upon her, to ease its
conscience of the various offences it commits itself, was
exceeded by the horror with which self regarded self.  And
she had horror, too, of the unutterable horror that would
prevail in this house, so still and peaceful at present,
supposing her crime were brought home to her and exposed.
She saw the awe-struck face of the postmaster, sitting
with his mouth open and empty of words under the
incredible calamity of her shame; she saw Emma Morland
looking at her, part in anger, part in unbelief, part in
compassion; she saw James Maskill obstinately refusing
to meet her eye, and pretending to whistle in shocked
abstraction; she saw her one act extended and dramatised
to its very close at Sproutgreen Court-house, as clearly
as though her soul were a theater, luridly lighted,
and she were sitting in the pit ... a horrified, helpless,
untearful spectator of her own downfall.

All suddenly the course of the drama was disturbed.
There was a sound of doors downstairs; voices mixed in
question and answer.  She held her breath and listened.
Her heart gave a great bump and seemed to stop
altogether.  So vivid was her conception of her crime that
her mind accepted these noises as indisputable notification
of its detection.  All the world was astir about the
stolen letter.  The policeman was there; the machinery
of the law was in motion.  They were come to take her.
They would all be waiting for her below.  She saw them
in a blinding group, with the stragglers beyond, about the
Post Office door; children flattening their noses and
sticking their tongues grotesquely against the panes for a
sight inside; licking their fingers and drawing slimy
tracks over the glass.  And then she heard her name
uttered—that hateful name that was become now as a
second word for sin.  The sound of it sent a shudder
through her to the soles of her lemon-colored shoes.

"Pam...."  It was Emma Morland's voice that
called her.  "Pam!  Are ye there?"

Instinctively she clutched the tell-tale letter in her hand
and scrambled off the bed.  Her first thought was for
the little dressing-table.  She pulled up the looking-glass
(ah, that was no liar); rubbed her cheeks with her hands
to try and soften their haggardness; smoothed her hair
rapidly; shook out her skirts, and passed on trembling
legs to the door.  Her name met her a second time as
she opened it, from a few steps further up the stairs, and
more urgently uttered.

"Pam! ... Are ye there?"

Her mouth was dry; her lips felt cracked like crust;
her tongue a piece of red flannel, but her voice might
have been less unsteady—as it might also have been
louder—when she answered.

"I 'm here," she said, and with an effort to divert
suspicion and appear unconcerned; "... do you want me, Emma?"

A guilty person would never ask: "... do you want
me?"  A guilty person would know too well, and not
dare to risk the question.  Don't you understand?
Cunning, you see, was coming to her help—now that she was
enlisted in the devil's own army.  When the crime is once
committed, when we have taken the infernal shilling and
the devil is sure of us, he does not stint his soldiers with
the armament of craft.

"Did n't ye 'ear me callin' of ye?" Miss Morland
inquired, with some sharpness of reproof at having been
kept at the occupation.

"... I can't have done," said Pam.  "... Have you
been calling long?"

"Ah 've been callin' loud enough, onny road," Miss
Morland protested.  "What 's gotten ye upstairs?"

Pam's fingers tightened their hold of the letter in her
pocket.

"... I 've been..."—she cast a beseeching look
around the room for inspiration; the devil furnished her
at once—"washing myself."

"Goodness wi' ye!  En't ye washed yersen once this
mornin'?"

"I 've been ... having another.  It 's so hot outside."

"Ye mud be a mucky un bi t' way ye stan' i' need o'
soap an' watter.  Ye do nowt else, a think.  Come down wi'
ye noo an' set dinner things, will ye?  It 's about time."

Only that!  Not detection; not discovery and shame.
Only to lay the dinner things.  And she had been paying
for that moment with all the horror and heart-burning
and trembling of knees for the real shame itself.  What
prodigality of terror!  What an outrageous price to pay,
for a mere worthless alarm!

Now it seemed to her her body was turned to glass.
Every thought within her she felt must be visible
through its transparent covering, as though she had been
but a shop-window for the display of her delinquencies.
Down at the bottom of her pocket, smothered beneath her
handkerchief, and her hand most frequently over that, lay
the object of her crime.  She dared not turn her back for
long lest they should see it through her clothing.  If it
had been buried under the red flags of the kitchen their
eyes would have been drawn to it and found it.  They
had lynx eyes, of a sudden, all of them.  They pricked
her through and through with strange test-glances, as
though they were trying the flesh of a pigeon with a fork.
When she put her hand to her pocket to reassure herself,
at some horrid suspicion, that the letter was still there
... their eyes taxed the action and charged her at once,
seeming to say: "Ah! ... what 's that?  Did something
crinkle?"

Even the handkerchief, in which she had placed her
trust to hold down and choke the evidence of her guilt,
narrowly missed betraying her outright into the hands of
her enemies.  It was after dinner.  They were all rising
from the table, and for some reason, Pam could not say
why—unless it was that she felt some concentrated look
upon her from behind and wished to perform a trifling
act of unconcern to divert suspicion—but all at once she
found herself with the handkerchief in her hand, and
heard, at the very moment that her own fear shot like a
dart through her breast, the keen voice of Emma:

"See-ye; what's that ye 've dropped o' floor?  A letter
bi t' looks on it."

In a flash Pam spun round upon the white square
upon the red tiles.  The schoolmaster had already
perceived it, and come forward to relieve her of the
necessity for stooping; his hand was outstretched when she
turned, but she almost flung herself in front of him and
snatched the letter from under his fingers.  It was a
dreadful display of distrust and suspicion.  Her breath
came and went, between shame for her act and terror for
the alternative, while she stood before him, thrusting the
letter into the pocket at the back of her, with a face like
a flaming scarlet poppy, and a breast rising and falling,
as though he had been seeking to wrest the missive from
her.  As for Emma Morland, accustomed as she was
growing to novel demonstrations of the girl's character,
this present act so eclipsed all previous records, and ran
so counter to everything that experience had ever taught
her of Pam, that she gasped in audible amazement.  The
schoolmaster, on his side, awkwardly placed—as one
whose undesired services seem to savor of meddlesomeness—flushed
up to the high roots of his hair, and then
slowly, very, very slowly, commenced to whiten all over
till his face, his lips, his neck even seemed turned, like
Lot's wife, into salt.

If Pam had but allowed him to return the letter, it is
quite probable that he might have had the good feeling to
raise it from the floor and hand it to her with his eyes
upon hers, as a guarantee of good faith.  On the other
hand, it was equally probable that he might not.  In any
case, the risk would have been truly a heavy one to run.
But now, though Pam had saved herself from open
detection, it was only at the cost of a suspicion that
henceforth would keep its wide eye upon her every action.
Love is a terrible detective; it has no conscience; knows
no more than a criminal to discern between right and
wrong.  Everything that it does it does for love.  The
things done are nothing.  The thing done for is all.  Back
into Pam's pocket went the accursed germ of crime and
misery which she must hug so closely—though she would
have given her unhappy soul to be rid of it.

But there was no safety in her pocket now; all her
confidence in a personal possession fled from her.  Her hand
seemed sewn into her dress, by its anxiety to keep assured
of the letter's safety.  For everything that she did
with her right hand she did half a dozen with her left.

And even that tried to betray her.

"What 'a ye done at yersen?" Miss Morland asked her
tartly, when she saw her collecting the glasses lamely off
the table with the left hand, and the other one missing.
"... 'A ye cutten yer finger?"

"No...."

Pain jerked it quickly into use and showed desperate
activity with it.  Also, she cast a fearful look over her
elbow, lest she should see the condemnatory square of
white lying on the floor at the back of her, blinking
maliciously at her discomposure.  The letter seemed, in her
imagination, suddenly instinct with the diabolical desire
to work her ruin.  She could no longer trust it about her.
Up to her room she betook herself at the first favorable
opportunity—which was the first that Emma's back
happened to be turned.  In the low, long drawer of the
wardrobe, deep beneath confidential articles of personal
attirement, she buried it in the furthermost corner, as far as
arm could reach.  Then she squeezed the drawer to again
noiselessly, and standing back, applied her gaze in terrible
assiduity to see whether the wardrobe showed any
outward and visible signs of having been tampered with for
improper purposes.  There was nothing suspicious that
she could discover.  The knobs spun wickedly, and
winked at her in devilish confraternity:

"Aha, not a word.  Trust us.  We know; we know!"

The afternoon drew on with a humming and a droning,
and a buzzing and a whirring, and a tick-tacking and a
hammering, all mixed up sleepily together in thick sunlight,
like the flies in Fussitter's golden syrup.  The postmaster
slept on his little bench in the shoemakery, with
his head back against the wall, and his mouth open like
the letter-box outside, and Ginger Gatheredge's left boot
between his knees, sole upward, and a hammer in one
hand and the other thrown out empty—with the sort of
mute, supplicating gesture towards the inexorable that
one associates with rent-day.  Mrs. Morland had slipped
out to Mrs. Fussitter's, and would be back in a
minute—without committing herself to say which.  Emma was in
the trying-on room, with her mouth all pinned up; there
must have been, at one moment, a dozen tucks in at least.
The schoolmaster was in the second kitchen.  Pam was
in the first.  She knew where he was; her ears were alert
to every sound in the house, but she did not know that
he was keeping guard over her with a terrible check of
concentration and listening apprehension.  She was
frightened he might be going to seek a conversation with
her, but she need have no fear of this had she only
known.  He was as frightened of such a meeting—for
different reasons—as she.  Suspicion was consuming him
again in silence, like the old former flame of his love.  He
dared not trust himself to words; he could only
listen.  Only desired to listen and keep always
near her.  He trusted her no more than if she 'd
been a declared pickpocket.  Love without any
foundation of faith is a terrible thing, and his love was
a terrible thing.  He had loved her before as he would
have loved an angel; his own unworthiness alone had
made him fear for the getting of her.  Now he loved her
no less—deeper, indeed—but it was the love for a
beautiful and treacherous syren.  His love was as unworthy as
he believed hers to be.  He knew not to what extent she
would practise her deadly deceptions, and in holding
himself prepared for any, his mind outstepped them all.
He opened a book—it was a volume of Batty's hymns—and
laid it on the table to be ready as an excuse, should
any be needed.  And there he sat, with the flat of his
face strained towards the kitchen beyond, where he
heard the girl astir.

For a while, so far as Pam was concerned, in her
solitary occupancy of the kitchen, she was free from actual
alarms.  Only her mind troubled her; asking her how she
was going to repair this great wrong that she had done—for
she had no wilful intention of retaining the letter.  All
her mind was concentrated upon the hazy means of its
safe delivery.  All her fears were lest shame of discovery
should fall upon her before she could make redress.  And
these fears were not groundless.  The task of redress
seemed more difficult as she looked at it.  In the first
place, the letter bore the date of its Hunmouth stamping
conspicuously on its face.  Had the Ullbrig office had the
stamping of its own letters, how easy it would have been
to re-stamp over the old postmark.  But coming and
going, all the letters were stamped in Hunmouth.  Oh, why
had n't Government trusted them with the stamping of
their own?  So much better it would have been—so much
better.  Yet since there was no possibility of altering the
tell-tale postmark, what was to be done?  If she took the
letter as it was ... he might remark the date,
remember having come upon her when she was reading
something, remember having seen her put something hurriedly
into her pocket, remember her confusion when he asked
whether there was any letter for him ... piece it all
together and learn that she 'd robbed him.

And till he got this letter ... he would stay at Cliff
Wrangham.

And there might be other things in it besides.

Money, for instance.  Notes that She wanted him to
put into the bank for her.  That made Pam feel very ill.
Notes—bank-notes!  Those would mean transportation
... or something, for life, would n't they?  The kitchen
felt of a sudden so small and hot and cell-like that she
could bear it no longer.  She slipped out feverishly into
the garden.  There, among the potatoes and cabbages
she made a turn or two, but it was such an unusual thing
for her to do, and she was so afraid lest its strangeness
might set other eyes to industry concerning her altered
state, that the fear that had driven her out drove her in
again.  Back she came from under the burning sun into
the stewpot of a kitchen.  And there, all at once, she
heard a horrible sound from overhead that stunned her
intelligence like a cruel box on the ears.  The next
moment she was racing up the little twisted staircase with
the horrid stealth and the concentrated purpose of a
tigress.  To her bedroom she fled on swift, noiseless feet;
crouched by the door for a moment to make sure, and
prepare her spring, and pounced in terrible silence upon the
curved figure of the postmaster's daughter, on her knees
by the fatal drawer of the wardrobe.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVI

.. vspace:: 2

"What are you doing there?" she panted breathlessly.

"Lawks, lass."  The figure of Miss Morland
sprang upward like a startled Jack-in-the-box and caught
at the open drawer to prevent an overbalancement on to
her back.  "What a start ye gied me, comin' in on a body
like that.  Y' ought to 'ad more sense.  Ah thought ye
wor far enough."

"You have ... no right here," Pam said, desperately
trying to justify her entrance.  "This is my room.  You
have no right in my room.  What are you doing in that
drawer?  You ought to have ... asked my permission."

For a moment Miss Morland's face was a kaleidoscope
of conflicting emotions.  Her mind apparently was in
such rapid progress that her words could n't descend, like
passengers at the door of a railway carriage, until the
train had sufficiently slowed up.

"Oh, mah wod!" she ejaculated, rising to her feet at
length in rare display of dudgeon, and wiping the
unworthy lint of Pam's carpet off her knees as though it
were contamination.  "Things is come tiv a pretty state
when ah 've to ask ye whether ye 've ganned an' putten
mah red petticawt i' your drawer by mistake.  Mah wod,
they 'ave an' all.  Ye mud think a body wanted to rob ye.
What 's come tiv ye?"

Even now, with that fatal drawer thrown open, and the
signs of rummaging visible about the surface, Pam dared
not retreat from her standpoint.  (Oh, my Heaven! it
was n't her standpoint at all.  She had n't made it.
Had n't wished it.  Up till now Emma had had the run
of this room unchallenged.  But Pam was but a poor,
unresisting tool in the hands of her terror.)  She dared not
give Emma permission to continue the search.  She
dared not say she was sorry.  She dared not abate one jot
or tittle of her loathsome simulated indignation.  She
could n't breathe until that drawer was safely shut.

"If you had asked me..." she began.

"Ah don't want to ask ye nowt," Miss Morland said
contemptuously.  "Ye tell me nowt bud lies."

Pam's lip quivered with fear and reproach.  How much
did Emma suspect?  How much did she know?  How
much had she seen?

"You have no right ... to say that, I think, Emma,"
she protested.

It was less a protest than a tremulous feeler, to sound
the depths of Emma's knowledge.  But she quaked for
results.

"No, ah en't," Miss Morland acquiesced, with the
terrible force of agreement that means so much dissent.
"Ah s'd think ye was just comin' upstairs to get yersen
washed again, when ye dropped o' me."

"I will look for the petticoat ... if you wish," Pam
offered humbly.  "But I don't think it 's here.  Which one
did you say it was, Emma?"

"Ah did n't say it was onny un," Miss Morland declared,
repudiating the olive branch.  "Ah don't want ye
to look for owt.  Ah 'll do wi'oot petticawt sin' ah 'm not
fit to be trusted.  Ay, an' ye need n't trust me.  Ah don't
trust you.  Ah know very well ye 're agate o' seummut
ye 'd for shame to be fun' [found] out in.  Where 's
waiter ye washed i' this mornin' before dinner?  An' 'oo's
been liggin' [lying] o' t' bed?  Cat, ah s'd think.  Folks
is n't blind if ye think they are....  Noo, get yersen
washed agen.  Ah 'm about tired o' ye."

At which Miss Morland slammed to the drawer peremptorily
with her knee, and flounced past Pam in a fine
show of injured pride and indignation.  And Pam never
questioned the justice of her wrath.  Emma was right to
be angry.  Pam had treated her shamefully, shamefully,
shamefully.  Oh, never did she think in the hours of her
happiness that she would ever have come to treat Emma
like this.  To suspect her; to approach upon her by
stealth; to use harsh words to her; to offend her so
needlessly and so cruelly.

All the same, as soon as the feet of the postmaster's
daughter had departed downstairs, telling the tale of
their indignation loudly to every step on the way and
banging it into the door at the bottom, the girl dropped on
her knees, opened the drawer anew, and commenced to
examine the depth and nature of Emma's exploration.
Heart, soul, and body, suspicion now was eating her up
piecemeal.  With the lapse of her own trust she trusted
nobody.  Carefully she turned up the articles one by one,
to see how far signs of recent disturbance extended.
Thank goodness, they were mainly at the top.  She sent
her wriggling right arm to that furthermost corner at the
bottom of the drawer, and the letter was there; there
(relief and reawakened misery) flat as she had laid it.

But this incident had shaken Pam's nerve.  Her faith
in the room was shattered, and in agony of spirit she cast
her eyes about on all sides of her to decide where now
she could best deposit this horrid possession.  Thoughts
of sewing it into a little flannel band and wearing it
across her breast occurred to her.  But all sorts of
dreadful things might happen.  She might fall; she might
faint; some sudden accident might overtake her; she
might drop down dead even, or dying; willing hands
might tear open her dress-body and exhume this frightful
secret from its shallow grave.  To such an extent did she
foresee disaster of this sort, that the mere wearing of the
letter seemed a courting of it.  It was like shaking her
fist in the face of Providence.

And then of a sudden she bethought herself.  In the
front parlor downstairs was a little inlaid brass and
mother-of-pearl writing-desk that Father Mostyn had
given her.  Once she had made regular use of it for such
small writing as she had, but now never.  It had become
elevated from an article of use to an article of household
adornment; one of those penates—ornamental fetiches,
with which all rustic parlors abound.  To open it almost
was an act of profanity, except for Pam.  Pam had one
or two little treasures of a personal nature that she was
guarding zealously, and the household law could be
stretched a point to allow her a sight of these possessions
from time to time, so long as she did not abuse the
privilege.  True, there was no key—but then, respect of
sacred tradition was as good as any key.  Nobody had ever
looked into the desk but Pam since its sanctification.
Why should they look now?  Down to the front parlor
she worked her way, disguising the directness of her
journey with the cunningest side errands, doublings and
confusings of her tracks.

It was but the work of a moment to open the desk, but
quick as she was about it the door of the second kitchen,
that led out into the passage, opened in the meanwhile,
and she heard the schoolmaster emerge.  There was no
time to dwell upon the details of the letter's concealment.
Between the two leaves of the desk she thrust it,
pushed the desk back into its place, reinstated the china
shepherdess on its polished top, and picking up the
crystal letter-weight, with the vivid picture of Southport
in colors beneath its great magnifying eye, engrossed
herself in the examination of this—her scarlet neck
and burning ears turned resolutely towards the doorway.

For some moments, standing silent, a statue of guilt
surprised, with her heart turning somersaults inside her
and her voice miles away had it been called upon—she
almost believed that the schoolmaster had entered the
parlor.  It seemed she was conscious of his presence
advancing behind her; could feel his eyes boring through and
through her like live coal.  So tense was her feeling, and
so imperative the summons of that unseen gaze, that in
sheer self-defence she was constrained to lay down the
letter-weight and turn round quaveringly to meet her accuser.

But there was none to meet.  The room was empty of
any but herself.  For all she knew, the whole
circumstance—from the opening of the kitchen door to the
schoolmaster's entrance—was a mere fabrication of her
tortured nerves.  And now she would have liked to bring
forth the desk anew and do her hiding over again more
thoroughly, but she dared not, lest she might be disturbed
in real fact.  Minutes she waited there, with her hand on
her bosom, listening for the selection of a moment that
should seem propitious.  "Now," she kept urging herself;
and "now," "now," "now!"

But whenever she extended an arm some warning
voice within her cried: "Wait ... what was that?"  At
times it was but the creaking of her own corset; the
straining of her leather belt; the rustle of her dress.  But
it always arrested her short of her intention; it always
seemed that the house woke into movement the minute
she sought to revise her work.

And last of all, when she had wasted enough favorable
moments for the doing of her work twenty times over,
she grew frightened that this continued propitiousness of
circumstance was too good—like summer weather—to
last.  Every moment now must see its break-up and
dissolution; every moment added to her risk.  And in this
she was right.  Of a sudden the sewing-machine stopped
with a premonitory abruptness, and she heard its owner
astir.  With a haunting sense of dejection and misery for
what she had failed to accomplish, Pam whipped from
the room back to the little clean kitchen.

And the moment after that, her chances for this time
present were ruthlessly snatched away from her.  The
postmaster awoke to find his neck and his left arm and
both his legs asleep, and something wrong with his
swallowing apparatus, and became very busy all at once on
his little bench.  Mrs. Morland came bustling back from
Fussitter's and said, "Good gracious! yon clock 's nivver
right."  Not that she doubted for a moment that it was,
but as a kind of reproof to Time for having slipped away
from her this afternoon, and got home so much in
advance of her.

And Emma Morland emerged from her trying-on
room, and came into the little clean kitchen, apparently
searching for something, and resolutely keeping her gaze
clear of Pam.  Pam knew at once what she wanted.  It
was not anything that eye could see or hands could lay
hold of; not pins or petticoats or needles or darning
thread.  It was counsel and advice, locked up so securely
in Pam's own delinquent body, and because of her
conduct this afternoon, the girl for very shame and
contrition dared not offer to give it.  She besought Emma's
eye with a pathetic, supplicating look to be asked some
favor, however slight, by which she might hope to work
back her slow way into Emma's good graces, but that eye
knew its business to a hair's-breadth, and went doggedly
about it without stumbling into the least collision.

Last of all:

"Do you ... want me, Emma?" Pam asked, in an
almost inaudible voice of sorrow and repentance.

"Eh?" said Emma sharply, turning as though she had
not rightly heard, and could not imagine what possible
subject should lead Pam to address her.  "Did ye say owt?"

"Do you want me, Emma?" Pam begged again humbly.

She would have liked to throw herself at Emma's feet
and pluck the hem of Emma's skirt, and cling there till
Emma poured upon her the benedictory grace of forgiveness.

"What sewd ah want ye for?" Emma asked
incomprehendingly.  "Naw; ah can do wi'oot ye, thanks."

No; she could do without her, thanks.  She who had
been so glad to have Pam's help and assistance in the
past; who had never done a stitch on her own account
without discussing it first with Pam, and whom Pam had
always loved to help, could do without Pam now.  Pam
was no longer necessary to her; was no longer worthy to
render assistance.  No longer, for very shame, would she be
able to enter Emma's little trying-on room, and know the
happiness of helping; no longer be able to enter Emma's
own heart and talk with her as to a sister.

It was all ended.  The lights of life were dropping out
one by one like the lights of Hunmouth when you drive
away from it along the roadway by night.  Into the great
darkness of shame she was journeying; it seemed all the
old landmarks were being left behind her.  In a strange
land she would soon find herself.  She was on its borders
now—but a twist of the road, and her old life would be
for ever lost to her.

And then suddenly a vivid flash of resolution shot out
and pierced her darkness with golden purpose, like a
shaft of sunlight into the dense heart of a thicket.  Why
should she go on suffering like this?  Why should she go
on bearing her shameful burden of secrecy and silence
round all these tortuous paths and byways of indecision?
If she had an aching tooth, would she tramp through the
wet and the wind in ceaseless rounds, of which the dentist
was the fixed centre?  This very night she would take the
letter up to the Cliff and leave it at Dixon's.  Let him
think of her as he would.  It was better to bear honorable
open pain than ignominious secret torture.  The simplicity
of the resolve came upon her like a revelation.  To think
she could have been beating about the threshold of this
decision so long without the courage to enter.  But that
is always the way.  When the pain of the tooth first takes
us we submit to its suffering.  It is only when it has
broken our spirit that we are driven on weak legs to the
fatal brass plate, and bemoan the many hours of wasted
anguish that might have been saved had we made use of
the true light when it first illuminated us.

Alas!  Pam was not at the dentist's yet, and there was
still more suffering for her in that aching molar of crime.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVII

.. vspace:: 2

Soon all was abustle at the Post Office in preparation
for the departing mail.  The kettle commenced to
throb upon the red embers of the little kitchen fire, and
pushing out a blithe volume of steam through its pursed
lips, appeared to be whistling light-heartedly at the
immediate prospect of the cup that cheers.  From the second
kitchen came the melodious clink of the cups and saucers
and tea-spoons; gladsome tea-table music, heard at four
o'clock on a hot summer's day, with its queer cracked
thirds and minor intervals and faulty diatonics.  James
Maskill rattled up to the Post Office door again, over the
great round cobbles, and tying the reins up into a loop,
stimulated hot and dusty letter-bringers to frantic final
efforts with fierce cries that he was on the point of departure.

"Noo then, ye need n't gie ower runnin' if ah 'm to tek it."

"Ah s'd sit down, if I was you, an' watch me gan."

"Ay, theer, ye 'll 'ave to mek use o' yer legs."

"Noo, ah 'm just away an' all, so ye know."

Whereupon, at Pam's invitation, he retired to partake
of a cup of smoking tea on the Post Office counter—that
reappeared immediately upon his forehead in the form of
globules—and doubling up plum-bread and butter by laying
it flat on his great outstretched palm and closing his
hand upon it, slipped it down his mouth cornerwise, as
easily as posting a letter.  Every now and then he gave
his tea-cup a vigorous stir to shake up the sugar in it,
and darting to the door of the Post Office, scanned the
street up and down for distant letter-bearers on its horizon.

"Noo then," he cried out at Ding Jackson, lurking
onward from afar.  "'Ow much longer div ye think ah s'll
wait for ye?"

"Ah don't know, an' ah don't care," Dingwall Jackson
responded irreverently.

"Don't ye?" shouted the postman, with sudden ire.

"Naw," Ding Jackson shouted back at him, going
better.  "Ah 've no letters."

"Ay, bud ye 'll know if ah get 'old on ye," James Maskill
cried threateningly, shaking a doubled fist like a great
red brick at him, and as heavy.  "An' ye 'll care too.  Ye
dommed saucy young divvle."

"Gie ower sweerin'," cried Ding Jackson, as loudly as
he could.  He almost twisted his interior in the effort to
publish the postman's offence throughout Ullbrig.  "Feythur,
James Maskill 's sweerin' at me."

"Ay, ye sewd try an' curb your tongue, Jaames," the
postmaster counselled him as he scowled back to his teacup.
"It's a 'asty member wi' all on us, an' stan's i' need
o' bridlin'."

"Ah 'll bridle 'im," said James morosely, stirring up
the sugar again, this time like the dregs of discord.
"... When ah get 'im.  An' ah know very well where
ah can leet of 'im" [alight on him].

At other times this wicked conduct of James's would
have grieved and disappointed Pam, particularly in the
face of his recent struggles and improvements, but to-day
she felt no right to be grieved.  Indeed, this sin seemed
so inconsiderable by the side of her own that she envied
the postman his comparative state of sinlessness.  To call
somebody a "devil" (which Ding Jackson undoubtedly
was, at any time that you used the appellation to him;
morning, noon, or night), what was that?  But to steal
something from somebody who 'd been your best friend.
To be a thief.  She knew by her sorrows what that was.
And James Maskill had been reproved and shamed and
corrected for the one, while she, for the other—that
could have sent her to prison and shamed her before
Ullbrig for ever—she was here, acting the saintly hypocrite.

Oh, no!  Whatever James Maskill did now she could
never reprove him.  The very worst that his temper
could do would always be above that level to which,
through her sheer sinful tendency, she had sunk.  James
would never steal.  James would never be a thief.  From
that hour forth she looked up to James Maskill with a
new-born reverence and respect, as to one whose life was
pure and hallowed.

"Thank ye," said the hallowed one, thrusting the cup
and saucer and plate through the kitchen door, and
holding them there until he should feel himself relieved of
them.

"You 're very welcome, James," Pam answered him, in
the softest voice that was left to her.  Even her voice, it
seemed, was becoming hard and sinful and metallic in
these days, to match her soul.  "Will you have any more?"

"No, ah s'll 'a my tea when ah get back," the hallowed
one responded; and in a lower tone, according to custom:
"Is there owt 'at ah can do for ye o' my way?"

Dear, faithful, honest, good-hearted fellow!  How he
loved her, Pam told herself bitterly.  How he trusted her,
vile character that she was.  How his goodness ought to
stimulate and strengthen her own, and draw her back, if
so might be, to the old paths she had trodden once.

"No, thank you, James," she said after a pause—in
which James only imagined she was trying to think of
something.

"Not to-night?" said the hallowed one.

"Not to-night ... thank you," Pam told him.

If a kiss would have been any good to him ... and
he 'd asked for it, he would have got it then.  Poor
James!  Lost a kiss because he never dreamed of thinking
it would be there, or asking on the off chance.

"Ah 'm still ... tryin' my best," he assured Pam,
round the door-post.  "Ah 'm not same man ah was, bud
that d ... Dingwall, ah mean, gets better o' me yet.
Ah know ah s'll not be right while ah 've fetched 'im a
bat across 'is lugs.  Nor 'e won't, saucy young ... sod.
Bud ah 've not gidden up tryin'."

He had not given up trying.  And she—was she trying?

Oh, James, James, James!  After many days you are
bringing back her soul's bread to her.  Pray that she feed
upon it and be strong.  She needs it.

"Good-neet," said James.

"Good-night, James," said Pam.

The postman raised his voice.

"Good-neet, Emma."

"Good-neet, Jaames Maskill," Emma responded.

"Good-neet, Missis Morland."

"Good-neet, Jim lad."

"Good-neet, agen," James said to the postmaster.

"Neet, James.  Ye 'll 'ev another nice jonney," the
postmaster told him.

"Ay, neet 's about best part o' day, noo," James responded.

He took up the bag, and lingering, cast one extra
"Good-neet" over his shoulder towards the door-post once
more, in his second and softer voice.  It did n't seem for
anybody in particular, but more as though he had it to
spare, and might as well leave it at the Post Office as
anywhere.  Pam's voice, however, registered acceptance
of it from within, with the grateful inflection for a very
welcome gift.

"Ay, good-neet," said the postman, giving her another
forthwith; and after hesitating on the impulse of a third,
hardened his mouth, swung the bag off the counter by its
narrow neck, lunged out into the lurid sunlight, pulled
the cart down to meet him, sprang into his place, said
"Gee" and "Kt," and was round the brewer's corner in a
twinkling, leaving golden clouds behind him.

And as soon as tea was over and the things were
cleared, and the house commenced to slip into its peaceful
evening mood, she set her plans in motion for the
carrying out of her resolve.  Viewing the recent discredit
into which her washing had fallen with Miss Morland, it
required all her nerve to brace herself for a visit of this
nature to the bright bedroom overlooking the garden;
but stealing a moment when Emma was absent, she did
it, changed her light dress for a darker of navy blue, and
descended, prepared to receive all Emma's scorn now
that it could no longer deter her from her intention.  But
Emma was nowhere visible when she reached ground-floor
again; her accumulated reserves of meekness and
charity had been vainly stored.  And now her first object
was to secure the letter.  She reconnoitred the rooms
once more, with the end that she might possess herself of
it, and hold it in readiness for the first suitable moment
that might offer her a chance of departure without being
seen.  Such departure would not be yet, of course.  It
would not be till the dusk was well fallen, and the moon
on the rise.  Until that time there was always the fear of
coming into collision with the Spawer about Dixon's
farmstead.  Above all, she must avoid that.  And meanwhile,
the letter must be in her keeping against all chance
that the one moment most favorable to departure in all
other respects should be the least favorable for the
procurement of the letter itself.

To her consternation and dismay, she found that the
parlor, though she had imagined it to be unoccupied when
she listened outside the door, was held in the hands of
the schoolmaster.  He was seated, reading deeply at the
round table, with his elbows on the edge and his hands
over his ears, when she wavered upon the threshold.
This first frustration cast a terrible shadow over her.
She did not know where to go to keep vigil.  If she
dallied too openly about the house, there was ever the dread
that it might involve her awkwardly with one member or
other, and rob her of her chance a second time, just at
the very moment that the schoolmaster should leave the
coast clear.  Apparently he had not heard her push the
half-open door and stop dead upon the outer mat, for he
had never raised his head.  Dejected and anxious, she
stole back to the little kitchen and twisted her knuckles
by the window, watching the slowly deepening sky—so
reflective of her own sinking gloom.  From here the
postmaster's approaching steps drove her into the second
kitchen.  From the second kitchen the sound of Emma
Morland, humming a hymn-tune severely through her
tightened lips, and advancing by the passage door, drove
her back again, and—as Emma still pushed her advance—up
the corkscrew staircase for the second time this night.

"Where 's Pam?" Miss Morland inquired acutely of
the postmaster, when she entered—not that she was in
active pursuit or need of her, but that the girl's absences
now were always a source of suspicious inquiry and
speculation.

"En't ye seed 'er?" the postmaster asked innocently.
"She 's nobbut just this moment come oot o' kitchen an'
ganned upstairs."

"Ay, to wash 'ersen, ah' s'd think," Miss Morland
reflected shrewdly to herself.  "Ah 'd gie seummut to
know what lass 's after."

At that moment, if it could have been revealed to her,
the lass was after listening at the top of the staircase with
a twisted ear to their solicitudes concerning her whereabouts.
Once upon a time, she told herself while she did
it, she would never have listened to anything that
anybody said, whether she had been the subject of it or not.
But now, listening seemed part of her natural defence;
she listened with no interest in the thing heard, except
only as a means for her own intelligence and safety.  At
the first sound of words her suspicious ear was up like
a cat's at the chattering of birds.

From her place at the head of the twisted stairs she
was driven into her bedroom once more by Mrs. Morland.
Then, when calm had been restored to the recently
ruffled atmosphere of the post house, and it was possible
to probe by ear to the uttermost corners of it, she slipped
out a cautious head, chose her moment, and stole down by
the Sunday staircase.  Very gently she pressed upon the
parlor door with her cushioned fingers ... very gently
... gently, gently, just so that she ... gently
... gently ... could catch a glimpse.

Ah!

The treacherous door had cracked, all at once, like a
walnut-shell under her boot-heel.  She was halfway up
the stairs again in a trice; holding her palpitating heart
and listening terribly over the bannisters for the sounds
that should proclaim discovery of her attempt.  But none
came.  Baffled, goaded with desire, half-crying with fear
of her enterprise's failure, and yet unable to cry because
she lacked the tears to cry with, being only able to pull
painful faces; desperate to achieve her purpose and
terrified with her own desperation, she was up and down the
staircase after this a dozen times; back into her bedroom,
listening at the head of the corkscrew stairs; holding her
ear to every point of the compass.  But never dared she
essay entrance of the parlor.  That door, just ajar on its
hinges, held her more effectually at bay than had it been
bolted with great bolts and locked and barred.  Dusky
night descended, the time was getting ripe for her purpose
... and still she lacked the letter.

Then the greater terror out-terrorised the lesser.  Fear
of what the consequences might be should she not achieve
her purpose to-night drove her downstairs for the last
time, and into the parlor.  With an air of reckless
innocence that pretends it has nothing to be afraid or
ashamed of, she pulled the door wide and strode into the
room.  In the simulation of guiltlessness her bearing for
the moment was almost defiant, as though she were
braced for going into some hated presence.  And indeed,
for all the assuring silence of the parlor, she advanced
with the full expectation of seeing the schoolmaster's
figure looming forth from the table, with his hands to his
ears and his back to her, as he had been on her first
arrival.  But no black shadow interposed itself between her
and the window; the chair was empty; the room was
void.  Gone all this while....  And she in her terror
had been letting the precious moments slip through her
fingers like water.  Her heart, in spite of the misery of
her lost opportunities, gave a great bound of exultation
when it found the way of its purpose clear.

She sprang across the room and laid hold of the desk.
The pleasure of feeling it in her possession again after
all her dividing anguish; this union of purpose with
opportunity; this path unto righteousness—were more
glorious than untold riches.  Tremulously she deposed the
china shepherdess, and opening the desk thrust in her
feverish fingers.

And then, all of a sudden, her heart seemed to stand
still.  A great sinking, swaying sickness seized her.

The letter was not there.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVIII

.. vspace:: 2

The letter was not there.

Like a wild animal bereft of its young, when the
first shock of discovery had had its way with her, she set
herself with both hands to rummage the contents of the
desk, as though sheer frenzy of desperation alone could
restore to her that which was lost.  Scarcely even did she
regard the objects that her delving brought to the surface,
but dug and tore at them all with a blind, consuming
energy that revealed the unreasoning horror of her mind;
turning and returning and overturning; now above, now
below; selecting each thing seemingly with the prefixed
idea to reject.

It was not there.  The letter that all her life and honor
hung upon, that she had thought to place there with her
own hands, was not there.  It was gone.  There did not
remain a trace of it.  On the floor, upon her hand and
knees, she sought distractedly, stroking the carpet with
passionate solicitude to deliver her the letter that was not
hers—as though it were a great, rough-coated beast that
she was coaxing.

And there, on her hands and knees, the schoolmaster
came upon her.  Through the thick walls of her engrossment
she never heard him; care she had thrown to the winds.

Still groping and coaxing, and peering over the floor in
the fast gathering dusk, she saw for the first time the
shadow that watched her.  It said no word at the moment
of her rising.  Slowly and tremblingly she rose upward,
like a faint exhalation, a phantom.  Had she continued
her vaporous ascent through the ceiling, and through the
bedroom ceiling above that, and through the red-tiled
roof, and forth into the great eternity of dissolution and
nothingness, it would scarcely have been out of keeping
with the strange slow spirituality of her rising.  All the
passionate heat of her search cooled before that presence;
her body, that had been so assiduous in its enterprise,
froze suddenly to ice; the very life seemed to have been
smitten out of her, and her rising but the last muscular
relaxation of a body from which the soul had fled.

"Are you ... looking for something?" the shadow
asked her, after a terrible moment's silence, when the
girl's guilty heart seemed trying to cry aloud and betray
her.

It was the old schoolmaster's voice that uttered the
question; the tight, hoarse whisper that seemed to
strangle his throat in the utterance like a drawn cord.
And it was the old schoolmaster's figure that waited upon
her answer; the remorseless, condemnatory figure with
its hands to its collar, that always, whatever she did,
threw her in the wrong.  All their intervening relations
seemed cut out and done away with.  They were back
again, splicing their lives at the point where these had
broken off on that memorable night in the kitchen.  He
was above her once more, on the great high judgment
seat, and she ... down here—a poor, frail, inconsequential
sinner—struggled and wrestled in the bondage
of silence before him.

"I?"  She spoke in an unsteady voice, all blown to
pieces with short breaths, as though she had been running
fast and far.  "No, no!  Only something that I ... that
I ... I thought I 'd dropped.  Nothing at all
... thank you.  It does n't matter."

She wanted to pass him quickly on the strength of that
denial—a lie on the face of itself—and get away
somewhere, to her bedroom again, before he could question her
further; but he stood there without moving, as he had
stood in the moonlight, and she dared not advance.  She
had the fear within her that he might yield her no place.

"You ... will not find it on the floor," he told her.

"I don't ... know what you mean," she found
strength to say—but only just.

"The letter," he answered.  "You are looking for a
letter."

In dead silence, like an executioner's axe, the charge
fell, and seemed to sever her anguished head of evasion
at one sharp blow from its trembling trunk.  She had no
power for struggling now; her life of tortured anticipation
and mental activity was at an end.  It was only a
poor, soulless, quivering girl's body that the schoolmaster
had in front of him.  He might bend and bruise it as he
listed; it should show him no resistance.

"It was a letter you were looking for," he taxed her
again, his voice gaining severity, it seemed, from her
admissive silence, as though he meant forcing her to confess
with her lips what she had hoped to let her silence say
for her.

"... Have you ... got it?" she inquired, in a dry,
empty whisper.

Had she spoken the words with a hollow reed under
her lips the tone would have been no more empty.

"It is safe," he said.

And something in the malicious utterance, something
significant of exultation for a victory unfairly come by,
revealed to the girl in a flash, when, and by what
abominable means, it had come into the man's possession.

"You took it," she cried at him, flinging the accusation
into his face as though it were a glove from the hand of
outraged honor.  "You stole it out of my desk!"  With
all the rapid process of moral despoliation that had been
at work upon her during these latter days, and with all
the resultant complaisance for crime, the old indignation
rose up strong in her against the idea of a mean, petty
theft like this.  It seemed she might never have sinned or
known sin herself, so clear and righteous was her moral
eye become of a sudden.  "You thief!" she threw at the
man.  "Coward and thief!"

He made no attempt to resent or defend himself against
these puny javelins of her anger.  Possession of the
letter was so impregnable a position that he could afford to
let her expend her ammunition fruitlessly against the
walls of his silence.

"And if I did take it?" he asked her merely, in tones of
gathering assurance.

"It was not yours to take," she panted at him.  "It does
not belong to you.  Give it me back.  You have no right
to it."

"It belongs to neither of us," he said, yet without
anger.  With such a power as this letter in his pocket
gave him, he had no need of anger.  And of justification
he sought none.  "My right is as much as yours ... and
I am prepared to stand by it.  Call me a thief if you like;
mere names won't hurt me ... your own harsh treatment
has hardened me too much for that.  We are both
of us thieves."

"... I was going to take it back to-night..." the girl
protested, part in asseveration of her innocence, part in
supplication that he should restore her the letter.

"Perhaps you were," he said, with a callous indifference
to her intentions that boded ill for his own.  Apparently
he was little concerned with the girl's atonement
or questions of restitution.  "But I have something
... to say to you first.  We cannot talk here.  Put on your
hat ... we will go outside."

His assumption of authority and dominion roused the
last red cinders of the girl's independence.  Now that her
back was to the wall and further retreat was impossible,
the energy, hitherto dribbling away in futile skirmishes,
accumulated itself in frontal activity.  She was
shamed—bitterly, horribly shamed—but even shame has its pride.

"Give me the letter..." she said doggedly, and held
out her hand.

"Put on your hat..." he told her.  "We will talk
about that outside."

"I will not go with you.  Give me the letter first.  If
you give me the letter I will go."

"You shall have the letter back ... in good time.  Not
now.  If you speak so loudly they will hear us.  Put on
your hat."

"I will not put on my hat."

"... I think you will."

"When will you give me back the letter?"

"When ... we have come to an understanding."

The word "understanding" tolled out across the dreary
wastes of her consciousness like a death-bell.

"... Will you give it me to-night?"

"We can discuss that."

"Give it me now ... and I will go with you."

"No; I cannot give it you now.  You have had your
way ... in other things.  I must have mine, for once,
in this.  Put on your hat."

She would have gone on her knees to anyone else in
the world that should have obtained this dominion over
her, but before this man, no.  To beg of him, her shame
was ashamed.  Knowing what he had been wanting of
her all these months—what he was wanting of her now—she
dared not plead for a single concession; dared not
put herself under the yoke of one small favor.  Doubly
she was at a disadvantage before him.  All her wiles of
womanhood; all her tears; all her soft persuasions; her
clasping of hands; her dove-like wooing with the voice
... all that dear pedlar's basket of feminine graces to
win the hearts and minds of man must be left undisplayed.
To this man, of all men on earth, she must not plead.

"If I will not put on my hat?" she said.

She dared not bind herself in direct negation to the
refusal, but she suggested the act—drawing pride for it
indirectly—with the twofold intention of expressing a
contemplated resolve she was far from feeling, and of
arriving at some knowledge of the degree to which the
man was prepared to push his ill-gotten power.

"But you will," he said.

There was something so black about the insinuation—as
though he himself were anxious to save her the sight
of what might be in store for her if she persisted—that
she dared hazard no second contingency.  They remained
for a second or two in silence, and the slow melting of her
obstinacy into consent was as palpable during these
moments as the melting away of a fragment of ice on a
fishmonger's slab.  No other word passed between them
then.  Very quietly the schoolmaster opened the door and
stood by the wall while the girl slid by him, cowed and
trembling.

The postmaster, sitting on the high Governmental stool
in the Post Office, with his back to the window and his
newspaper held up above his head to catch the last red
reflection from the darkening sky, staring upward at the
crowded firmament of print through his great glasses as
though he were star-gazing, heard the front door close,
and looking over the ribbed glass screen into the roadway,
saw Pam and the schoolmaster pass together in the
direction of the brewer's corner.

"Emma," said he, putting his head in at Miss Morland's
door next moment; and more urgently still, not
discerning her there at first in the dusk: "Emma lass,
are ye theer?"

"Ay, ah seed 'em," said the severe voice of his daughter.
"Div ye want lamp noo?"





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.. _`CHAPTER XXIX`:

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   CHAPTER XXIX

.. vspace:: 2

That same night the Ullbrig chimes were as clear to
hear at Cliff Wrangham as though they 'd rung in
Dixon's stackgarth, and Dixon shook his head.

"Yon 's a bad sound," said he dubiously.  "Ah 'm
jealous we s'll be gettin' some rain before morn."

And while all Ullbrig slept (save two), and all Cliff
Wrangham (save one), a great, black, umbrella-shaped
cloud pushed up its head into the sky above where the
sun had sunk, like a mammoth mushroom.  Soon there
were no stars left behind Ullbrig church for the tower to
show against; half the sky was black as ink and the
mushroom still growing.  Out of the advancing darkness
came wafts of cool, wet wind that shook the sleeping,
windows and casements gently, as though to awaken them
to preparation, and bid them: "Be ready—we are
coming."  And almost while their breath was whispering the
warning, the first rain drop spat sideways against the
Spawer's window, and after that the second and a third
and a fourth.  And thenceforward, through the hours till
daybreak—that never broke at all—the silence seethed
with the steadfast downpouring of rain.

All over the country-side this night there would be
white faces peering out through the streaming wet
windows, for your farmer is a light sleeper where his crops
are at stake; and men's low, calamitous voices heard discussing
the swift change in their prospects; and stocking-feet
stirring muffled about boarded floors; and bedsteads
creaking as occupants sit up in them, and roll out with
sudden-roused anxiety or throw themselves flat again in
the despondency that knows too well to need any ocular
confirmation of its fears; and the sounds of masters,
calling urgently upon men by name in the great attic above,
to inquire whether this, that, or the other had been safely
done last night before turning in.

For three days the rain fell, almost without intermission.
At times, for variation, great big-bellied clouds of
white mist rolled over the land from the sea, and hid it,
and rolled away again.  They heard the booming of the
minute-gun from Farnborough, and the hoot of passing
steamers.  More than once, during these three days, the
Spawer extended his excursions—with fitful energy of
action—right beyond the confines of Dixon's farm, and
showed a set face of purpose towards Ullbrig.  But it
was all mere moonshine.  The thought of his advent in
Ullbrig village, with his streaming mackintosh and
soaking cap and be-muddied boots, deterred him from his
folly in time.  And whenever he turned back it was
always with a certain consolatory pious pain of renunciation,
as though he had just got the better of a great temptation,
and had gained a victory instead of losing one.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXX`:

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   CHAPTER XXX

.. vspace:: 2

Early on the morning of the fourth day, which was
a Saturday, Barclay was sighted in his spring cart,
driving down to Ullbrig to catch Tankard's 'bus; the farm
lad sat by his side to hold up the great gig umbrella, with
cylindrical slashes in its cover, through which a cow could
have jumped, and two or three of its complete ribs
showing.  Dixon, standing at the pump in his white
waterproof and leggings, his corn-sack headgear, and his
six-penny telescope, as though he 'd been a skipper, and
Barclay's cart (with miniature waves of water curling off at
its wheels) an apparently friendly craft, hailed him as
the farm lad consigned to his master the care of the
umbrella, and clambered down to throw open the lane gate.

"Noo then."

"Noo then," said Barclay in turn, showing his face,
and waving the reins at him with the right hand.

"Ye 're not cuttin' owt to-day, it seems?" Dixon
inquired jocularly.

"Nay, ah 'm waitin' while it ripens a bit.  Ah thought
ye 'd 'a been agate leadin' yours by noo."

"Ay," said Dixon, "... 'appen we may if rain dizz n't
lift.  We mud as well 'ave it damp as dry, ah think.  'Ow
diz it suit ye noo, this tee-tawtal weather?"

"Nay, it dizz n't fall t' be no wuss nor it is.  That 's
'ow it suits me," Barclay responded.  "It 's no use stayin'
i' 'oose, watchin' crops waste.  Ah 'm away to Oommuth."

"To buy a bit o' band, ah 's think?" Dixon hazarded,
with an internal twinkle.

"Ay, a bit o' band 'll not come amiss i' 'arvest time."

"Don't loss it o' yer way back, onny road," Dixon
charged him.  "Shall ye come wi' Tankard?"

"Ay," said Barclay oracularly.  "Gen ah don't come
later, ah shall."

... And drove away in the sloppy channel of the
lane, with the clash of the gate behind him for farewell.

The farm lad, returning after a while in sole charge of
the cart, with the umbrella totally inverted over him,
using one of its rents as a window, held further parley
with Dixon at close quarters by the same gate—that Dixon
opened for him to save a dismount—concerning his master's
departure, and the world in general.  The conversation
brightened Dixon's face as it proceeded, and sent him
back to the house with a sparkle in his eye, as though he 'd
been asked to pronounce judgment on a glass of XXX,
and could say "Proper stuff this!" with all his heart.

"Noo, ah 've gotten to larn seummut ti morn, onny
road," he announced to the household assembled in the
big kitchen, from whose window the stack of faces had
been interestedly observant of this second conversation.
And in response to the very general inquiry: "What 'a ye
larnt, then?" answered with another: "What div ye think?"

"What sewd we think, an' all?" Miss Bates demanded
rebelliously.  "Folks like me 'as no time to think."

"Nay, they 'd do better if they did," Dixon assented,
with his imperturbable geniality.

"Ay, or they 'd do less, 'appen," Miss Bates snapped
at him.

"Ah don't know i' what way," Dixon decided amiably.
"Noo, div ye gie it up?  Ah bet ye weean't guess, onny on ye."

"Sun 's shinin' i' Oolbrig, 'appen," Arny suggested.

"Feythur Mostyn 's gannin' to slart [daub] a sup o'
paint ower t' front of 'is 'oose," Jeff said.

"Nay, ye 'll none on ye get gain [near] 'and it," Dixon
said, not desiring, however, to give them too much rope,
lest they might.  "It 's a weddin'."

"Ay, an' ah know 'oo's it is!" Miss Bates cried, emerging
suddenly at the open door of her rebellious silence,
to demonstrate the superiority of her intelligence, and
shaking it at him as though it were a broom.  "It 's
Pam's, an' she 's gannin' to marry schoolmester."

"Ay, that 's right enough," Dixon said, with the
perceptible reluctance of admission that would have wished
the news—or Miss Bates' guess—to have been otherwise,
particularly in view of her triumphant: "Ah knowed very
well."

"'Oo telt ye she was, though?" Jeff demanded of his
father, with Thomasine unbelief.

"Barclay lad, just noo."

"An' where did 'e get it fro'?"

"Nay, 'e 'd gotten it off too well for me to ask 'im owt
o' that.  'E telt me it wor ower village 'at schoolmester
'ad asked Pam to 'ave 'im, an' she 'd ta'en 'im.  Ah 'm
not sure schoolmester 'issen 'ad n't telt a goodish few."

"Ay, 'e 'll want to tell 'em an' all," Miss Bates agreed
gustily.  "'E 's been after 'er long enough.  Mah wod!
Ah 'd 'a seed 'er somewhere before ah 'd 'a looked at 'er
twice, all time she 's been snuffin' 'er nose at me.  They
want giein' marriage, both on 'em.  Ah sewd 'a 'ad to be
asked a good few times before ah 'd tek up wi' a man
same as yon—old enough to be my feythur, very nigh."

"Ay, it teks all sorts to mek a wuld," Dixon
pronounced drily.  "We s'll see what sort on a man teks up
wi' you, 'appen."

"'Appen," said Miss Bates, with great reservoirs of
meaning wisdom dammed up behind the accent of that
word.  And then, not finding quite sufficient satisfaction
in this inflectional superiority, could not resist the
temptation to cry out: "Bud 'e 'll 'ave to be different fro' be
yon sort of a man, onny road."

"When 's weddin'?" Arny asked.

"Nay, ah can't tell ye owt more, wi'oot mekkin' it up,"
Dixon said.  "Pick what there is for yersens.  Ah lay,
ye 'll manage to fin' seummut fresh in it."  And looking
towards the mid-parlor door: "'As 'e come doon yet?"
he inquired.

"Ay, a goodish bit sin'," Miss Bates said.  "Bud ah
thought it was women 'at did all gossipin'!" she
declaimed angrily, seeing the blessed standard of
intelligence-bearer thus being wrenched from her grasp and
carried into the Spawer's breakfast-table by another.  And
raising her voice more loudly as the figure of Dixon
disappeared from the kitchen on its coveted errand: "Ay, ye
can talk aboot women talkin', mah wod!  Ye can an' all.
Bud what aboot a man's tongue 'at must needs gan off
as soon as it 's gotten to know seummut, an' tell it to
ivverybody?  Ah 'd for shame to show mysen so throng wi'
other people's news!"  And thus commencing to whip up
the top of indignation within her, till it hummed loudly
and threateningly, found an effective lodgment for
her hand all of a sudden on the side of Lewis's cheek.
"Put yer mucky fingers gain-'and that bacon, if ye dare!"

So the Spawer was not the only one to whom the news
of Pam's engagement came as a blow, only he lacked
Lewis's privilege of crying for it.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXI`:

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   CHAPTER XXXI

.. vspace:: 2

Sunday morning opened out scowlingly, with an
angry watery look that saw no pleasure in anything.
There was no rain, but there were great black clouds
heaped up in the sky, every one containing a thunderstorm,
if not a couple.  Such clouds they were as you can
make for yourselves by dipping a thumb in ink and
smearing circularly over paper.  Between the superimposed
piles of them at times, as they rifted, the cold grey
light poured down upon the level landscape below like
pailfuls of water.  The chill drops still spangled
everywhere from the recent rain.  Every bird that flew out of
the hedges scattered diamonds in its passage.  The grass
was bowed down beneath its watery burden, drop upon
drop was strung on the bended blades.  The trailing
porch of flowering tea hung weightily over the door,
ready to discharge its accumulated wetness down any
neck that passed under.  On all the window-sills were
long, tremulous watery rows of jewels.  The whitewashed
walls of the house were soaked and mottled;
everywhere about the path and laneways were great
pools of gathered water, shivering under the breath that
blew over them now and again, in apprehension of more.

A very day, indeed, for hot coffee, odorous ham, and
smoking mushrooms—as all these ministrants to the
stomach's comfort on the Spawer's breakfast-table there
are—but the Spawer only looks at them in staring disregard.

This last blow about Pam has struck him so suddenly
and so forcefully that he can only keep feeling himself
over, and wonder what bones are broken, and how many.
His pride, he knows, has suffered a nasty shock.  All
along he has been reckoning upon the girl as though she
were an actual possession, to be left or taken at his own
sweet will; a fixed star in the firmament.  And lo! now
he finds she is very much of a planet, with a path of her
own, that has swum into his ken and swum out again,
leaving the astronomer stuck in the mud with his telescope
to his eye, a pitiable object of miscalculation.

And by turns he is incredulous and despairing, and
hopeful and indignant and irate.  She is not going to be
married.  It is a lie.  There is no truth in it.  She is
going to be married.  The shadow-man, the moonlight, the
parting, her avoidance of him—all point to the truth of it.

Pam was marrying a pair of bell-bottomed trousers
and a shabby morning coat.  Horrible! horrible!

Oh, the sting was bitter!  The disappointment supreme.
Even his love for the girl was so steeped in the
sense of humiliation and of grief that she should have
fallen to such extent below the standard of his measurement,
that at times almost he failed to tell whether he
really loved her any longer, or was possessed only of
pity.

He could n't believe it.  On his soul, he could n't believe
it.  He knew it was true, but he could n't believe it.
On Sunday morning, wet or fine, he must go to Ullbrig
and learn the truth.  Father Mostyn would be sure to
know and tell him.

And meanwhile he had to garb himself with the extra
scrupulousness of attire for covering his torn pride.
Now that he was humbled he must be very proud.  He
must show no tell-tale flinchings.  He must laugh with
the lazy, half-contemptuous humor, as though this little
rustic world ... Morbleu! ... this little pasture of
bucolic clods ... this fallow field of earthen intelligences
... you understand? ... this pitiable place called
Ullbrig, meant no more to him in serious reality than Jarge
Yenery's straw hat.  If this thing were so, as he knew
and dared not believe ... it should be buried in his
bosom and heaped under a thousand simulations of
indifference.  Neither the girl nor any in Ullbrig should
have the gratification of knowing that he had ever acted
to her as other than the friend.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXII

.. vspace:: 2

It lacked yet some minutes to service time when the
Spawer passed up the path to church.  In the porch
old Obadiah Beestman, with a bell-rope in one hand and
a bell-rope in the other, and his right foot slung in the
noose of a third, was still ringing his dismal ding, dang,
dong, as the Spawer entered.  Obadiah is also clerk and
sexton too, and is shrewdly suspected by his Reverence
of Nonconformist proclivities into the bargain.

He nodded solemn greeting to the Spawer as the
Spawer arrived—the ringing of the bells being to
Obadiah as much a part of the morning's devotion as the
Prayers and Litany—if not more—and told him, "Onny
on 'em to left 'and."  By which he meant that the Spawer
was at liberty to occupy any pew that caught his fancy,
without fear of trespassing upon rights or being
disturbed.  Not a soul, so far, was in church.  The Spawer
picked his favorite pew, with its faded green cushion and
family of hassocks—the grand patriarch standing a foot
and a half high, and sloped for the knees to rest on
without unnecessary bending; with others of various shapes
and sizes, down to the baby sawdust-stuffed buffet, no
bigger than a bath bun.  Once upon a time, some
God-fearing household of the Established Faith had come
here week by week to worship, and brought these hassocks
to kneel upon, and this cushion for ease in sitting,
and had died or gone away, while the tokens of their
devotions were lapsed into possession of the church.  In his
old right-hand corner, with his shoulders fitted into the
angle of the high pew-back and side, he sat and turned
over the books within reach; hymns, ancient and modern,
commencing at page twenty; prayer-books, decorated with
rude designs of the human body, with poems against
theft, and so much inscribed with names of ownership
that the nine points of law and possession were merged in
them quite; some small, some large; all clammy and
smelling of the vault.  Up and down the woodwork of
the pew, and the hymn-books, and the green cushions,
were the glistening tracks of lethargic but progress-making
snails.  All over the damp walls of the church they
ran too, like luminous hieroglyphics of death and decay;
and over the mural tablet in marble to the memory of
Francis Shuttlewell Drayman, one time vicar, who
served God in this church faithfully for forty-nine years,
and was given rest as a reward for his labors on February
19, 1799.  Also Hannah, wife of the above, who departed
this life in search of her beloved husband, August 5, 1804.

As the Spawer sits and ponders over these things, trying
to assimilate them by a sort of spontaneous process
with his own state—and find one common key which
shall fit all the varied wards of the locks of life—the
worshippers begin to assemble.  Mrs. Hesketh, holding
her youngest by the hand and piloting it (whether a boy
or a girl does not exactly make itself apparent to a
superficial observation) up the aisle in front of her, at the
manifest peril of falling over it, and trying by jerks of
the arm to shake its stare off the Spawer, which,
however, requires a stronger arm.  They disappear into a
pew somewhere under the lectern, where much sibilant
whispering begins to issue immediately upon their
incarceration, as though they were cooking something; and
every second the big forehead of the infant, surmounted
by its sailor hat, shows itself as far as the eyebrows over
the pew back and goes down suddenly, as though its
supports had been sundered.  Old Mary Bateman shivers up
the aisle too, on the far third-class side, with her brown
charity shawl drawn tightly over her shoulders and
clasped into the pit of her stomach by invisible hands
wrapped up in it, as though she were cold and hungry,
and the pinched, alms-house look of humility about the
lips of her bowed face befitting a pauper.  Being entirely
dependent for everything in life upon the mercy of God,
and having a very proper value and appreciation of
it—which is too infrequently the case with people able to
earn their own living—she has long since discarded pride
as an unmeaning and useless appanage, and walks
humbly before the Lord and her fellow-beings (if they will
kindly pardon the liberty of her calling them such) as
the devoutest Christian might desire.  At Sacrament she
will wait until the last lip has left the cup, and only
presume to approach the table when sought out and
summoned there by the priestly forefinger.  And after death
she will go underground in a nice deal coffin, as
being cheaper and more perishable, so that she may the
sooner mix her dust with the soil and make room for
somebody else when the time requires.  After her comes
Mrs. Makewell, who deems it advisable to show herself
occasionally beneath the priestly eye, as a reminder that
she is still able to go out charing ("God be praised, your
Rivrence") at eighteenpence a day, with her beer; also
as a midwife when requested; and will give his Reverence
judicious samples of her bronchitis during pauses in
the service, knowing that his Reverence hears every
cough and scrape and clearing, and bestows port wine
upon the worthy.  While she is trying to fasten herself
into her pew there are sounds of a massive sneck being
lifted somewhere round the chancel where the vestry is,
and the scuffle of loose boots that are too big for the
control of the feet that don't fit them echoing over a flagged
floor.  This, the Spawer knows by experience, is the
choir.  He even sees them peering round from the far
end of the choir stalls and pushing each other out into
the chancel, and hears the strident hiss of much whispering,
which at closer quarters would resolve itself into:

"See-ye!  Old Moother Bateman! old Moother Bateman!"
with an unpublishable effusion upon the subject of
this unfortunate from the pen (or the lips, as he would n't
know what to do with a pen if he had it) of the Ullbrig
bard.  "Gie ower shovin', ye young divvle."  "Look at
Spawer fro' Dixon's, like a stuffed monkey in a
menagerie."  "Let 's chuck a pay [pea] at 'im."

The sound of the massive latch resounding acutely
through the empty building a second time puts a death-like
stop to the chancel activity, and an august step heard
passing over the flagstones in lonely majesty of silence
announces beyond all doubt that his Reverence has
arrived.  At the same moment the Spawer, with a strange,
nervous fluttering about his heart—as though he were
about to face some great audience in his musical
capacity—hears the whispering echo of light footsteps going up
the winding stairs of stone from the door in the porch to
the organ loft.  If he had been a gargoyle, or a
sculptured effigy of Peter, his ears would have heard that
tread, and known the maker of it.  Every step of the
way he followed her progress.  Now she had two more
left, and then the loft door.  The two were taken, and
the loft door creaked on its hinges.  She was in the
church and behind him.  By an instinct as unerring as
that which guides a homing bird he felt, with a painful
throbbing of the throat, the fact of his recognition.  He
knew, almost as well as if he had been looking at the
scene from some high point of vantage—higher even
than the girl's—that she was gazing down upon him from
the organ loft.  And with this consciousness was poured
into him from a vial more bitter the knowledge of her
sudden start; the constrained tightening of her lips; the
light suddenly extinguished in her eye at sight of him;
all her being standing still like a human apostrophe and
saying:

"He here!"

Yes; he was here.  Miserable wretch that he was; he
was here.

Into his shoulders he drew his neck; wedged his head
down firmly, and sat without moving in the corner of his
pew.  On other Sundays he would have looked round at
her and smiled his greeting upward.  But not now.  He
dared not risk any such greeting now, lest he should look
to find the girl's face turning from him.  Without any
shadow of doubt, their alienation was complete.  He who
had been regarded as a friend at the first was come to be
regarded as a persecutor now.  Even his presence there
this morning was a persecution to the girl; a menace to
her.  She could trust him no longer.  She suspected his
intentions of dishonor, and was striving to hold at arm's
length a man who hung about the skirts of her
encouragement.  He renewed his suspended breathing with a
measure of relief when he heard the sliding rattle of the
manual doors, and knew that her eyes were removed
from him at last.

And then he knew that another figure had gone up to
the organ loft with the girl, and was contemplating him
from on high; a silent, spectral figure, whose flesh seemed
constituted of pale moonlight; and whose garb was the
shadow of night.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIII

.. vspace:: 2

"Ha! this is beautiful of you," his Reverence said,
coming up to the Spawer after the service and
enfolding his hand in that warm, balmy, beneficent softness
of palm.  "To come three miles on a morning like this
for the sake of worshipping in the true Faith.
Beautiful! beautiful! quite an example to our Ullbrig laggards, it 'll
be talked of.  Ullbrig has only three yards to come
... and it does n't come those, as you see.  When Ullbrig
comes, look for the Millennium or port wine—generally
port wine.  There 's no mistaking the symptoms.
Mrs. So-and-So's liver 's no better.  Put on your best black
dress and go to church this morning, Janie; a bottle of
his reverence's port would do her good.  Take care and
sit where he can see you and sing as loud as you can.
Show him how capitally you can find all your places, and
don't stare about you when he 's preaching.  That 's our
Ullbrig way.  Go to church to get something out of it if
you can.  'His reverence gets paid for preaching; we
ought to get something for going.  That 's only fair.'
See what his reverence the vicar 's to put up with in a
place like this.  *Ex nihilo nihil fit*.  That 's our motto;
which, being rendered according to Ullbrig theologians,
means: Nothing done without good value given for it in
return.  If Nonconformity had n't its tea-urns and its
bath buns it would n't hold sway over Ullbrig another
twenty-four hours.  Plenty of hot tea and big bath buns,
with plenty of flies and currants in 'em; that 's the way
to subjugate the heathen bucolic beast.  Music's no
good—any more than the Church.  We 're dogs with bad names
to start with, both of us.  Musicians are unscrupulous,
dissipated vagabonds, such as you, that live by their wits,
as everybody knows.  Vicars of the Established Church
are children of Satan and prophets of Baal.  We 're both
in the same boat.  And," said he, picking up the dismembered
mortar-board from its place by the water-bottle,
"this morning we shall have to swim for it.  You can't go
back to Cliff Wrangham in the teeth of a storm like this
that 's brewing."

"It 's awfully good of you..." the Spawer began.
"But really, I counted the risks when I came.  I 'm ready
to take my chance."

"Ha! not a bit of it! not a bit of it!" his Reverence
objected, lifting up his forefinger.  "You shall take your
chance with me.  It 'll be a dry chance, if frugal.  We
don't get so many faithful here that we can afford to treat
them with indifference.  Come along with you.  We 'll lock
up and make a bolt for it.  I daresay we can find
something in the larder to serve us in lieu of lunch if the
storm sets in.  And judging by the sound of it"—a
prolonged peal of thunder spread itself out above them and
shook the hollow fabric of the church to its uttermost
corner—"it 's going to be a stayer."

Together they made the round of the building, closing
up all the swing windows against the deluge that must
inevitably come, and giving the lock of the exterior vestry
door two turns as the clerk had admonished them, set the
thick fibre mat close against the lower chink to oppose
any intrusive swill of water, and did what they thought
best in such cases as those where a diamond pane lacked
in the leaded windows; removing the hassocks from below,
and spreading a mouldy cushion or two to absorb the
bulk of what wetness came through.

They had only just completed the last of their
preparations when a vivid streak of lightning flashed in the
yellow, murky air like a knife-blade, and seemed to rip
up the great baggy canopy of water suspended above
them at one slice.  A roar of enraged thunder followed
the deadly thrust, and the rain fell whizzing to earth next
moment like arrows.

His Reverence gathered up his cassock in both hands
as far as the knees, and screwing up his mouth and
aiming a way for himself with one eye through the thick
downpour to the Vicarage gate—but a dozen paces or so
from the porch—made a game dash for cover.

"Ha! capital! capital!" his Reverence was saying at
the other side of the close, bruised, blistered, and by this
time rain-soaked door, wiping the drops off his chin and
nose-end, and running the handkerchief round the inner
rim of his Roman collar.  "That 's one of the beauties of
living by your own porch.  The elements have n't any
terrors for you," and stamping his feet upon the flags to
shake out the legs of his trousers, where he had rucked
them over his shoes, he led the way into the sanctum
sanctorum, so full for the Spawer with memories of
by-gone happiness.

A dual sense of gladness and sadness possessed him as
he walked forward.  Here he was very close to, and here
he was very far from, the spirit of Pam.  Out of every
tile he trod on some brooding remembrance of the girl
rose up as though his foot had dislodged it; wound about
him like the sorrowing smoke from a funeral pyre and
dissolved.  In every corner of the room they entered, the
spirit of the girl seemed to linger.  All about the room
were the visible tokens of the girl's presence—tokens so
acute that to each of them his mind's eye supplied the
absent figure of the girl as she had been at the actual
moment of its accomplishment.  Here she was stooping to
straighten the antimacassar of a chair; here she was
smoothing a cushion; here she was adjusting the objects
on his Reverence's writing-table.

And because the Spawer's heart was full of the girl,
they did not touch upon Pam first of all.  Instead, they
talked of the storm, of the thunder, of the crops.

And all the while his Reverence was making excursions
to various corners of the storm-darkened room;
opened the cupboard door and plunged his hands with a
rattle into a hidden knife basket; tried the blades on his
thumb, and sprang them critically against his palm for
selection; jingled amid silver forks, and counted them to
his requirements, large and small; brought forth glasses,
tumblers and wine glasses, and liqueur; then casters and
bottled condiments; plates and napery, and laying them
on the far end of the big dining-table, cleared that space
near the window for their ultimate disposal.

"Let 's see ... one, two ... did I bring the forks?
To be sure.  What am I thinking of?  Capital! capital!
I 've been so long in other people's clover, you see, that
I 'm forgetting how to graze on my own meagre grassland.
That 's better—and the salt.  Well! and what 's
the concerto been doing all this time?  Made headway,
has it?"

He picked open a folded table-cloth by its two corners,
and shook it out of its stiff, snowy creasing.

The Spawer told him that he was afraid ... it had n't
been doing much.  To tell the truth (that candid truth
at which the Spawer was becoming such an adept), the
weather had corrupted him.  First of all it had been too
fine ... and then it had been too wet.  This rain had
unsettled him.  It had washed out all his inspiration.
He 'd only felt inclined to stick his fingers in his pockets
and shiver over fires.  The keys were too cold and damp.
There was no warmth about them.

His Reverence gathered the cloth, and spread it over
the table.  "Indeed?  I suppose you 've not seen much
of Pamela ... since I left?" he asked casually.

The Spawer's heart hit him under the chin.

"Pam?" he replied, as though for the moment nothing
had been further than this girl from his thoughts.  "Very
little.  Let 's see.  One ... no, twice, I believe.  Yes;
twice to speak to since you 've been away."

"Ha!" said his Reverence, and smoothed the cloth
scrupulously down all its creases and over the corners of
the table.

What did that oracular "Ha!" mean?  Did it mean that
his Reverence knew the whole history of those two
times—or suspected it? ... or knew nothing; suspected
nothing?  There are moments when an ambiguous monosyllable
is more potent than the wisest of words—and this
was one of them.  The Spawer waited a little space, while
his Reverence passed his smooth palm backwards and
forwards over the snowy surface, in the hopes that he
might add something to that unexplanatory "Ha!"  But
his Reverence said nothing.  He might have been waiting too.

"I 've heard, though..." the Spawer began, feeling
the discomfort of that monosyllable like a drop of cold
water down his neck, and stopped there suggestively.

"Ha!"  His Reverence passed a concluding hand over
the table-cloth, and straightened himself with puckered
mouth and portentous brows.  "... Unfortunately
true.  Unfortunately true.  Yes."

"Unfortunately" true!  The Vicar, then, was his ally.

"... At first," he said, professing suddenly that the
destiny of two drops, trickling slowly towards each other
on the window-pane, was of more moment to him than
the matter of the girl, "... at first ... I hardly
believed it.  I suppose, though ... you say there 's no
mistake."

His Reverence shook his head, and passed over to the
cupboard again.

"A very great mistake," he said, stooping on one knee
and speaking into the cavernous recesses of the shelves;
and after a moment: "A very great mistake," he said.
"I 'm not surprised at your incredulity.  Of course, being
ignorant of circumstances, you 've nothing but your
judgment to guide you—and plainly judgment would
lead you to pronounce against such a form of proceeding.
Yes!"  He raised himself from the floor with the
twisted face for a rheumatic twinge in his knee, and
returned once more to his table preparations.  "I must
admit that the girl has disappointed me.  Of course
... ever since the beginning—as Ullbrig will tell you if you
care to pay it the compliment of asking (which I don't
suppose you will)—this has been a contingency to reckon
with.  But I 'd hoped.  You see ... it 's different.
Things latterly had looked so favorable.  I thought the
musical experiment was likely to succeed.  Ha! and the
French too.  Yes, yes; the French too.  It seemed to
have stimulated the girl to aspirations altogether beyond
Ullbrig.  I thought we 'd trained her palate to require
daintier food in every respect than Ullbrig could give her.
And then ... all at once ... to be beaten on the post.
Of course—" he drew attention to what followed with a
quiet gesture, as though it were really quite obvious
enough without the superfluous emphasis of pointing
out—"... it would be quite possible for me to forbid the
thing—veto it completely and put a stop to it once for all.
But then..." he screwed up his mouth for a moment's
reconsideration of what such an act would effect, "for
the present I have n't quite found my justification for this
extreme measure."

"He is ... a schoolmaster?" the Spawer hazarded.

"Exactly; our Ullbrig schoolmaster.  A worthy enough
man, no doubt, in his own particular way—but it is n't
the way I had in my mind for Pam.  I believe he excels
somewhat in free-hand and rule of three.  These are his
specialties.  His father—if my memory serves me
right—" here the Vicar appeared to interrogate his
memory through fringed lashes, "... was a—ha!-small
greengrocer and mixed provision dealer—Knaresbro'
way, I believe.  Of course, under ordinary circumstances,
I should have had no alternative but to nip the whole
affair in the bud; pack Pam away, if need be, and arrange
meanwhile for the fellow to be transplanted in some
peculiarly far and foreign soil.  But as it is ... that seems
an unnecessary setting of the mills to grind without grist.
If we stop this marriage..."  His eye roamed over the
table, where knives and forks and spoons and plates and
glasses commenced to array themselves with a semblance
of order beneath his fingers.  The Spawer's eye shifted,
as a meeting seemed imminent.  "... Perhaps, when
I 'm dead and gone, she may contract a worse.  Situated
as she is, without friends or society, we can't hope to
place her in life as by right and reason she should be
placed.  Perhaps, if one could only finance the girl, and
secure fashionable influence for her, and float her
upon the social sea, she might repay the investment
cent for cent.  But on the other hand ... there 's
always a fear.  Knowing nothing of the temptations
of society life, she might fall to the first barrel like
a lame pigeon.  Besides, the girl shows no hankerings
after the flesh-pots.  There 's not a pinch of mundane
salt in her nature.  So why apply it with one's own
fingers, and spoil her in the seasoning?  Ha! why indeed?
Therefore, as things stand, she must be sacrificed.  This
man wants her and she wants him—more strongly than
even I 'd supposed—and when all 's said and done, we
might only make worse of it if we tried to twist human
nature to our own preconcerted theories.  At least, the
fellow has no positive vices—they are mostly negative.
He is steady, sober, respectable; a hard worker, likely—so
far as one can foresee—to provide the girl with a
certain home for life.  For an indefinite period they may
remain at Ullbrig, where—except for those inevitable
little disturbances which we may expect under conditions
of matrimony—her existence will be but slightly changed.
Of course, she will have to relinquish her postal duties,
but her parochial work will suffer no modification.

"Ha! now for the larder.  Let 's see what there is to
pick.  Do you feel anything in the lobster way?  Here 's
a pie that Pam 's cooked and stuffed into the larder for
me—knowing I should be back too late to lay in stock for
Sunday.  Dear girl.  Why in the world could n't she
think as beautifully for herself as she does for others?
And here 's his reverence's brown loaf, and some beet,
and some herring olives.  Come, come!  We shan't do so
badly."

"You only got back last night?" the Spawer inquired.

"Last night only," his Reverence rejoined, dispersing
his various acquisitions about the table.  "Came along
with Friend Tankard from Hunmouth.  Poor Friend
Tankard!  I think he gets slower and slower.  Some day,
mark my words, he 'll set out from Hunmouth, and never
reach Ullbrig at all.  That 'll be the end of him.  However,
he did just manage to pull us through this time, and
for the rest of the evening I was interviewing our errant
sister.  But she stood firm.  I tried to shake her on all
points; had her in tears even.  Yes, poor girl, had her in
tears.  She rained copiously, but it only seemed to water
the roots of her resolve.  She used the tears of my
making to beg to me with.  Ha!  Let 's see ... to be sure!
The beer.  You 're a beer man, at least, are n't you?—even
though you stop short of whiskey.  Capital! capital!
I 'm going to offer you a little specialty of my own.  It 's
a local beer—not Ullbriggian, by the way—but from the
district, and you 'll say you never tasted its equal.  Foams
like champagne and bites like a nettle.  Mild withal."

He disappeared from sight on this new errand, and
returned, after a remote sound of clinking, with half a
dozen bottles of his specialty, three by the neck in each
hand.

"Here we are!  If the light were n't so bad, I 'd ask
you to examine the color.  But that 's no use.  We 'll let
that go, and judge by the taste alone....  And so—"  By
a skilful intonation he cleared his voice of the beer,
and skipped back to the old topic where they had been
before.  "... In the end we allowed the matter to
stand, and deferred judgment."

"And they will be married..." the Spawer began.

He was thankful beyond measure that the Vicar picked
him up without delay, for his voice went suddenly as
husky as bran.

"Not yet! not yet!" his Reverence said.  "That's quite
another thing.  Though, for that matter, the girl wished
to prevail over my scruples even there, and persuade me
to an actual date and definite consent.  But no.  They
must possess their souls in patience until I 've had
opportunity to study them under these new conditions.  I 'm
prepared to let her go, since her happiness requires it, but
I 'm not going to throw her.  Besides ... a little object
lesson of this kind appeared to me desirable.  As I pointed
out to Pam, the man's conduct in the matter left much to
be desired.  Had he been possessed of the natural instincts
of a gentleman he would have approached me first, before
intruding himself upon the girl's affections."

"Of course," the Spawer acquiesced hurriedly.

He loathed himself for a cowardly renegade as he did
so, but the priest's eye, to his guilty vision, fixed him with
such a meaning glance of severity that he felt anything
short of verbal agreement would betray him.

"Of course," Father Mostyn repeated, with renewed
emphasis.  "The proper way—indeed, the only way for a
gentleman—would have been to approach me in the first
instance, and receive my sanction before unsettling the
girl with a suit which subsequent events might prove to
be undesirable.  But there, of course, you have the man,
unfortunately.  I daresay his nature would be quite
unable to appreciate the niceness of the point—even if you
explained it to him.  Now you and I"—here the terrible
condemnatory look seemed to be fixed on the Spawer
again—"know these little matters by instinct, as it were.
Such things as those are in our blood.  We don't work
out our conduct by free-hand and rule of three.  It 's
inbred in us.  We act upon them as spontaneously as a
pointer points.  Ha!"  He ticked off the first and second
fingers of the left hand with the magnetic index-finger of
the right.  "Bread ... corkscrew..." and hesitated
at the third as though uncertain whether there did not
exist some still further necessity.  "Ha! to be sure," he
said, and wagged his shoulders, "cheese."  He ambled
genially out of the room again, and returned presently
with a loaf of white bread on a wooden trencher, a
corkscrew, a lever, and a dish of Cheddar.

"Now, come along! come along!" he said, all his being
fused in the glowing warmth of hospitality, and sending
forth its comforting rays even to the Spawer's chill
fibres.  "There 's nothing to wait for—except grace from
Heaven.  That's it.  Draw up your chair and make
yourself at home."

And bending his head over the tinned lobster: "In the
name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXIV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIV

.. vspace:: 2

And now, thinks the Spawer, with the fine egoism of
wounded love, there is not in the whole world a
heart so heavy as his.

But he is wrong, for here in Ullbrig hangs a heavier.

Heaven knows Pam had sinned in a hard market,
and bought her iniquity dear.  Other people, worldly
people of experience and sagacity, know how to obtain
all their sins below par, at the expense of the widow and
orphaned.  Pam, knowing nothing of this moral stock-and-share
market, was paying for her shares with everything
that she possessed.  To the last penny of her self-respect
she was paying for them.  Of all moral and conscientious
coinage she was void and bankrupt.  There
was nothing left her now but the body she lived in—all
its beautiful furnishment of soul had been distrained and
bundled out by the bailiffs long ago.  And the body was
mortgaged.

For this marriage—that to the Spawer looked but a
callous flaunting of her bliss before his stricken eyes, a
cruel demonstration of how little she was dependent
upon him for any share of her happiness in life—what
was it but a foreclosure?  She who had preached the
gospel of true love, of the necessary unity of the body and
the soul in marriage; who had proclaimed to Ginger that
"there must be no chance about it, Ginger! ..." she
who above all girls knew a love as free of carnality as
any earthly love can be—she was selling her body now
for its price.

Would she ever forget the night of horror that saw
the compact made.  The lonely, dusty highroad to
Hunmouth, with its wide grass borders sloping down to the
ditch bottoms, between the trimmed, stunted hedgerows,
where the schoolmaster led her; the rising moon; the
sickly, suffocating mist of harvest; the dim stars.  And
there, backward and forward over the powdery road,
she had fought that last fateful fight for her soul's
freedom—and failed.

Give her the letter back ... only give her the letter
back ... and she would try to love him in earnest.  She
would force herself to love him.  This time she should
not fail.  Give her the letter back.  It was not his; it was
not hers.  Come with her himself if he doubted, and see
her hand it in at Dixon's door.  She swore she would
give it.  He did not understand.  It had been all a
mistake.  She had not meant to take it.  If he only knew the
horror she had felt of herself.  Oh, she promised! she
promised!

But the man would have no promises.  She had made
him promises before and broken them.  Here was the
letter—here in his possession—and here it should remain,
for witness against her, if need be, until the thing was
settled.  Let her call him what she would now; abuse
him as she liked; hate him—all was one.  This night she
must let it be proclaimed in the family that they were
plighted.  As soon as Father Mostyn returned, she must
plead for them both with him.  Not until she had pledged
herself publicly beyond all prospect of withdrawal would
he give the letter up.  Promises availed nothing.  He
was done with promises.  If she would not accept him on
these terms it was a plain proof that she did not mean to
fulfil them, and unless she was prepared to fulfil them
she must abide by the consequences.

And more tears; and more entreaties; and pitiable
shows of rebellion, quickly subdued; and petty resistances;
and tortured turnings to and fro over the road;
and at last surrender.

At last surrender!

Death even, had death been his condition, she would
have accepted sooner than this dire alternative.  Only one
idea possessed her now—that the Spawer should never
know the presumption of her love.

But the letter!  Till he got that ... he would not go
at all.  The longer its restitution was delayed, the longer
must she endure her agony.

Strange reversal of misery.  In the beginning she had
suffered with the sickness of his going.  Now, in the
end, she suffered doubly with the sickness that he should
stay.  Of a truth, she was snared in her own wicked net.
The sin that she had committed against him was turned
into an all-sufficing punishment more than meet for the
offence.  And when would she be able to ease her pain
in delivering the letter?

She did not know.  Since that night of shameful
surrender no further mention of the letter had passed
between these two guilty partners, and because of the cruel
mercy at which this man held her she would ask him
nothing.  To appeal to him respecting his intentions
respecting her—to inquire of my lord's pleasure, as though
she were a bond slave, purchased with gold ... no, no,
she could not!  When he deemed the time ripe to return
her his ill-gotten seal of authority—once it had stamped
the bond to his service—let him do so, and she would
take it.  Till then, let them both keep silence respecting
their compact.

Hardly a word, indeed, passed between them on any
topic.  And by trifling, wordless actions the schoolmaster
tightened his hold upon the girl's shrinking muscles, and
held her to him as in a vice.  Mere little attentions of
courtesy they were, for the most part, that the household
regarded—and kept watch for—with significant looks to
one another, seeing in them the pleasant ripples on the
seductive surface of true love—but to the girl they were
but bolts being driven home, one by one, into the
padlocked door of her prison.  For she was this man's
prisoner in thought, word, and deed.  Whenever she moved,
he moved with her.  If she hid herself from him in her
bedroom, be sure he was keeping safe guard over its
door from his own.  If she changed rooms, he was after
her like thought.  In all except the derision of the outer
world she was a felon, convicted, imprisoned, and under
close surveillance; unworthy a grain of trust or credence.
When he handed her an apron, or helped her into her
mackintosh, she felt the act as keenly as though she were
being given a gaol garb to wear.  Oh, the degradation of
it all! lacking only the degradation of men's eyes.  But
for that one pair of eyes which held her to her purpose,
she would rather have gone to a real prison than suffered
this horrible incarceration.  And yet, it was plain to see,
the man was only doing his best to gain her love.  He had
trapped her like a bird, cruelly, no doubt; but now that
she was his, and caged, he was ready to whistle to her,
to give her sugar; gild her captivity the best he knew
how.  Her love to him was like the lark's song; he had
snared her for that, and counted on hearing her sing to
him.  Once she was his, and he would save her life with
his own if it might be.  But meanwhile, teaching her and
taming her, he made sure that the cage was secure;
passed his fingers feverishly over its wires a hundred
times a day to assure himself that he had overlooked no
loophole for her escape.  There were letters for Ullbrig
during those days of rain, and he proffered to take them
in the girl's stead.  With a rain like that there was
nothing to be feared.  But the girl would not.  To his cruelty
she had had to submit, but to his kindness never.  So they
went, the two of them—for though he could venture to
leave her behind, he dared not be the one left—battling
through the downpour beneath mackintoshes and umbrellas,
with their heads down, the whole roadway apart,
exchanging never a word.  And Ullbrig, safe at home,
behind its starched curtains, saw the letters come thus, and
smiled.

Truly, many waters cannot quench love.

Sunday—that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday, that
seemed like the climax of the girl's shame, when to her
horror she had found the Spawer in his pew beneath her;
bless Heaven for the timely storm that kept them
apart—Sunday came and went.

Monday replaced it; a promiseful, rainless day.  All the
sky was heaped up with great broken masses of cloud
from yesterday's storm, that a persistent warm breeze
swept over the cliff edge and across the sea, in ceaseless
waves of sunlight and shadow.  Throughout the day
figures were moving about the fields, turning the limp and
soddened sheaves to catch the wind.  Still the breeze
blew, and the countless host of clouds—like another
Exodus of the Children of Israel—passed steadily over the
land from the west to the east; to the brink of the sea
and beyond.  By evening they were nearly all gone over.
Only detached bands of them here and there rode up
silently from the great west, as though they had been
horsemen of a rear guard, and moved slowly across the
sky in the wake of that mighty passage.  And as the last
of these departed, the sun, like a great priest garbed in
glorious gold vestments, rose to his height on the far
horizon with arms extended to Heaven, and pronounced
a benediction over the land.

Rest in peace now, oh, Ullbrig farmers!  Have no fear,
oh, faint-hearted tillers of the soil!  Rejoice, ye harvesters,
for the Lord God of the harvest-field is come into His
own again.  The corn shall ripen in the ear; there shall
be reaping, binding, and gleaning, and an abundant
return for all your labors.

That same night, while the land lay still under the
sacred hush of that benediction, in the little front parlor,
all flushed glorious with the exultation of the sun's
message, the schoolmaster returned to Pam what, on just
such as evening as this—millions of ages ago, in some
remote epoch of the world's history—he had taken from her.

Not a word accompanied the restoration.  In silence
the girl's hand went forth—with not even her own eyes
watching its shameful errand—to meet it and receive
that precious, hateful pawn that she was redeeming with
her body.  For some seconds they stood, maintaining
their respective attitudes in that surreptitious transfer;
the man with bent head and averted gaze as he had
given; the girl with high, rebellious bosom for a great
grief, and her chin shrinking in the nest of it, while the
recipient hand at the back of her worked slowly downward
in the depths of her skirt-pocket.

Then suddenly, before the man had time to realise or
utter the words his mind was slowly coining, the girl's
high breast fell in the convulsion of silent sobs.  With
both hands pressed to her cheeks, and the tears streaming
fast through her spread fingers, she brushed
abruptly by him.

At the door, for he had something to say, he spoke
her name and laid a restraining hand upon her shoulder,
but she shook it off with the hateful shudder for a
serpent, and passed swiftly from him up the Sunday staircase.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXV

.. vspace:: 2

All throughout the rest of that evening the
schoolmaster had employment in guarding Pam's bedroom
door.  At times, drawing long breaths to suffocate
his beating heart, he listened at its keyhole, applied his
eye even, pressed his hot face flat against the woodwork,
and strove to elicit some filterings, however attenuated,
of its occupant and her concerns.

But the door was as uncommunicative as a gravestone.
Had he not seen the girl go in, and heard her
close the lock upon her entombment, he would have
been sick with apprehension and doubt; ready to believe
that she had eluded him, and that he had lost her.  More
than once, as it was, he tapped at the door, but no
response came to him, and he was fearful to intensify the
summons lest he might betray his presence to those
downstairs, and bring about an enforced relinquishment
of his watch.

Evening gave place to night, and the yellow harvest
moon arose.  Sounds of supper things stirring and
searches after Pam drove him from the landing into his
bedroom.  Emma Morland, less timorous of knuckle
than he, and less furtive of intention, came boldly up the
staircase, calling Pam's name, and rapped—after finding
the door locked—a peremptory summons upon its inmate.

"Come; what 'a ye gotten door fast for?" he heard
her demand of the languid voice of response that had
raised itself faintly at the summons, like a wounded
bird.  "Is n't it about time ye came doon an' gied a 'and
wi' supper things?  Ah 've yon blouse to finish by
to-neet, think on."

Then the wounded voice stirred itself wearily again.

"What! another?" Emma Morland cried, with more
of resentment in her tones than sympathy.  "That meks
second ye 've 'ad i' t' week.  Ye nivver used to 'ave 'em.
What 's comin' tiv ye?"

"Well!  ah declare!" she exclaimed, after further
parley of an apparently incomprehensible and unsatisfactory
nature.  "It 's a rum un when a lass like you starts
tekkin' tiv 'er bed, 'at 's nivver knowed a day's illness in
'er life!  There mun be seummut wrong wi' ye, ah think—a
decline, or seummut o' t' sort.  We s'll 'a to be
fetchin' doctor tiv ye, gen ye get onny wuss.  Will ye let
me mek ye some bread-an'-milk?  Some gruel, then?
Some tawst an' tea?  Ye weean't?  Ye 're sure ... noo?
Well, then; it 's no use.  Ah 've done my best.
Good-neet tiv ye, an' ah 'ope ye 'll be better i' t' morn.
Don't trouble aboot gettin' up no sooner nor ye feel fit.
'Appen ye 'll sleep it off."

So she was safe in bed, then.  Through the sorrow
his love felt at the unhappiness in which it had involved
the girl—for love it was—nothing short of love, and
great love at that, could have moved this nervous,
self-secluded man to such courageous acts of infamy—he
drew relieved breath at the intelligence.  Now he could
relinquish the closeness of his vigil without fear.

He would have followed Emma Morland down the
staircase with less ease of mind, perhaps, could he have
seen the dressed figure of the girl, curled up on the quilt,
with her face plunged in the pillows; and been able to
follow the fevered hurryings of her thought.  For the
languid, wing-wounded voice he had heard was but a lie,
like all the rest of her in these days.  It was no
headache she had—heartache, if you like—but no headache.
What her seclusion sought was thought, not oblivion;
action, not restfulness.

With the letter back at her breast again, all was
undone once more.  The door of the last few days seemed
opened, as with a key.  With this restored to her, and
in her arms, all her courage came back; all her old
steadfastness and fortitude; the blinded eyes of her spirit
seemed opened.  This very night, while the household
slept, she should steal forth—as she had stolen forth in
that first early dawn of her happiness—and make restitution
of the letter.  Under the door by the porch, or in
at that familiar window—if only it were left unfastened—she
should slip it.  And with this letter must go a
second—that she would write—making full confession of
the offence, and humbling herself before him for his
pardon and forgiveness.  No longer did she desire to be
clad in his presence with the garments of hypocrisy.  Let
him look upon her in the nakedness of her sin, for her
soul's true chastening.  Let nothing be hid from him.
Rather now his proper scorn and loathing than his
ill-gotten favor, as her unrighteousness had once sought to
retain it.  For his favor was no more hers, at this time,
than the letter she held.  Both had been gained by
hypocrisy and fraud.  Both must be restituted for the
completion of her atonement.

And then her soul, walking forward with face glorious,
saw the atonement done ... and passed beyond
... and stopped.

After the atonement....  What?

Lord have mercy on her!  What?

Should she come back to this house, return to this bed,
go on living this life of shame and dishonor, give herself
ultimately into the arms of this man?  Should she celebrate
the sacrament of atonement this night, only to enter
upon a fresh course of unrighteousness to-morrow?

Oh, no, no, no!  She could not.  A thousand times
no!  She could not.

By fraud he had got her.  By cruelty he had broken
her resistance.  If she were going to pay openly for her
sin, by just atonement before the proper tribunal, why
need she pay a hundredfold in secret to this unrighteous
extortioner?  What she had undertaken to do she had
done.  She had bound herself by no promises, for he
would not accept them from her.  She had tied herself
to him publicly, and pleaded with Father Mostyn as
though she had been pleading for her life's blood; had
submitted to the degradation of this man's authority
... only for the letter that she held.  Rather than give
herself up to him she would cast herself over the cliff
and seek refuge in death.

And so thought ran on with her, and the further it
traveled the further it seemed to take her away from the
scene of her guilt and the man who had wronged her.

Yes, slowly but surely—as though, all along, it had
been aware of its destination, and kept it only from the
girl herself—her mind, traveling over its miles and
miles of railed purpose, arrived at this dark terminus.
She would go.

She wept when she saw at last where it was she must
alight, and said good-by to herself as to a dear friend.
But the parting was inevitable, and weeping, she bowed
to it.  To pour new wine of life into this old burst bottle
of hers, how could she?  Without open proclamation of
the truth, her life in Ullbrig would but be days and
hours and minutes of wicked, unbearable deception.
But in a new place, away from the old sin and the old
temptation, she might better succeed.  She could never
be happy again; that she knew.  Happiness was gone
from her for ever, but she could be good.  Goodness
should be her adopted child, in place of the one she had
lost.  The Spawer was good; like him she would try—oh,
how patiently—to be.

Maddest of madness.  The girl thought she was arriving
at it all by processes of reason; she was merely
delirious.  Grief had been a five-days' fever with her,
and this was the crisis.  But there were no kind hearts
to understand her sickness; no gentle hands to restrain
her.  Delirium, that she took to be reason, dictated
"Go," and she was going.

Vague dreams of vague work in vague towns blew
through her comprehension, like drifting mists from the
sea.  She would go here; she would go there; she would
get work as a dressmaker; as a cook; as a clerk in some
other post office; as a secretary ... as God knows what.

Night drew on as she fashioned her plans.  One by
one the familiar sounds acquainted her exactly with the
progress of it.  In the darkness of her pillow, before
the moon got round to her window, she needed no clock.
She heard the clatter of pottery; "good-nights" exchanged
in the kitchen; creaking of the twisted staircase
to the postmaster's stockinged feet, with the hollow
bump of his hands as he steadied his ascent; the amiable
gasping of Mrs. Morland, gathering up her forepetticoats
and laboring in the wake of her husband's ascent;
the unutterable sound of the schoolmaster's footsteps,
that sent pangs through her, each one, as though he
were treading all the way on her heart; the cruel catch
of his bedroom door, so hard, remorseless, and sinister.
In such wise he had shut the door of his compassion on
her soul's fingers, and heeded not.  And last of all,
the sounds of bolts shot beneath; journeyings of Emma
to and fro between the two kitchens.  Now she would
be extinguishing the lamp; now she would be lighting
her candle; now she would be putting the kitchen lamp
back for safety on the dresser by the wall; now she
would be coming upstairs ... ah! here she came.  The
flickers of her candle winked momentarily in the keyhole
of Pam's door, as though she were listening at the head
of the staircase to gather assurance of her sound repose.
Then the keyhole closed its blinking eye, and there
ensued the click of Emma's own latch.

At that last culminating sound, Pam's heart turned
palpitatingly within her, part exultant, part terrified;
seemed almost to come into her mouth like a solid
materialised sob.  Now all the path was clear.  Its
clearness dismayed her.  Soon slumber would prevail over
the post-house, and act sentinel to her purpose.  But
though purpose, standing like a bather by the brink of
wintry waters, shivered at the prospect of immersion—yet
did not falter.  Purpose had vowed to go, and purpose
was going.  Another hour the girl kept stillness
upon her bed, and the half of an hour after that,
listening until the rhythmic *ronflement* of the postmaster's
snore was established, and the intervals between that
horrible menaceful cough—short at first—had spaced
themselves out into ultimate silence.  Then from her
bed she rose.

Stealthily, seated on the side of it, she unlaced her
shoes and laid them on the quilt, that her feet might be
noiseless upon the floor.  Then, letting the weight of her
body slide gradually on to the rug by the side of her
bed, she moved forward, balancing with outstretched
hands.  The clear beams of the moon filled her white
bedroom by this time, as though it were day.  And now that
the actual moment of flight was upon her, its keen,
constricted space in eternity acted like a pin-hole lens, through
which, magnified, she saw the difficulties of her task.

What, in the nature of personalty, should go with
her?  She would have need of her bath, of her big
sponge, of her toothbrushes, of her dentifrice and
powder, of her brushes and comb, of her night-gowns, of
her dressing-gown, of changes of underlinen, of her
blouses, of her best dress, of her Sunday shoes, of her
walking-boots, of pocket-handkerchiefs ... these only
concerning her toilette.

And she would have need of her mother's books, and
her own little library; her own little stock of French
grammars and easy reading books; the music that he had
given her ... heaps and heaps of precious, inconsiderable
gifts and souvenirs that in this hour of severance her
soul clung to tenaciously, as to dear, human fingers.

Alas! of such latter, it seemed, she had none to cling to.

But all these things she could not convey with her.
Flight could not hamper itself with baths and books, and
boots and blouses.  All that hindered it must be cast
aside.  And these things ... the only trifling landmarks
in life to remind her who she was, and what small
place she held in the great waste of existence ... these
must be cast aside too.

These must be cast aside!

What a severance!

How would her soul know itself without these familiar
tokens?  Without these, without Ullbrig, away in
strange places, in strange surroundings, she might be
anybody.  She was no longer Pam.  She was simply a
life ... an eating and a drinking; a sleeping and a
waking.  She wept.

Stealthily withal, but bitterly, and without any
abatement of her purpose, like a child weeping its way to
school, that never dreams of contesting the destiny that
drives it there.

Yes; all these dear things of her affection must be left
behind.  For the present, at least.  But they were not
robbers in this house; they were honest people, who had
loved her in the past, and been kind to her.  They would
guard these things for her, and if some day she wrote to
them and asked as much, they would cede them to her
without demur.  Only what she positively needed must
she take with her.  A night-dress, her tooth-brushes, her
sponge (that, at least, would squeeze up), a collar or
two, some stockings, one change of linen, one brush and
comb, one extra pair of shoes.  Just such a parcel as
she could carry without causing too much fatigue to
herself, or too much comment from others.  And she would
need money.

How much had she?

In her purse she had four shillings, sixpence, and
coppers; in the pocket of her old serge skirt, three
half-pence.  Five shillings odd to face the world with.  Oh,
it was very little!

But in an old chocolate box she had one pound ten
shillings in gold, and a fat five-shilling piece—all her
recent savings; the proceeds of little works for his
Reverence, and dressmaking assistance for Emma.  From
various parts of her bedroom, she gathered all the items
necessary for her outfit and essayed upon her most terrible
enterprise of all—the descent of the staircase.

Slowly, slowly, slowly ... oh, agonisingly slowly
... she turned the handle of her door and opened it
upon its hinges.  In those early days she had done this
same thing—with trepidation, indeed, and compression
of lip—but never with the blanched horror of to-night.
To stumble now, or betray herself; to arouse the house
to her flight, and be caught disgracefully in the
act—with nothing but shame and exposure as recompense for
her anguish—that must not be.  And yet all the boards
cried out upon her, sprang up, as though she had startled
them sleeping, and called: "Pam!  Pam!  What! is it
you?  Where are you going, Pam?"  And she dared not
hush them.

And the wooden walls, when she laid a guiding hand
upon them, rocked and yielded to her weight; it seemed
they must inevitably shake the sleepers on their beds.
And the stairs—treacherous stairs—each one of them
tried to betray her; promised fair to her foot, and called
out when she confided to them her body: "Noo then;
noo then! where 's ti gannin' to this time o' neet?
Mester Morland!  Mester Frewin! y' ought to be stirrin' alive
noo!  There 's this lass o' yours away seumweers wi' a
bundle o' claws [clothes]."  Oh, the slow sickness of it;
step by step, foot by foot, stop by stop, rigid as a statue,
cold of heart as of clay, burning of head, tingling of ears.
But at last her feet found the friendly kitchen mat, solid
on the red-tiled floor.

Long, standing there, she listened, panting and sifting
the overhead silence for the slightest sound that might
betide discovery of her flight.  But none could she catch,
though the meshes of her hearing were drawn painfully
fine.  The worst of her task was over.  Now were only
a few concluding things to do ... and then the going.

The moon filled the little clean kitchen and the kitchen
parlor—all this back part of the house, indeed—with its
great white beams, as it had filled her bedroom upstairs,
and gave her no need of lamp or candle.  Speedily moving
over the red tiles in her noiseless stockinged feet, she
acquired her few remaining necessaries from drawer and
cupboard, made up her effects into as neat a parcel as they
would let her, put on her old, faded, blue Tam-o'-Shanter,
laid her brown mackintosh ulster on the dresser, and
got ready her thick-soled walking shoes.  Now she had
only a little writing to do, and she could be gone.  First
of all, with her tears intermittently running, she must
write her letter to Him.  And she must write also to
Emma Morland.  And a line must be left for the postmaster,
and one for Mrs. Morland, and a farewell to the
man upstairs, who had wrought this havoc with her life.
And Father Mostyn ... he must not be left in ignorance.
And James Maskill too ... poor hallowed James,
who looked so sadly at her in these days; and Ginger.
At this sad hour of her parting, her heart wished to make
its peace with all against whom it had offended; all that
had offended it; all that had showed it kindness.  To
everybody that had given her a good word or a bad she felt
the desire to leave a little epistolary farewell.  But she
could not write to them all now.  Later, perhaps.  To do
so would be to keep her hand at work with the pen till
daybreak, and now every moment was of importance.
Ullbrig would be early abroad to-morrow.  Eyes would
be scanning the earth from every quarter long before
sunrise.  Not the most that her heart wished to do now,
but the least, for her purpose, that it might, must be her
rule.  She would write to the Spawer; he, at least, must
be written to.  And to Father Mostyn, and to the
schoolmaster, and a word to Emma.

So deciding, she got pen and paper and ink, and set
herself to this final task in the broad white band of
moonlight over the window table.

With writhings, with fresh tears, with bitings of the
pen, with painful defections of attention to the regions
upstairs, in the flood of clarid moonlight, she coped with
her labor.  But at last that too, like all suffering in the
world, had an end.  The letter was written and sealed.
And next, more fluently, was penned the epistle for his
Reverence; and succeeding that, her farewell to the
schoolmaster; and her sorrowing penitence to Emma.
The first two she gathered to herself; the second two she
left, displayed on the table, to be found of their respective
addressees in the morning.

And now she was on the brink of departure.  All her
work in this house had been accomplished except the
mere leaving of it.  She had looked upon this as easy, by
comparison, but how truly hard it was.  Dear little kitchen,
that swam away from her eyes as she gazed upon
it—like a running stream under the moonlight.  So the
glad current of her past was racing from her.  Dear little
blurred dresser—friend of hers from her childhood
upward.  She stooped her lips to it on an impulse, and
kissed its hard, scarred cheek again and again, in one last
sacred farewell.  Never more, perhaps, should her eyes
rest upon it.  Dear little warm-hearted oven, that had
done her so many good turns in the past.  Sometimes,
perhaps, it might have been a little too short with her
tarts, and a shade crusty with her pies—a little
hot-tempered with herself even, but that was nothing.  What
were its faults by the side of hers!  She held its round,
bright knob in a lingering grasp.  "Good-by, little oven....
Oh, little oven, good-by!  Do your duty better than
I have done mine ... and take profit by me.  Be kind to
Emma ... and Mrs. Morland ... for my sake ... and
brown your very best."

And to the little fender also, her soul said good-by;
and to the lamp that had lighted so many nights of her
happiness in the great agone; and to the brass boiler tap;
and to the warming-pan.  All over the house she would
have liked to wander, raining her mild, sorrowful tears
... and saying her spiritual good-bys to these dear,
inanimate friends of her vanished happiness; but it might
not be.  Into her mackintosh she stole at length—that
rustled like marsh flags, for all her care—slipped on her
shoes, gathered up her parcel, and passed out of the
kitchen on cautious tip-toe.  But a few more moments and
she had renounced the comfortable roof of red tiles that
had made so pleasant a shelter over her head these years
past.  Now there intervened no shield between that dear
head and the stern, starry sky; so severely calm and
clear and dispassionate.  No hope from there, dear child,
though you lift your lips to it and invoke its mercies.
Others too, as tender—though not more fair—have
confided themselves so, and sunk in the great world's ocean
beneath these self-same stars.

And thus, with one long, drenched, searching gaze of
tears, sideways up the wall of the house that had held her,
good-night and good-by!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXVI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXVI

.. vspace:: 2

The schoolmaster, never a sound sleeper at the best of
times, this night slept his worst.  Being but a novice
in practical iniquity, and lacking yet the reposeful
assurance that lulls the veteran evil-doer upon his pillow, and
gives him slumber unknown of the godly, who have consciences
to lie upon their breast like lobster, he tossed
hotly between his sheets.  Sleep came to him, indeed, but
it was a troubled sleep, blown across his mind's sky in
fitful patches, like the clouds that had scudded seawards
over the land this day, and gave him no repose.

Thoughts, like teetotums, spun too fast for the mind's
eye to recognise the figures on them.  But always the
basis of his delirium was Pam; the ceaseless desire of her
possession; his love of her; his remorse of the evil that
had been done to get her; her horror of him that his act
had inspired in her; wild resolutions to atone to the girl
for his past iniquity by his future dedication to her
worship; to justify the means by the end, and make her bless
him at last for the sin that had brought them together.

So his mind was spinning on its unchecked dizzy orbit
in space through the hours, like a star through the
centuries, when all at once, with a shock that shuddered him
from head to foot, some unseen power arrested its flight
as with an omnipotent hand, and left him wide-eyed and
wakeful on his bed; no star at all now, but the bed-bound,
trembling body of a man, filled with sudden fear and
apprehension.

What had happened?  Had his being just wrested itself
from the bonds of a horrid nightmare?  Had he been
dreaming or thinking when the shock came?  He could
remember nothing, whether it had been dream or reflection,
to which he could attribute the alert horror of this
moment.  It had dropped upon him from somewhere
without himself; as though it had been a mighty, soundless
peal of thunder, shaking his soul to its foundations.
His thoughts he could recall with equanimity; there was
nothing in them to cause him fear—and still fear filled
him, the more greatly for having not form nor expression.
Fear, or apprehension, filled him to such extent that the
cold, tingling fingers of terror crept up his scalp, from
neck to forehead, brushing all his hairs the wrong way;
and a great, boiling sweat burst out next moment upon
his face and body.  So men have been made aware at
times of the doings of death, and the schoolmaster,
recalling cases of the kind, drew himself up palpitatingly
in his bed.  On the cane-bottomed chair by the head of
it, it was his nightly custom to set his candle, which he
thus extinguished, with a hand thrust out from between
the sheets.  Thrusting out the same hand now, he possessed
himself, in agitated haste, of the match-box, struck
nervously for a light with the match's unphosphorused
end, and with the red tip of phosphorus on the
unsand-papered side of the box; and lastly, after much work of
the sort, drew into existence a fitful, wavering flame, that
died in giving light to the candle.  Then he pulled forth
his watch by its chain from under the pillow, and holding
it out from him, fixed a disturbed eye upon its face.
Half-past twelve.

Half-past twelve!  No more than that!  Ages he
seemed to have been battling with the fever of thought.
Could the watch be true?  He pressed it to his ear, and
heard the active click-click, click-click heart go beating
in its busy little body.  It had not stopped then.  It spoke
the truth.

He replaced it under the pillow, and remained drawn
up in bed, with both arms outstretched on the coverlet, as
though debating action—though what to do, or what
might be supposed to be required of him, he knew not.
His heart, thumping against his ribs, gave abundant
evidence that he had been rudely roused—if otherwise he
had had any inclination to doubt.  And there was the
relaxed weakness about his legs, too, and his limp arms,
that bore witness to the sharpness of the shock.  Had
the shock come upon him standing, his first instinct would
have led him to sit down.  Over and over in his mind he
kept turning this awakening like a strange, unknown coin,
seeking to find some decipherable superscription upon it,
and learn what it might presage.  It had come upon him
suddenly.  It was like to a clap of thunder without noise;
the boom of a gun; the slam of a door.  Something
whose sound he had not heard, but whose shock had
stirred him.  Yet all he could think of was death.
Somebody was dead; somebody was dying; somebody was
going to die.  To such extent did the idea of death
possess him that it seemed to expire from him like a mighty
stream, whose fount was in his brain.  The whole room
was filled with the awesome presence of it.  Death was
at the bed-foot; at the window curtain; shrouded the
candle.  And then, of a sudden, thoughts of death and
thoughts of the girl, circling round each other, came into
horrible collision, and commingled, and lo! death and the
girl were one.

In his guilty state of mind, he was an easy prey for
terror.  He tried to rid himself of the idea with a hundred
assurances drawn from pure reason.  How could she be
dead?  She had never died before ... why should she
die now?  She was sleeping safely in her own bed, not
four yards from him.  Draw a bee-line through the wall
at his head, through the landing beyond, and through the
wall of the girl's room, and there she should surely be.
Only last night he had been speaking to her; hardly more
than four hours ago he had heard her voice.  Death could
not have come to her so soon.  The idea was nonsense.
But like a child, terrorised by things unseen, that the
wisdom of grown-up logic cannot pacify, the more he
reasoned the more his unreasonment grew.  For all this
ill-gotten authority over her that he had been wielding
so unmercifully these days past ... to what might it
not have driven her?  Desperately he listened—with his
face turned toward the wall—as though death were a
thing audible, like the tick-tacking of the big clock in the
passage below.  But the tick-tacking of the big clock, and
the irregular thudding of his own heart, and the long-drawn
snores of the postmaster, were all that he could
hear.  This trinity of sounds hung like a creaking door
before his hearing.  He was sensible of a deep and deadly
silence beyond, flowing like the sea of eternity; but despite
his desperate fishing, he could draw up nothing from its
depths.  Last of all, wrought to the supreme pitch of
suspense, he threw aside his coverings, slid from the bed,
and stole across the room towards the door—a miserable
figure of inquietude in his thin, bare legs and short
scholastic night-gown, that took him pathetically somewhere
by the bone of the knee.  Again, at the door itself he
listened for a while, trying to cancel those three intrusive
factors—the snore, the clock, and his own heart—and
base his calculations on the silence beyond; but he could
not.  If he would gain any reassurance for his disquieted
spirit, he must go forth and inquire deeper of the
surrounding stillness than this.

And he went forth, and saw the moonlight bathing all
the landing through the little staircase window and issue
idly in a pale, phosphorescent stream round the three
sides of the girl's part-opened door.

Like a wide-mouthed statue of horror, he stood marble
in the white moonlight and stared.  Her door was open;
her door that had been closed and locked upon her last
night was open now—open so emptily and with such
desolation, while the moonlight flowed placidly through it,
like sea-water through the hollow hulk of a submerged
vessel—that it seemed as if never it could have held the
live, blood-warmed body of the girl.  For a moment, the
shock of what he saw was twin to the shock of what—so
short a while back—he had failed to see.  Then in his
little, wasted cotton night-dress and his bare legs as he
was, he started forward into action, pushed open the
panels unhesitatingly with his fingers, and entered.

All to itself the moonlight possessed the room; filled it
from floor to ceiling, from corner to corner.  There was
no girl.  Her bed had been merely laid upon from the
outside; she had not slept in it.  There was her night-dress
untouched in its embroidered case.  Except for the
callous, white moonlight, that showed him these things
without a thought for his anguish, the room was empty
as a sieve.  The girl had gone; gone where and why and
when, he could not tell.  Whether with thoughts of death,
or thoughts of flight, or thoughts of treachery—he could
not tell.  The discovery flew to his head like the vintage
of bitter grapes.  He searched madly about the room;
threw up the white valances of her bed, lest perchance
she were but hiding from him; opened her cupboards and
beat his hands wildly among the darkness of skirts and
hanging garments for some clasp of fugitive flesh and
blood; part shut the door to assure himself she was not
lurking behind its hinges, with her face in her hands and
her forehead against the wall.

But she was not.  He knew she was not when he
searched.  She was gone!  she was gone!

And thence, with his thin, worn, calico lapels blowing
about his legs, he scurried down the twisted staircase to
see what the lower regions had to show him.

As soon as his feet flinched on the bristles of the fibre
mat, they showed him all that they had to show.  The
two letters spread out side by side on the window table,
white as driven snow in the moonlight.  It needed no
slow investigation to assure him what they were.
Gravestones did not more certainly indicate what lay beneath
them than did these two pallid envelopes.  He was on
them at once, like a hawk.  "To Mr. Frewin," he read
on the first, in Pam's neat, well-known script, and ripped
it open regardlessly, as though he were gutting herrings.
So did his heart beat at him from within, and so did his
brain contract and swell, and so did his apprehensive hand
tremble, that for some seconds the piece of paper, for all
the words he distinguished on it, might have been a white,
waving flag.  But in the end he got control over himself,
and wrested the girl's last message to him from the paper
on which, to all intents and purposes, it was scarcely dry.

"When you get this..." he read.  Ah! that familiar,
time-worn overture for stricken messages of grief.  How
many miserables, by water-sides, by lone lochs, by canals,
reservoirs, and railways, have prefaced their journey to
eternity with these four words.  Scarcely a suicide so
unliterary that, at this last moment, he cannot call them to
his aid for epitaph to his misery.  As soon as the
schoolmaster read them, he knew all.  Death or departure
... this was the end.

.. vspace:: 2

"... When you get this" (he read), "I shall be far
away from Ullbrig, and you will know why.  If you had
done differently with me, I might have done differently
with you.  But it is too late now for regrets.  After the
sin you have forced me to share with you, I could never,
never love you.  The future frightens me.  For all you
have made me suffer I forgive you freely, but I pray God
we may never meet again.  I have been as wicked as you,
and for this reason I dare not join our wickednesses, for
fear of where they may lead us.  Please forgive me for
the things in which I have sinned against you, and beg
God to forgive us both for the things we have done
against Him.  Pray for me too, as I will pray for you.
Perhaps your life may be all the brighter and better for
my absence.  Strive to do your best that it may be so;
and please remember, if at any time you are tempted to
think hardly upon me, that I am not angry with you, and
that I do not blame you.  Good-by for ever.  PAM."

.. vspace:: 2

That was all the letter told him—but it was enough.
His face was like the face of a snow-man when he had
finished reading.  Not only was he smitten to the heart
with the lost love of the girl, after all his lavish outlay of
unrighteousness and sin, but now she was gone, and he
was here in Ullbrig to bear the brunt of his deed.  For
he had no misconceptions as to his true position in the
matter, as Pam had.  He knew his conduct for what it
was, and his hold over her for what it was, and the
world's judgment for what it would be.  Her very going
was a declaration of the thing he had held over her in
his wickedness, and would have never dared employ.  The
worthless blackmail with which he had threatened her had
served its purpose only too well.  To such extent had the
girl believed its power and feared it, and accredited him
with the intentions of its use, that she had been terrorised
into flight from him.  And now the full responsibility of
his act pointed at him with awful finger.  To-morrow,
tidings of the girl's departure would be out.  Tongues
would be busy.  She who had been going to wed the
schoolmaster had loved him so little that she had fled
from him.  Why had she fled from him?  Because he
had held a letter over her head that he had robbed
from her desk—a letter belonging to neither of
them—and by withholding it from its proper owner, and
threatening the girl, he had got her to submit to his
terms.  When once that became known he was a
ruined man.  His love was ruined; his life was ruined.
The death that had so terrorised him already must have
been none other than his own.  For rather than face this
terrible exposure and degradation, he would die.  He was
a wild and desperate man now, holding the slipping cable
of life and honor in his hands.  To avert this catastrophe,
to find the girl—at scarcely anything would he
stop short.  But what must he do?  Where seek her?
How act?

To cast his eye on the second letter was to seize upon
it as he had done the first, and tear open its contents
without a moment's hesitation.  Emma Morland would never
know what had been left for her this night, and beneath
this envelope there might lurk a confession of the whole
history of the girl's departure, with his own share writ
incriminatingly large; at the least, some word or sentence
that might give him a clearer clue to her intentions
than her own letter to him.  But he was disappointed.
Beyond beginning: "Dearest Emma," this second epistle
told him nothing that he consumed to know.  It was a
mere farewell of sorrow for all the sin Pam had
committed against Emma, particularly during these last few
days, and a pathetic begging for forgiveness.  Emma did
not know how unhappy Pam had been—Pam hoped Emma
would never, never know such unhappiness.  She was
not the girl Emma thought her.  She was a living lie, full
of wickedness and deception.  The only thing for her to
do, she felt, was to blot out such a horrible lie from the
face of Ullbrig and be gone.  Then followed assurances
of undying love to Emma, and to the postmaster and to
Mrs. Morland, with a list of such things as Pam
bequeathed to Emma for her own use and possession.  To
all intents and purposes, it was Pam's last will and
testament, pathetically worded enough, had the man been in
any mood for pathos other than his own.  To the postmaster,
Pam left this; to Mrs. Morland, that; to James
Maskill, the other; to Ginger—if he would have it—some
further token of her affection.  Only the schoolmaster's
name was absent.  And at the end was Pam's own name,
blurred and spotted with the tears that had fallen fast
at this juncture.

But for these the man had no heed.  He had read the
letters, and they had told him nothing; now he must
decide quickly, as he valued his life.

And first, he could accomplish nothing as he was.  The
remembrance of his ungarbed condition came upon him
suddenly, and he cursed himself for his bodily
unreadiness—although his mind had as yet no commission for
his limbs to execute.  Up the twisted staircase he pattered
again, employing his hands on the steps in front of him
like paws, to accelerate his pace, and thrust himself wildly
into his clothes.  Then he scurried down again to the
little kitchen.  There he sorted his own boots from the
disorderly gathering for the morning's clean, strapped up
their leather laces with the speed of desperation, stuffed
the two letters into his coat pocket, caught a cap from the
row of pegs where the postmaster's official regalia hung,
and scuffled down the passage to the front door.

There was no mistaking signs of the girl's flight, or the
way by which she had fled.  For him there was no necessity
to work back the big square bolt, or turn the traitorous
key.  Pam's fingers had done that service already.
He was out in the street with scarcely a moment's delay,
on the whitewashed step where Pam's own feet had rested
less than fifteen minutes ago—could he only have
known—closing the door upon him by stealth, as she had done,
and looking up and down the roadway, divided lengthways
between its far white band of moonlight and its
nearer black shadow, with its serrated line of broken
roofs and chimney-pots—like the keyboard of a piano—as
she had looked before her purpose made its final
plunge.

Which way had she gone? he asked himself, in frenzied
supplication.  For all he knew, she had been gone an
hour, a couple of hours, three hours ... four hours.
Even now, while he was making this vein-bursting
struggle to come abreast with her and stave off that awful
exposure of to-morrow, it might all be ended.  Destiny
might have this shameful history written to the full in
the book of record, and the book inexorably closed.
Perhaps the girl's purpose had been maturing all these days
past.  Perhaps her plan had been prepared from the first
... and in abeyance, pending restitution of the letter.
Fool that he was ever to give it!  Why had n't he adhered
to his first project, and given it to her only when they
were in sight of the house, and he was with her, or left
it there himself by night, with a message that it had been
overlooked in a corner of the post-bag?  Now what had
she done with it?  Had she restored it?  That would
mean the Cliff Wrangham road she must have taken.
Or had she fled with it, bearing all traces of her guilt
with her?  That might mean any road ... the Hunmouth
road, the Garthston road, the Merensea road.  Or
had she gone to cast herself upon the protection of the
Vicar?  Accursed old busybody! who had drilled and
questioned and cross-examined him about the wedding
like a school-thief under suspicion.  There was probability
about this latter surmise, and at least, to put the speculation
to the test would not take him far out of his way.
Full of the wild, unrestrained desire to do something,
with tumultuous, incredulous hope in the desire, he quitted
his place on the doorstep, and set off in madman's haste
for the Vicarage.

But the moon poured down in sublime, unpitying
indifference upon its unlighted windows.  The house was as
still and unawake as the church at its side and the white
graves beyond.  Baffled, he stood and glared hatefully,
with his hands twitching about the upturned collar of his
coat, and his face working as though the house were
human and he would have throttled it.  Of all men in
the world to help him, here, behind these luminous opal
windows, was the man, and he knew it, and was powerless
to evoke his assistance, grinding his teeth together in the
fierce agony of despair.

Motion took him in the legs again, and drove him down
the narrow, crooked side-street towards the low road and
Merensea Hill, between the rows of tumbled cottages, with
their yellow window squares.  He could have drummed
on them with his fingers, and in his desperation and
need of assistance would have done so, but fear withheld
him.  As he ran, he heard troubled night-coughs rap out
sharp at him here and there, where some aged sufferer
drew breath badly, and wrestled for such stagnant air as
was contained in the sealed chamber.  The buzzing of
some big eight-day clock, too, chiming a belated hour, he
heard, and the fretful crying of a baby, being lulled to
sleep by its weary mother.  Heaven knows where his run
would have ended in this direction, for it was become so
blended and amalgamated with his consciousness that he
could have as soon stopped running as the feverish
urging of his thoughts.  But at the bottom of the street,
where the road dips its lowest before making the sharp
ascent of Merensea Hill, he saw the dark figure of a man,
and death could not have stopped him sooner.  It was
only Bob Newbit, smoking his black cutty, with his hands
in his belt, and a coat thrown over his shoulders, come
out to watch over the fire of the brick-kiln that glowed
red in the field across the roadway, but all men were one
man in their power to read the schoolmaster's dark secret,
and do him harm.  He saw the burning end of the cutty
turn his way, and without waiting to know whether he
had been perceived, or give the chance of a hail, he
turned on his tracks again like a hare, and was forging
up the street through the square lighted windows towards
the Vicarage.

This time, without stopping in his breathless course, he
went by.  One way was as good as another to him, who
had no reason for going any.  He would keep on to Cliff
Wrangham.

At first, panting doggedly onward, he ran this way as
he had run that.  If his clothing had been on fire instead
of his brain, like this he would have wildly run, seeking
flight from the agony that consumed him.

But conviction came upon him as he ran.  It seemed
incredible he could be making all this desperate endeavor
for nothing.  It must surely end by repaying him with
positive result.  Little by little the mad, fitful uncertainty
gave way to the madder flame of assurance.  Of all madness,
this fixed madness is the most to be feared.  Now
he was merely pursuing the girl, who was along here in
front of him.  At times, turning his ear before him as he
lunged onward, he seemed to hear elusive footsteps;
thought he saw her flitting aside into gateways and
hedgerows to escape him.  Once he staggered halfway
across a grass close because, he saw her standing in the
middle of it, trying to deceive him by her motionlessness
into thinking her some inanimate thing.  When he came
near she was a pump-well.  Then he saw that he had
relinquished the substance for the shadow.  She was on
the roadway there, in advance of him; her skirts flying,
her hands to her hat.  And he lumbered back over the
soft grass, soddened by the recent rain, to the roadway,
and resumed his forward pursuit.

Full of fresh strenuous desire to press ahead, and worn
out with this unaccustomed exertion, he passed, half
running, half walking, with his hand bound over his heart,
and his breath drawn up convulsively, like a child with
the croup—through the final gateways, one after another.
Now he was in the little end lane, making a poor pretence
of caution.  Now he waw by the stable; now he was by
the iron wicket.  The hope that had been his while he ran
stopped dead as his flight stopped.  By the little iron
wicket, and still under cover of the kitchen-garden wall,
he stayed, gasping, and dared not go further, or look at
the front of the house, for fear of what he should see—the
sight of all its moonlit windows looking out with the
calm, self-communing gaze of the blind, that know nothing
of what they gaze upon.  As the Vicarage had faced
him, so this house should face him.  It was the end.  He
knew his doom.

And knowing it, he found strength to see, and saw.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXVII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXVII

.. vspace:: 2

Saw the magnified yellow window thrown over the
pathway and out across the tangled grass to the
mouldy green railings, from the Spawer's room.  Here
was life at last.  Thank God!  Here was life at last.

His heart gave a convulsive leap of exultation within
him.  Could it be mere coincidence that of all Ullbrig and
Cliff Wrangham this man should be unnumbered among
the sleepers?  Could it be that the late light, flowing from
that little low window beyond the porch, had no concern
with his own misery and the girl's flight?  He could not
think it.  Here was his journey's end.  Let him take the
girl red-handed in shame, if need be.  Shame, even,
counted for nothing in his love of her.  Had she been
dyed to the neck in iniquity he would have wished her,
and followed to the world's end for her, without the lash
of his own sin to whip up the pursuit.

Slowly, with his eyes fixed on the sidelight from that
fateful window, he advanced; arms outspread for caution,
doubling inwards from his middle at each step, and
making a semi-circle upon the grass to get sooner and deeper
sight into the room.  All at once his eye cleared the
obstruction of trailing porch, and he stopped here, as though
to take in fresh supplies of cautious reserve and get
leverage upon the position.  Then, more laboriously he worked
forward again; his head far in advance; his knees bent;
his arms like a baboon's, extended to the ground—as
though at an alarm he would clutch at the long grass and
draw himself into its shelter.  The piano-end came into
view.  Its keyboard of chequered ivory lengthened as he
approached upon it; next he gained sight of the mantel-shelf;
and last of all ... with his finger-nails clenched
into his palms for self-repression ... the man.

He was seated on an end of the table, with his back
towards the window, and appeared to be reading or
scrutinising something beneath the powerful light of the
big hanging lamp.  What it was he bent his head over
the schoolmaster could not see, but his acute, tormented
vision saw something else that discharged itself at once
in lightning of revelation through the whole length and
breadth of his being, and blinded him for a moment with
fierce, flashing passion and exultant joy.  The room was
heaped up under the confusion of a departure.  There
were books stacked together carefully on the table; music
in fat portfolios; there were garments folded and
unfolded; coats and trousers; boots on trees; and to give
crowning evidence to his deduction, a big leather traveling
portmanteau, open of lid, beyond the fireplace.  Ah! was
it any longer a coincidence, these two departures?  Thank
God he was in time.  The Lord had not deserted him.  It
was the Lord that had brought him here this night.

Meanwhile, the Spawer kept his attitude, with bowed
head of absorption beneath the lamp; and the man
watched.

Yes; he was going.  The schoolmaster had made no
mistake.  A child, looking in at the open window, would
have declared as much.  Of a truth, Maurice Ethelbert
Wynne had had his last decisive bout with that big bully
Destiny.  No mistake about it, he had been badly beaten.
All through the hours after supper he had been collecting
his effects together; packing the big trunk down here,
that it might be more easily conveyed to the spring cart
on the morrow; packing the smaller portmanteau upstairs.
Upstairs to-night for the most part his work had
been, only quitting it at long intervals to bring down
further contributions for the yawning leather trunk.  And
now, on this last occasion of his descent, he had been
made aware, for the first time, that a couple of letters lay
on the keyboard of the pianoforte, by the bass end, near
the window.

At the beginning his eye had rested upon them, and
accepted their presence as a matter of course, without any
further inquiry or speculation, quite content with seeing
them.  It was a customary place for him to leave things
of the sort, only he did n't remember having left anything
there lately.  By the way, what letters would they be?
More out of idleness than real curiosity, he put out his
hand and took them up.

The first, addressed to him in that firm, feminine
handwriting—almost masculine—beneath a wealth of green
stamps and postmarks, he recognised at a glauce.  But
it had not been opened.  Strange that!  Which of all her
letters had escaped him like this?  When had it come?
How long had he overlooked it?  Still asking himself the
questions, he turned his eye upon the second letter.  That
too, was addressed to him in a handwriting he knew no
less surely—though with less familiarity: the soft, neat,
girl-like script of Pam, and that, too, must be unopened,
for it was the first he had received from her.  From Pam,
of all people in the world.  What had she to say to him?
Perhaps this letter would explain the other.  Very
nervous of finger, he tore open the envelope.

A curious little letter it was, perplexingly short, that
puckered up his brows and left him more puzzled after
its perusal than before.  It appeared to be, in some sort,
a confession for an imaginary crime that the girl had
committed—though wherein lay the enormity of it, or the
necessity for this present epistle, not for the life of him could
he perceive.  Pam, indeed, whose own guilt was so vivid
that a word was sufficient to depict it, had thought that
the same word could reveal it to all the world.  Her letter
was like the answer to a riddle, with the question lacking.
Apparently, the Spawer told himself, the girl had failed
to deliver a letter—the letter accompanying this, he
presumed—and it had preyed terribly upon her mind.  He
was to forgive her, as she felt sure he would forgive her
if he could only know what suffering it had cost her.  And
then followed an outburst of affectionate gratitude for
all the kindness he had lavished on her; his never-failing
goodness and patience.  These she should never forget.
With a concluding appeal to him that he should try and
think as leniently of her as he could.

Think as leniently of her as he could!  Miserable
topsy-turveydom of life, where all one's acts turn upside-down
in the acting, and one's deeds misrepresent one with the
deliberate purpose of political agents.  Here he had been
holding himself a supplicant upon the girl's mercy, and
lo! all the while, it seemed their positions were exactly
reversed, and it was she who imagined herself an offender
against him!  This letter of the girl's troubled him.  Did
it mean she had never been sure of his friendship?  Did
it mean she had altogether overlooked the signs in his
conduct that should have told her he would have forgiven
anything ... to her?  Had all their relationship been
built up of vain imaginings and misunderstandings?  If
... for instance...

But he would have no more "ifs."  Already he had
had too many.  What might have been and what was were
as asunder as the Poles.  Let him not revive the old
unworthy desires under the cloak of If.  What did the
second letter say?

He opened it more slowly than the first—as though he
felt a little the shame of going before its presence, and
did not anticipate much happiness from this interview of
pen and ink.  But as he read, it seemed he could not tear
his eyes away from their fascinating occupation.  If
Pam's letter had added cloud to his confusion, this letter
was explicit indeed—and yet dazed him at the same time
with an overwhelming sense of unreality.

The freedom that he had felt himself unable to ask of
the Other Girl, in this letter she was asking of him.  All
the old stock-in-trade arguments of love that he had
thought once of bringing to bear upon her, she was
bringing to bear on him.  Their attachment, she pointed
out, was a mere boy-and-girl attachment, that had never
taken deep root in their later lives.  He had offered her
her liberty once, but he would know that all her sense of
loyalty had refused the gift at the time.  But now it was
different.  Another stronger love had come into her life,
and she would not disguise the fact from him—it had
more to offer.  She was not cut out for the wife of a
composer.  He would know that, really, without her
telling him.  She could never be helpful to him; never even
give him the full measure of sympathy that the creative
mind needed.  In a word, love and worldly position had
been laid together at her feet and she dared not proceed
with this flat, stale attachment of theirs, that had neither
reason nor riches.  It was always a woman's privilege to
change her mind, and she would avail herself of it to
accept the liberty he had offered her before.  Friends
they had been, all this while—never lovers at all—and
friends, she trusted, they would never cease to be.  There
was a little blot of tears at the end, a slight incoherence
of phraseology in a sentimental reversion to their happy
past ... but only slight—only very slight.  Love had
been dead between them long ago.  She was reconciled
to that.  But this letter was its official funeral—and it is
a strong woman whose tears can resist the appeal of a
burying.

And this was the letter the Spawer read with face bent
down, while the man outside kept watch.

No wonder he sat motionless on the corner edge of the
table, as he had first seated himself, poring over that
magnetising something that the watcher, for all his
watching, could not see.  For what did this letter mean
to him?  Nothing at all now, in hard fact, perhaps
... but yet ... what tantalising riches in speculation.  Here
were his trunks, and here was he, all ready for dutiful
departure—and in his hands was the instrument of
reprieve.  His duty had been remitted him.  From that
duty he was free.  Who should say what was his duty
now?  Had he a duty at all—to himself, or anybody?
Or was he, by virtue of this relinquishment, become a
mere jellyfish, without volition, to float this way or that
at the mercy of the tides?  What was there to take him
from Ullbrig now?  What was to keep him?  If he
stayed?  If he went?  If this letter had come sooner!
If this letter had only come sooner!

And the whole thing began over again.

All the old fever of reasoning set in anew with him,
and rose up to its height.  All the old desires.  All the old
wild hopes.  He had been tired when he came downstairs,
less with physical fatigue than with the dull, sleepless
lassitude of established despair—but now he was very
wide awake.  His eyes revolted at the thoughts of being
closed perforce upon a pillow; they wanted license to
keep open house for his brain all night through.
Suddenly, too, came upon him the nervous appetite for
activity; the desire to give a bodily articulation to the
movement of his mind.  He felt as though he could have
set off, and walked the globe round, and been back again
here by to-morrow's breakfast.  And submitting to the
feeling, he rose all at once from his place on the table,
turned down the twin burners of the swing lamp, picked
up his cap, squeezed his way out through the two doors
and the narrow porch, and set off towards the sea.

He walked with a brisk, purposeful step, for the night
was chill beneath the white moon and the many cool stars.
Part way across Luke Hemingway's big ten-acre field, at
a sudden turn of his head towards some recumbent,
cud-chewing cattle, his eye-corner caught the tail-end of an
upright figure, vanishing into the hedge at some distance
behind him.  There was nothing, of course, when he
looked, to confirm the impression, beyond the clear-defined,
moonlit path along which he had come.  But his
eye retained such an obstinate remembrance of its own
delusion, that at a few yards further on, choosing his
moment, he turned on his heel again.  And again,
strangely enough, his eye seemed to be just eluded by
the vanishing figure of a man.  Had he been nervously
given, he might have felt tempted to walk back and
scrutinise the hedgerow that had thus twice afforded refuge
to his shadowy pursuant.  But for one thing, his mind
was too busy for nerves to-night, and knowing, moreover,
the strange receptive sensitiveness of the human eye, and
the assurance with which it attests, as realities, mere
miraculous figments of the brain, he passed on—reserving
the right to turn again when he had given his visual
informant an opportunity to forget its impression.

After a longer interval, therefore, he looked back
again, on the pretext of stooping to his shoe-lace, and
three times after that.  Twice his eye attested to the
presence of a furtive figure, that seemed to drop to
earth in the thick fog grass when he turned, only now
he knew that his eye did not deceive him.  He was being
followed.

That the discovery did not tend to add much zest to his
midnight ramble—even had there been any before—the
Spawer would have been the last to deny.  It is an
unpleasant thing, at any time, to have one's back turned
towards a stealthy follower of undeclared intentions, but
moonlight and a lonely coast add still further unpleasantness
to the situation.  However, the fact remained, and
it was no use getting into an unnecessary fuss about it.
To turn back openly would not remedy matters much, or
give the Spawer any particular advantage over his
unknown pursuer.  He decided, therefore, keeping cautious
vigil over alternate shoulders as he walked, to push on
to the cliff, without betraying the least sign of suspicion,
and see to what extent this figure would press pursuit.
So, quickening his step imperceptibly, and setting up a
blithe, not too noisy whistle of unconcern, he came to the
cliff, the shadow following.

The wind and storm of the past few days had troubled
the sea, that thundered up in ugly assailment of surf
about the cliff's soft earthen base, for the tide was rising.
Awhile he stood, at the point where he had come upon
the path, watching the great waste of chill waters with
one eye, and the spot where the figure had vanished, with
the other.  The keen gaze of Farnborough gleamed out
at him in sudden recognition, and here and there little
intermittent pin-points of yellow pricked the horizon
where boats rose and fell upon the bosom of the sea.
Then he lifted his leg leisurely over the gate-stile, by
which he had been standing, and sat for a moment astride
of it.  From this perch he commanded the hedgerow—that
ran down to the cliff edge at right angles—on both
sides, and could not be approached without his observance.
But whatever object his follower had, it seemed
certainly, so far at least, that it was unconnected with
any ideas of direct encounter.  There had been no
attempt to gain on him; their relative positions now were
what they had been at the first moment of discovery; and
it seemed he might sit here till daybreak without his
shadow's making any advance in the open.  Suddenly,
an idea to test the situation came into his mind, and on
the instant he acted on it.  The man, whoever he might
be, was about fifty yards or so inland, on the shady side
of the hedge, and watching the Spawer's conspicuous,
upright figure keenly, no doubt.  All at once the Spawer
brought his second leg over the rail, descended, stepped
quickly some paces inland, and drew into the hedge.
Though the moon fell on him, the hedge was straggling
and untrimmed, with somewhat of a dry ditch at its
bottom, and long grass.  Standing here, unobtrusively, it
would take an active search to come upon him, and such
a search would not only show him his pursuer, but give
him some shrewd idea of the man's intentions.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXXVIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXVIII

.. vspace:: 2

It was not long that the Spawer had to wait.  He had
scarcely subsided into his position, indeed, when he
heard, on the other side of the hedge, the rapid "rff, rff,
rff," that told where long grass was being torn aside to
the passage of hurried feet.  The fellow was running,
then.  It flashed across the Spawer's mind grimly, as he
listened to the sound of him, that he did not think himself
of such interest to any mortal man.  And almost before
he had time to gratify his ironic humor with a smile, the
mortal man had scrambled desperately over the stile,
flinging himself to ground on this side of it with such a thud
of precipitation that he had to preserve his equilibrium
with spread fingers in the grass.  Next moment he pushed
himself upright again, ran hesitatingly forward some
paces, stopped dead, and commenced to beat about in a
wild, blind search on all sides of him, as though he were
dazed with the loss of his quarry.  For a moment it came
into the Spawer's head as he watched him that perhaps
the man was mad or drunk.  Certainly there seemed little
of rationality about his actions.  At times he ran; at
times he cast himself so close upon the edge of the cliff
that the Spawer's flesh crept cold, and he wondered
whether he ought to stand by and see a deluded fellow-being
submit himself to such dangers.  If he went over
there, with the boiling sea beneath, it was little chance
he would ever come up again—till the tide brought him.
But after a moment or two, the Spawer grew reassured
that this catastrophe was not likely to happen, and
continued watching in silence.

He was a furtive, unprepossessing-looking fellow, it
struck the Spawer.  His coat-collar was buttoned up to
his neck, lending a particularly sinister touch to his
appearance, and the coat itself hung upon him loosely, as
though he had no shoulders, and bagged with an empty
flatness about the waist, as though, too, he had no stomach.
It was a tramp's coat, with tails—such as no honest
rustic would wear—but had found its way here, through
a nameless course of degradation, from the towns.  And
they were tramp's trousers too, that looked as though any
minute they might come down; loose, lifeless, shapeless
trousers, whose bottoms his boots trod on at every step.
Otherwise, he wore a dark cloth cap, pulled tightly over
his scalp, with its neb scowling down to his eyebrows,
and his breath came and went vindictively—or so it
seemed to the Spawer—as though he had been baulked of
something, and was panting more through rage than exertion.

And all at once, puzzled to fit some kind of a key to
the fellow's strange conduct, what enmity or what design
he could have against him, the Spawer's mind harked
back to the two letters he had received this night, and to
the enigmatical epistle of the girl, and in a flash he knew
his man.

But though he knew him, whatever the recognition
might serve him in despatching theories of robbery and
violence, it served him little for enlightenment.  Added,
indeed, to his perplexity, instead of subtracting from it.
For what object had caused this man to follow him—him,
his poor, crushed, and trampled antagonist—to the
sea to-night?  Had he not injured him enough, but that he
must needs track him in this despicable fashion, and play
spy upon his doings?  All the hatred and unreasoning
disregard that the unsuccessful have for the successful
rose up within him at the discovery.  Of the schoolmaster's
virtues he knew nothing; sought to know nothing.
It was enough for him that to this man he was
indebted for his soul's humiliation; that this sinister-looking
figure had supplanted him for occupation of the
dearest territory in the world; and he rejoiced with a
cruel and unhallowed joy that this, his vanquisher, had
been given over thus into his hand.

Ten to one, were he only to make no sound, he could
succeed in eluding discovery, for the fellow showed no
aptitude in search, but success of this sort was not what
he desired.  He had been contemptibly dogged for some
purpose or other, and he would have full revenge of the
man's shame.  Very quietly he stepped out of his shelter
and showed his tall figure in the moonlight.

"You appear to be looking for something," he said.

At the sound of his voice, the man spun round eagerly
on his heel, as though his first emotion had been of pure
incredulous joy that his quarry was not lost to him.
Shame succeeded upon that, to think of what the Spawer
had been a witness, and his forward impulse was checked
momentarily into a falling back on the heel that had
urged him.  Then, just as quickly, anger succeeded upon
shame.  Those chance words, uttered so carelessly, but
with such a frigid tone of scorn—as though the Spawer
in mind towered above him like an Alpine summit, and
his lofty contempt was snow-capped—roused his wrath
to desperation.

"You know what I am looking for," he said hoarsely,
and advanced with both hands up at his coat-collar.

Could the Spawer have had but one glimpse into the
surging hot mind of the man at this moment, and seen of
what wild charges he stood accused, he might have turned
the sword of his words into a ploughshare, and tilled
honestly for enlightenment.  But in his own mind it was
he who had been wronged.  And besides that, the fierce,
unexpressed hostility of love was between them.  Even
had there not been this present cause of quarrel to kindle
anger, they would have been rampant for the fray like
two rein-bucks.

"I know what you are looking for?" he asked, and his
voice moved contemptuously away from the suggestion
as he might himself have moved (so the schoolmaster
thought) from the contaminating touch of an unclean
beggar.  A clear, well-pitched, musical voice it was—so
different from the schoolmaster's hoarse, toneless
utterance—and its very superiority, seeming now to take
conscious pride in itself, stirred up the listening man's worst
hatred.  In birth, in station, in presence, in voice, in
possessions, and in love, this tall, insufferable figure
prevailed.  "You make a mistake..." he heard it say to
him.  "I know nothing at all about you, except that
you have been dogging my footsteps for this last quarter
of an hour.  I know that.  If you have anything to add
to it, I am ready to hear you."

The lean, shabby figure of the schoolmaster flinched
visibly in the moonlight at each fresh phrase, as if it had
been a whip-lash that his antagonist was curling about
him.  With both hands clenched at his coat-collar, he seemed
almost to be hanging on to resolution against a groan.

"Yes," he blurted out fiercely at last, releasing his
hands at the same moment from this occupation, and crying
out his confession like a wild triumph of delinquency;
"I have been following you.  You may know it."

"I do know it," said the Spawer.

"I say you may know it," the schoolmaster repeated,
raising his hoarse voice another tuneless semitone up its
chromatic of passion.  "I don't care."

"Don't care," the Spawer told him coolly, "as you may
be aware, got hanged.  I would advise you to take profit
by his example."

The schoolmaster's hands flew back to his collar again
with one accord.

"You thought you were safe from me," he forced
through his unsteady lips.  "You thought you were free
to do as you liked."

"I certainly thought I was free to walk along the cliff
without being persecuted with these attentions," the
Spawer cut into him.

"Yes; you thought ... you could trample on me!"
the schoolmaster hissed at him venomously.

"I have not the least desire to trample on you," the
Spawer assured him frigidly.  "I would not tread on a
worm if I knew it.  There is room in the world for us
both—if you 'll be so good as to make use of it."

"You think..." the schoolmaster cried passionately,
"that because you come from big towns, and live in fine
houses, and wear fine clothes ... that you can do what
you like in the country."

"It seems I am mistaken," the Spawer apostrophised
sarcastically.  "In the towns, at least, we have the police
to defend us from molestation by night."

"You think," the schoolmaster shouted at him, as
though to beat down his words and tread them and his
opposition underfoot, "... you think we country people
are fit subjects for your scorn.  You think you can walk
over our feelings, and trifle with all our happiness as
though we were mere paving-stones for your own evil
enjoyments.  You think we are the dirt beneath your feet."

"Indeed?" the Spawer remarked.  "I never thought
half so much about you as you suppose."

"You have thought it," the schoolmaster cried at him;
"and you are thinking it.  Every word you say to me is
an insult.  You want to tell me that I am beneath your
notice, and that your contempt is too good for me.  You
think you can mock me indiscriminately, and make a fool
of me."

"Not at all," the Spawer responded carelessly.  "I have
my own business.  You can do that quite well enough for
yourself."

"But you are wrong!" the schoolmaster shouted, in a
voice almost inarticulate with passion, and the terrible
cooped-up storm of hopes and fears.  "You are wrong.
You thought you could kick me aside like a dog, and leave
me to the derision and contempt of Ullbrig.  You thought
you could break up an honest man's happiness for your
own wicked diversion, and steal off like a thief with it.
But you are wrong.  You are wrong."  He was almost
weeping—though the Spawer did not know it—with the
insufferable fever of desperation.  Had the Spawer
known it, he would have had mercy, and surrendered this
wordy victory rather than fight to the finish with the
poor God-forsaken, love-forsaken, self-forsaken devil that
cut and lunged so furiously at him.  But the only conclusion
respecting this encounter, glimmering at the far back
of his brain, was that the man was consumed with the fire
of an unworthy jealousy, and he took joy in piling up its
fuel—even at the risk of burning his own fingers.  "But
you are wrong!  You are wrong!" the schoolmaster
reiterated at him.

"It seems I am wrong in many things," the Spawer
assented.  "But that 's scarcely surprising; since I don't
know who in the world you are, or where you come from,
or what the devil you want with me."

"You know who I am," the schoolmaster shouted at
him.  "And you know what I want with you."

"Not in the least," the Spawer told him, "unless it is
relief, but if so, you have a strange way of asking for it."

"You know it is not relief!" the tortured figure
exclaimed.  "If I were starving, I would go to my grave
sooner than ask a penny of such as you—that have n't the
heart of a dog.  You want to put me off with words and
sneers and scorns, but I won't be put off.  You shan't put
me off.  I have stood everything that I will stand."

"You have certainly stood long enough," the Spawer
remarked.  "Don't stand any longer on my account.  If
you have said all you wish to say, perhaps you will kindly
tell me which way is your way, and leave me free to
choose the other."

"I have not said all I wish to say," the man cried,
opening and clenching his fingers.  "You shall not shake
me off, for all your pretending.  I have found you in
time, and I will stick to you for the rights you want to
rob me of.  You shall not slip me.  Where you go I will
go.  You shall not get away."

The Spawer pulled his moustache, and looked the man
up and down.

"Really..." he said, after a while.  "You are a
smaller man than I ... but you tempt me very much to
kick you."

In a second, at that threat of action, the pent-up
torrents of the schoolmaster's rage and anguish burst forth
from him.  Anything was better than words.  He rushed
up wildly to his adversary.

"Kick me!" he cried fiercely, shouting up with hoarse
voice of challenge into the Spawer's face.  "Kick me!
Touch me.  Lay a hand upon me.  You say you 'll kick
me.  Kick me."

He pressed so hard upon the Spawer, with arms
thrown out and flourishing wildly, that even had he
wished it, the Spawer would not have had purchase to
kick him.  Instead, he receded somewhat from their
undesirable chest-to-chest contact, striving by gentle
withdrawal to mollify the man's mad anger.  For he had
seen into his eyes, and their look startled him.  Not for
himself—he was in every sense the man's better, and
could have wrought with him as though he were a schoolboy's
cane—but for the man.  It was borne in upon him
suddenly anew, with terrible conviction, that the fellow
was mad; the victim of some fierce hallucination—whose
fixed point of hatred was in himself—and he repented
now that he had goaded him to such a cruel pitch.  And
still the man pressed upon him.  "Kick me!" he kept
saying, utterly deaf to the Spawer's temporising and
persuasive utterances.  "Kick me.  Touch me.  Lay a hand
upon me."

To lay a hand upon him now, even in mere pacification,
meant an inevitable struggle, and such a termination was
too unseemly to be thought of.  As it was, matters had
gone altogether beyond their bounds.  To have chastised
the fellow with scorn had been one thing, but to be
involved in a retreat before the hoarse breath of a
passionate madman was another, utterly outside all
dignity.  Sooner or later, too, he would have to stand or be
forced over the cliff.  The thought of the boiling sea
below, to which, in the concentration of his faculties upon
this ignominious encounter, he had been paying no heed,
recalled him hotly, and he stole an anxious glance over
his shoulder to learn where he stood.

And at that very moment he stood on the cliff edge,
and it slipped and gave way with him.  Wynne flung up
his arms, beating the air with them like wings, to regain
his balance, but he could not.  An arm clutched out after
him, whether to push or clasp him he did not know.  Half
spinning as he went, he doubled out of sight backward;
and if anything were needed, apart from the anguish of
his own mind, at that awful, inevitable moment, to add to
the horror of his going, it was the schoolmaster's long,
horrid scream.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXXIX`:

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   CHAPTER XXXIX

.. vspace:: 2

That scream—having no part with the man's self,
but tearing forth from him as though it were a
liberated fiend—curdled the schoolmaster's own blood.
This culminating horror of a night of horrors took hold
upon the pillars of his reason, like a blind, despairing
Samson, and overturned the temple quite.  Before, he
had had just the madness requisite to carry out what
unaided reason could never have accomplished; but now,
madness filled him like thick, suffocating smoke, and
extinguished his last guiding spark of lucidity.  From
head to foot he was mad; mad with a terrorised madness
that is one long mental scream, like the unrestrained
scream of his lips.  First, as the man went over, and his
own cry rang like a terrible knell in his head, he dropped
to his knees, and bound wild hands upon his eyes, to blot
out the horror from them.  Again and again and again,
with insufferable rapidity, he saw—for all his binding—the
horrid vision of the Spawer's beating arms; the sickening
collapse; the sudden emptiness of sky.  Again and
again and again his own cry tore out in his ears.  If his
brain had been one great slate, and this cry the screech
of a perpendicular pencil torn across it, it could not have
scored it more terribly.  All his hallucinations were
reversed and turned against himself.  His mind had no
mercy upon him; he was a murderer.  This was the
death that came to him upon his bed.  The horror of now
fitted the horror of then like a bolt.  He was a murderer,
fore-ordained.  The hot brand of Cain was on his brow.
Twice the fatal cliff called upon him to come and look
over at the scene of his crime, but twice he heard the
surging of the sea below, and twice he dared not.  Then
the irresistible magnetism of his own murder drew him,
and he crept forth the third time on all fours, and peered
awfully over upon a small projecting shelf of the cliff.
Close down by the roaring surf the Spawer lay stretched
on his back, and looked with his dead face up at him.  As
he had fallen, so he lay.  His head was to the sea; his
feet toward the cliff at which they had struggled so
desperately for hold; his right hand, by the force of rebound,
had jumped across his breast, and seemed placed in mocking
attestation upon his heart; his left lay limply from
him without a bend, its palm turned upward, its fingers
partly closed; his chin was thrown up, white and ghastly;
his face a little sideways upon his cheek, as though in
renunciation of this dark, wicked world, and seeking
slumber.  A very different figure of a fellow, indeed,
from that proud six-footer of scathing independence that
had mocked this miserable onlooker from above.  And
yet, how terribly triumphant.  Even on his back, without
a word between his lips, or a look in his eyes, he had
more of majesty at this dread moment than life could
ever have given him.

And so thought the man who, blindly seeking but to
prevail, had put death's conquering sceptre in his hands.
For the one moment of his guilty gaze he saw with clear
eyes, freed from madness—as people are free from
worldly thoughts that take their look upon the dead.
But the moment passed, and his madness descended upon
him once more, like the cloud of a whirlwind.  It swept
him to his feet, and drove him blightingly before it—anywhere
away from the scene of that awful fall and cry.
Before, he might have killed himself, but now, with the
horror of death before his eyes, and ringing in his ears,
he dared not die.  Over gate and by hedgerow, through
field and fence; beating and battling a mad passage for
his flight against the armed hosts of standing corn;
pitching blindly over stooks in the stubble; turning and
doubling; falling headlong and regaining his feet with
terrified fighting-fists, as though in conflict with unseen
adversaries, so his madness drove him, like a leaf before
the breeze.





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.. _`CHAPTER XL`:

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   CHAPTER XL

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Out of the dark womb of Eternity—and with all the
penalties and discomforts incidental to birth—Maurice
Ethelbert Wynne was born again.

With pangs, with anguishes, with flashes of light, and
alternating darkness; with terrible struggles to lay hold
of this elusive state called life, that seemed floating
somewhere about and above him, if he only could secure it,
he drew shuddering breath of consciousness at last upon
his little six-foot couch, and saw, through tremulous
eyelids that were yet powerless to open themselves, a
multitude of round things shining.

They were so many, and their light so marvelously
great, that he went off through pain into darkness forthwith,
and abode there for a space.  Thence, after awhile,
he commenced to struggle inwardly again for the life he
had once laid hold of, and groping, found it; and looked
through his impotent lashes once more, and at once the
multitude of round things shining fell in, and hurt him,
and a second time he let life go quite quietly, and
relapsed into his darkness.  But the taste for life, once
awakened, cannot be so inanimately surrendered.  Cost
what cost in pain, lips will keep returning periodically to
the cup—each time with further strength of fortitude for
pain—till in the end hands are strong to grasp and retain,
and life, sipped at first, is gulped with eager mouthfuls.
And so, slowly but surely, the Spawer returned again and
again to his multitude of hurting things, and looked
upon them diligently, and patiently learned their shape,
and studied them, and knew them in the end for moons.
Vague, shadowy remembrances of a former life, or
premonitory forecasts of the life he was now about to live,
floated—not in his mind, for he had as yet no concentrated
point of consciousness that could be called a mind—but,
dispersed and uncollected, all about the dark void
of his being.  Names that he did not know for names
flitted hauntingly about him, like bats—names that, as
though he were a mere baby, he had not the strength or
the capacity to utter, but that he somehow recognised and
knew.  One name, in particular, came to him in his dusky
sojourn, and abode with him; a blessed, dove-like
messenger of a name, whose presence was peace.  When it
departed from him he was troubled, and sought for it,
as a blind kitten seeks after the breast.  When he found
it again he was content with his darkness; quite content
to lie and be conscious that he was alive.

Then, to names succeeded shapeless dreams;
after-shadowings or forecastings, as the case might be,
snatched by violence from Eternity, and bringing him
pain.  Shadowy figures in conflict he seemed to see; men
running; men pursuing; men wrestling; men falling—not
men, as men are, but men as his infant mind conceived
them, dark and formless and blurred; men like
trees walking, whose movements disturbed him painfully;
men crying; men screaming.  When they screamed,
instinctively he sought the shelter of darkness once more,
for he could not bear the sound of that scream.  It
frightened him from life.  Yet after awhile, he would be
back at the moons again, nibbling at them industriously
with his intelligence, like a mouse at cheese.  They were
moons now, he knew quite well.  He did not know them
as such by name, but he understood the substance of the
things seen, and thus feeding on them and deriving
nourishment, his consciousness thrived.  One by one it
diffused itself through the darkened channels and subways
of his being.  It reached his ears, and he heard a great
buzzing, and a roaring and a beating—as though all his
brain were being churned within him.  It reached his
limbs, and his being strove to stir them, and after many
trials succeeded insignificantly, whereupon, with his lips
he groaned.  Centuries thus, it seemed, he floated, a mere
helpless log upon the tide of existence, clutching at things
he could not hold, bumping against consciousness for
moments at a time, and being drifted off again into the
dark; in reality it was scarcely minutes.  Then, of a
sudden, something icy cold and wet fell with a rude slap over
his face.

The shock roused him, and the coldness contracted
spasmodically the relaxed tissues of his thinking.  All
his brain, diffused hitherto vastly throughout space,
seemed to shrink up at that Arctic contact, like metal in
a mould, and occupy the narrow limits of his head,
throbbing painfully at the restriction imposed upon it.
Thought, in this cramped environment, became agonisingly
congested.  His head was a sort of Black Hole of
Calcutta, in which thought seethed for outlet.  Where
one idea before had attenuated itself throughout the
centuries, now centuries of thinking were compressed
insufferably within the space of one moment.  Life, that had
been unoccupied, teemed all at once with the fever of
activity.  A hundred incidents seemed in progress within
him at one and the same instant.  His lips were useless
to him for speaking, but from somewhere in his throat
came a voice that poured out from him unceasingly, as
though it were a tap, accompanying with narrative the
course of events.  Still, though all the forces of life and
thought were humming at high pressure inside him, was
he powerless to burst the fetters of his body.  Like an
iron man he lay, with his one arm extended, and his one
arm bent, and his chin thrown upward, and his legs
stretching from him to their limp extremities—miles and
miles and miles away.  Over and over again in mind he
got the victory over this unresponsive flesh, and rose with
it, and looked about him at the encompassing multitude
of moons; and over and over again his mind returned
dejectedly to its recumbent habitation, and knew itself
deluded.  The desire for movement was become a nightmare.
All his being wrought in motionless agony to
wake up his dead limbs to life, as his soul had been
wakened.  The horror of this inactivity grew upon him
and focussed itself to a great, loud, liberative cry that
should cut his bonds like a knife and loose him from this
awful lethargy.  But though the cry was within him, all
prepared, his lips could not utter it.  He was lead-weighted;
feet, hands, legs, eyelids—not a member to help him.

And then the cold wetness fell upon his face and forehead
a second time, and with a terrible spasm of anguish
he pushed his cry.  All heaven seemed to ring with it in his
tortured imagination; he could not have conceived that
the bulk of his effort had been wasted mentally before it
reached his lips, and that the residue of physical impulse
would scarcely have sufficed to deflate a kitten's lungs.
Just another cry or two like this, thought he, as he rested
from the exertion of it, and he would burst forth from
his bondage and be free.

And again, with titanic intention, and the merest
inappreciable flattening of his diaphragm, he launched his
pitiable mew.

And this time it suddenly seemed to him that he had
awakened some external sympathy on his behalf; that
other forces were being brought to bear upon him from
without—how, or whence, or why, he knew not.  Voices—or
his mental equivalent for voices—seemed disturbing
the atmosphere of his being; besieging him, trying to lay
hold upon his voice and give him a ladder to outer life.
The moons too, as he stared at them through his
eyelashes, appeared moving about in agitated disorder this
way and that above the high wall of blackness that
fronted him.  Then, something detached itself from the
wall-top, and slid downward with a rattle.  He was here!
He was here!  Did n't they see him?  In went his stomach
feebly again, and he ejected his agonised sigh.  And
while desperately he sought to aid the outer assistance,
and proclaim his dire need—of a sudden his attitude
changed.  The moons swam backward overhead, the
black wall rose above his sight.  What his paralysed
limbs had failed to accomplish of themselves, was being
accomplished for them.  Arms were under his neck,
hands were beating his cheeks, voices were calling upon
him.

And all at once, with a great spasm, his eyes rolled
round into their right position—it seemed he had been
gazing out of the backs of them this while—and the
blindness fell away from him like the stone of a
sepulchre; and his ears burst open; and the calling voice came
clearly through into his understanding.

Oh, surely that was Pam's dear voice!  None other in
the world would have had sweet power to penetrate such
a darkness as his.  And his lips dissolved, that had
seemed glued inseparably together, and let him move
them over the girl's name.

"... Pam ..." he said.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLI

.. vspace:: 2

Yes, it was Pam's own self that knelt beside him and
sustained him, her arms wound supportingly about
his helpless body, his head on her knee, and shed tears of
warm thankfulness over his lifted face, and caressed him
eagerly with her voice.

"I thought you were dead..." she said tremulously.

His response flickered elusively to and fro at the
bottom of the Spawer's being, like sunlight deep down a
well; but he merely watched it with curious philosophic
content, as though quite sufficiently satisfied to know that
it was there.

"Where am I?" he inquired listlessly, after a moment,
and then, out of sheer gratitude to the girl, without waiting
to be told, subsided into peaceful slumber upon her knee.

So long as she was there to hold him and nurse his
head, what more could a man want?  To sleep with Pam
for pillow ... ye gods!  But his period of blissful
oblivion was short.  The beating and the calling recommenced,
and he was forced into opening his reluctant eyes.

"You must not..." he heard the girl beseech him.
"Oh, indeed, you must not!  Try to come to yourself.  Are
you hurt?  Do you think you can stand?"

He heard the questions plainly enough—in his grave
he would have heard questions that that voice put to him—but
their import excited him little.  What did anything
matter, so long as Pam was with him?  She would look
to everything.  Trust Pam.  All he did was to dwell
pleasantly upon the sound of her voice inside, and seek to
slumber to it, as a child is soothed by singing.  But though
his soul longed for this peace, she would not grant it, but
plied her questions anew with strange, inexplicable
unrest.  He had never known Pam so unrestful.

"Are you hurt?  Do you think ... you can get up
... if I lift you?  Shall I lift you?  Will you let me lift
you?"

He fished about listlessly for a moment or two in the
depths of his well, and brought up the word "Eh," as
being both easy to catch and to utter.

"Eh?" he said, without the slightest desire to be told
for information's sake, and made as though once more to
settle his head.

But she rubbed his cheeks vigorously with her hand,
and roused him with her voice anew.

"Oh, please, please..." he heard her beg him, with
tears.  "Try to wake up now and answer me.  Don't go
back again.  You must n't go back again.  Do you think
you can stand if I lift you?  Do you?"

"Where am I?" he asked again, in the same apathetic
voice.

He did n't care where he was.  Wherever he was, Pam
was with him.  That was good enough for his taste.  He
merely wanted her to nurse him, and soothe him, and lull
him.  All speculation, all curiosity, had been knocked out
of him by his fall.  The heavens might have opened now,
and the sight of angels descending would have caused him
no wonder.

"You are down the cliff!" Pam told him, shouting the
words in his ear, with the twofold object of reaching
his remote understanding and rousing him by sheer
strenuousness of voice.  "You must have fallen.  Don't
you know what's happened?  Can't you remember?"

He was down the cliff.  He must have fallen.  Did n't
he know what had happened?  Could n't he remember?
Of a sudden—yes, of course he could remember.  He was
down the cliff.  He must have fallen.  The schoolmaster
had pushed him.  He 'd been fighting with the schoolmaster
in a dream, and got pushed over.  What did it
matter—a dream?  He 'd often got pushed over in dreams.

"Can't you remember?" came back to him, in echo of
the girl's voice, and he told her: "Yes, he could
remember."  Furthermore, to prove his good intentions, he asked
her with his eyes shut: "Where are the moons?"

"There 's only one," the girl shouted into his ear.

"That all?" he said, fishing hazily for the words as before.

"It 's up there—there in the sky."  She let down his
head a little, so that the moon might come into his line of
vision.  "There ... do you see it?"

He saw it and shut hie eyes, turning his head away
from the light.

"All right," he said, and added a dreamy "Thank you."

Something boomed out behind him, and he saw the
girl's hand go up defensively above his head.  Next
moment cold trickles were wriggling down his face.  Some
rested on his eyelashes and blurred the moonlight.

"What 's that?" he asked complacently.

"It's the sea..." the girl cried into his ear, and wiped
the wet tenderly from his face and lashes with an end of
sleeve drawn into her palm by her fingers.  "The tide is
coming up.  We must not stay here any longer.  We shall
be drowned if we do."

"Oh!" he said.  Drowned, would they?  What was
drowning to a man who had been dead?  And then, quite
irrelevantly—its irrelevancy even puzzled himself, in a
placid kind of way—"are there any mushrooms?"

"Oh, yes, yes," the girl told him eagerly.  "Lots and
lots of them.  But not down here; up at the top.  We
must get up to the top first."

"I 'm the boy for mushrooms," he said, and thought he
smiled knowingly, but it was only his inside that smiled.
The face of him never moved a muscle.

"See ... I am going to lift you!" the girl shouted.
"Let me put my arm about you ... like that.  Yes.  And
now like this.  Now ... so.  Do I hurt you?"

My Heaven!  Did she hurt him?  The groan that followed
needed no conscious bidding to find the outlet of
his lips.  His immobile face was broken suddenly into
seams of pain, like the cracking of a cast.

"Oh ... my poor darling!  My poor darling!" the girl
cried, lowering him a little, in an agony scarcely less than
his own, and the tears started from her fast.  "Have I
hurt you?  I did n't want to hurt you.  But we can't stay
here.  However much it hurts we can't stay here.  We
must get you moved.  I can't let you drown for the sake
of a little pain.  Come! try again.  You 'll help me, won't
you?  Now.  Is that better?  Is that better?  Am I
hurting you now?"

And again she raised him.  In a measure the first pain
had paved the way for a second, and being prepared for
it this time, by twisting his face he was enabled to bear
the lifting; but it was agony.  Such complete change of
posture seemed to shake up all the dormant dregs of his
discomfort, like the lees of a bottle.  His body was
become no more than a mere flagon, for the contents of
mortal anguish.  His heart beat as though it had been
knocked loose by the fall.  All the inside of his head had
been dislodged, and bumped sickeningly against the walls
of his skull.  His ribs were hot gridirons.  His back was
on fire.  But at least he stood unsteadily upright.  Within
the compass of the girl's arms—as once, on that first night
of their meeting, she had been within his—he stood rocking
helplessly to and fro; his knees trembling treacherously
beneath him, only saved from sinking by the uplifting
power of the girl's embrace.  Suddenly it seemed
to him, with a warning buzz in his ears, that the darkness
was coming on again.  A great weakness crept over him
and enfolded him.

"Let me ... sit down..." he said faintly.  He
thought that by sitting he might elude the enveloping
embrace of the darkness.

"No, no; not here.  Not just here..." the girl
implored him.  "Not so near the edge.  Try and walk.
Please! ..."

And then the darkness closed upon him swiftly, as he
stood in her arms, like a great engulfing fish.

But it disgorged him, almost at once.  It seemed his
own pain deterred it.  And slowly, what time he suffered
untold agonies of body, the girl half pushed, half carried
him from the perilous edge of their narrow shelf, toward
the cliff side; weeping to herself for the pain she knew
she was inflicting; talking all the while to interpose her
soft, tender voice between himself and the keen edge of
his suffering.  Did she hurt him now?  That was better,
was n't it?  Oh, that was beautiful!  Just another step
like that.  And now just one more.  And now just one
to finish.  And now just a little one to bring him round
here.  And got him propped up in the end—though
Heaven knows how—with his back against the ugly black
slope of cliff, and his face towards the sea, that bit with
raging white teeth against the miserable crust of their
refuge, and roared and snarled mercilessly for their
devourance.

And there, resting awhile, with the assistance of his own
pain that had roused him, and the stern sight he saw, the
girl assiduously coaxed and fretted, and rubbed his
apathetic consciousness, like a cold hand, till it returned at
last some vital warmth of understanding.  As far as his
loosened brain would allow, all the doings of this night
came back to him, remotely remembered.  Through clouds
of intervening suffering he called back his quarrel with
the schoolmaster; the words, even, that had been uttered;
his horrid plunge over the cliff, and that sickening arrest
at the bottom.  And before these things had happened,
came back to him his love for the girl, and his loss of her;
his resolution and his irresolution; his night's packing,
and the letters he had received.  Even it occurred to him
that the big lamp would be still burning—unless its oil
were exhausted by now.  It was all unreal and
incomprehensible, but he remembered it and never doubted.
This was no new life, but the old—to whose jagged splinters
of breakage he was being so painfully spliced.  What
a wonder his breakage had n't been beyond all repair!
How on earth had he come, neck downwards from that
great height—a height it would have sickened him to
contemplate jumping—and yet been spared?  The mill of his
mind ground slowly, by fits and starts, and not over-fine.
All its mechanism seemed dislocated and rusty and out of
order; in mid-thought it would be brought up suddenly
with a horrid jolt that seemed like taking his head off.
The noise of its working, too, was almost deafening.

"What are you doing here?" he asked vaguely, all at
once, of the girl, who, with one arm about him, was
seeing how far he might be trusted to keep his own balance
against the cliff.  It was a question that had been
glimmering at the bottom of his well for some time
past—only, so far, he had never been able to perceive clearly
why she should not be here as well as anywhere else.  But
now the strangeness of her presence forced itself upon
him.

"I was on the cliff..." she said, speaking in quick
gasps, as the result of her exertion, "and heard you fall.
At least ... I heard you cry out.  You cried out
... did n't you? as you fell."

"Yes..." he admitted slowly, for the mills of thought
were grinding again, and he knew whose cry had brought
him succor.  Murderous, cowardly cur!  Friction of anger
set up in his mind and heated him—who knows? ... perhaps
for his own good.  Anything, only to rouse him.

The girl shuddered at that cry's remembrance.

"... I heard you.  I was by the boat ... and I knew
something dreadful had happened ... and ran back, and
looked over the cliff ... and saw you, and scrambled
down to you.  But we must n't waste time.  Not a
moment.  If once the tide gets over here....  Do you think
you can let me leave you ... for a minute?  I must find
a way up the cliff.  So."  She withdrew her hand from
him, holding it outstretched, however, for a moment, with
fingers close upon him, in case he might show any
dangerous subsidence.  But he did not.  "Are you all right
now?  Do you think you can keep just like that?"

He assured her he was all right, and could keep just
like that.  He was by no means convinced in his own
mind that such was the case, but he felt his acquiescence
due to the girl, and gave it.

And she, with a final adjusting touch of finger, that
was a caress all told, consigned him timidly to his own
insecure care, and turned her energy upon the cliff.

Even as she looked up its black, forbidding side, smooth
and sheer, and clayey with the recent rains—and
remembered the desperate abandon of her descent—her heart
forsook her.  Calmly, first of all—trying to stimulate her
bosom to courage by deliberateness of action—she sought
of the cliff for some mode of ascent; desperately, after
awhile, when none forthcame, flinging herself at the slimy
earth, kicking with feet for a foothold—that slid down
with her when she used it, as though she had been trying
to scale butter; tearing with her hands at straggling tufts
of grass, that pulled out by the wet roots, soft and
sodden—struggling, scrambling, fighting.

And at last the fearful truth was borne in upon her—or
perhaps, more accurately, the seal was put upon the
truth that her bosom had secreted when she sacrificed
herself over the cliff-edge for this man's saving—and with
tears, not of terror, but of bitter defeat, she came back to
him.  Oh, the agony of that confession!  Yet with death
so close upon them, it was no moment to offer the cup of
false hopes.  However she tried to screen the knowledge
from him, death would shortly tell him everything.

"It is no use..." she said, her tears streaming, her
hands all muddied, that she wiped hopelessly on her
skirts.  "... I can find no way."

"Oh," he said, so apathetically, that for a moment she
thought he had not understood.  But it was only the mills
that were grinding.

"It is all my fault," the girl burst out bitterly.  "If I
had run to the Dixons' at once ... they would have
been here now ... and saved you.  But I never thought.
I was in such a hurry....  Oh, forgive me ... forgive
me, please!"

And into her hands, for the man's sake, she sobbed as
though her heart would have burst.  It was so dreadful
for him to be lost like this, when she had been so near to
saving him.  For herself it mattered nothing, who had so
little to lose.  And though she strove to extinguish the
thought, there was a kind of proud, defiant exultation at
being drowned in such company.  Oh, God forgive her
such wicked thinking!  Her heart, so anguished during
these latter days, could not, in its wildest moments, have
wished a more companionable death than this.

After awhile, the mills of the man's mind, slowly
moving, ground a little grist for his lips to get rid of.

"... Can you get up the cliff by yourself, if you leave me?"

He seemed to be talking to her out of the closed chamber
of dreams.  What he uttered reached her, indeed, but
there was something between them yet, like a wall, that
both were sensible of.

"But I would not ... I would not!" she cried impetuously.

"But could you?"

"No, no, no ... I could not!"

"Are you quite sure?"

"Quite.  I could not.  Indeed, I could not."

"Shall we both be drowned?" he inquired.

To the girl the question came with a callousness almost
brutal.  Moreover, it cut her to the quick to hear how this
fall had blunted the keen edge of the man's susceptibilities.
It was as though another being of an altogether inferior
calibre were usurping his body.  Oh, that for their
last agonised moments together this terrible dull veil
might be rent, and for dying happiness she might know
him as she had known him in the past!  And for this she
maintained her weeping.  But inside, the man was stoking
up the furnace of his mills with desperate activity, to get
work out of hand before this last.  He, too, was filled
with ripe grain of thought to be ground, and knew how
bruised and blunted he was—and how little near he could
place his thoughts to the thoughts of the girl.

"What were you doing ... on the cliff?" he asked
laboriously.

All his within was striving to find a short cut to
somewhere, but his mouth would not let him.

"... I was going away."

"Oh!  Where to?"

"... Anywhere.  To Hunmouth ... round by Garthston."

"Why were you going anywhere?"

"Because ... because ... did n't you get the letters?
I left them on the piano."

"Oh, yes; the letters.  I read them.  But I did n't
... know them."  "Know them" was n't what he wanted to
say, and he struggled for a moment to find the requisite
expression, but his mills were not equal to it.  "I did n't
... know them," he repeated vaguely.

"Oh ... because ... because..."

And thereupon the girl plunged into the shameful deeps
of her wickedness, and made confession.  A hurried
confession it was, for time pressed, but she cried it in its
entirety into his ear—shielding nothing but the absent man
... and her love.

And the mills of the Spawer's mind thumped faster.

"I want ... to ask you something," he said slowly,
"... before I die."

"Yes ... yes."  The girl was at his lips in a moment,
to catch their precious outpouring before death should
stop her hearing for ever.  "Ask me.  I am here."

"I want to ask you..." he said.  "You know why I
was going back.  The other letter was ... from Her.
She asks me to set her free.  If there had n't been
... been any other one in the case, and I 'd asked you
... to marry me ... would you have married me?"

And in an instant the girl's arms were about the man's
neck, and her lips upon his lips, as though they would
have sucked the poor remaining life out of his body into
her own, and given it an abiding habitation.

"Oh ... my love, my love!" the girl wept, through the
wet lips that clung to him.  "What do I care about dying
now?  I would rather a thousand times die to learn that
you had loved me ... than live and never know it."

And she poured her streams of warm tears over his
face, and wrapped him about with her arms, and bound
her body upon him.  And in the fusion of that mighty
love, the laboring mills of the man's mind burst free.

"Why did you come down to me?" he cried.  "For
God's sake get away while you have the chance.  I 'm not
worth saving now ... I'm only the fragments of a man....
But you!"

For all answer she bound him in tighter bondage of
protection, as though she were trying to steep their souls
so deep in the transport of love that they should not know
death or its agony.

"If you leave me..." he urged upon her, "and get up
the cliff ... there may still be time."

But she clung to him.

"For my sake, then!" he implored her.  "You are my
last hope of safety.  For the love of me, try and do it.
We must not die like this."

And for his sake, with her old desperate hopes falsely
revived, she redoubled kisses of farewell upon his mouth
and lips, and threw herself passionately against the
relentless wet wall of their prison.  Now this side, and now
that.  Now trying to kick out steps with her feet; now
trying to tear them with her hands, she wrought at this
frantic enterprise, and the man watched her, and knew it
to be of no avail.  And then, at his urging, she cried
out—lifted her own white face to the sullen black face of the
cliff, and cried—cried with words, and rent the air with
inarticulate screams.  But all was one.  Like a thick
blanket the cliff, so close upon her, muffled her mouth and
I smothered the voice that issued from her.

"It 's no use ... no use," she said, and came back to
the man.

And at the same moment the cruel, horrible sea, that
had been boiling turbulently about the far brink of their
ledge, with occasional casts of foam, thundered against
the cliff, as though to the collected impulse of intent, and
rushed up, roaring, and gained the summit of their
slender refuge at last, and curled a scornful, devastating
lip of water over it.  They stood for a moment like
marble, the two of them, at this clear message from the
mouth of death; watching the water slide back after the
retreating wave, and pour away at either side of their
earthen shelf amid an appalling effervescence, and then
the girl woke up again.

"It will not be long ... now," she said, very quietly.

Then she went to the man and laced her arms about him—

"Promise me..." she said, "you will not ... let go
of me ... when the time comes."

"I promise you," the man answered, very huskily.

"May I call you ... Maurice ... before we die?"
she asked, and her voice faltered at this.

"Please..." he begged her; and she said "Maurice"
a time or two.

"Hold me ... Maurice," she said.  "I may ... turn
coward ... at the end ... but hold me.  Don't let me
go.  I want to die with you."

"I will hold you," he answered, and their arms tightened.

And again the sea thundered, and this time something
swirled about their feet.  Then they asked forgiveness of
each other for inasmuch as they had offended, and
received the sacrament of each other's pardon.

And there being nothing else to do, they stood and
waited for death.





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.. _`CHAPTER XLII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLII

.. vspace:: 2

On this same eventful evening, the absent Barclay o'
Far Wrangham returned to himself by slow stages
from nowhere in particular, at some vague, indeterminate
point between Hunmouth, Sproutgreen, and Ullbrig,
having missed Tankard's 'bus by a small matter of two
days and one night.

Out of five golden sovereigns that had gone forth with
him, he retained a halfpenny, which, wedged tight in the
corner of his trouser's pocket, kept troubling him like a
conscience at times.  On his head was a brimless hat that
some friendly cattle-drover had exchanged with him on
Saturday.  A tramp had picked up his overcoat and was
walking the high road to London in it; but Barclay o' Far
Wrangham still retained the new waggon-rope that had
been one of his early purchases in Hunmouth market on
his arrival; and with this over his shoulder he lurched
onward.  He possessed not the faintest idea of destination,
but his legs shambled along with him instinctively,
like horses that knew their road.  They took him safely
across fields, and over stiles, and along hedges, and down
narrow pathways between standing corn, and through
gates—that he hung over affectionately and went through
all the most conscientious formulæ of shutting, and still
left open behind him.  Somewhere short of Sproutgreen
he perceived a figure coming distantly down the road in
his direction.  At a hundred yards away or more he made
elaborate preparations for its greeting; wiped his mouth;
let down the waggon-rope to the ground, trailing it loosely
by an end; took his hat off and reversed it; rubbed the
cobwebs from his eyes, and held out an arm like a
sign-post in attitude of friendly surprise.  There had been a
word in his mouth, too, for welcome; only it slipped him
at the last moment, but he made an amicable bellowing
instead.

"Bo-o-o-o-oh!" he cried, exploding loosely, like a
good-natured cannon, whose recoil sent him staggering
backwards over his legs till it seemed he meant retiring all
the way to Hunmouth.  By a gigantic effort, however,
he resisted the backward impetus when it had sent him
off the roadway into the shaggy side-grass, and fell
forward on his hands.  "A-a-a-a-ay!" he shouted genially.
He was brimming over with foamy friendship for this
dear, familiar stranger.  "Noo wi' ye!" and stood up on
all fours at the greeting, like a well-intentioned dog,
whose muzzle was the battered cleft in his hat-brim.

Thus adjured, the pedestrian drew up with some severity
on his aloof side of the road, and gave Barclay to
understand, with a grudging "Noo" of inquiry, that he
had nothing whatever to hope from him on this side the
Jordan.  As he had chanced to stop in a line with the
dead-centre of Barclay's hat, Barclay could not immediately
discern him, and was filled indeed with suspicions
of treachery.

"Wheer are ye?" he inquired, after a few moments of
futile activity, making valiant efforts to keep his eyelids
lifted.

"Ah 'm 'ere i' front o' ye," his unknown friend replied,
with small show of favor, regarding this picture of
human debasement with scorn.

"Are ye?" Barclay inquired, somewhat foggily, and
pushed himself with much effort on to his haunches.
"Which way div ah want to be?" he asked.

"Wheer did ye come fro'?" the figure demanded sternly.

"Eh?" said Barclay.

"Wheer div ye come fro'?  'Oo are ye?  What 's yer name?"

"Barclay o' Far Wrangham," said Barclay unsteadily,
going forward on his hands again.

"Ah 've 'eard tell on ye," the figure remarked.  "Gan
yer ways wi' ye.  Yon 's yer road.  Come, be movin'."

For some moments Barclay rocked silently on his all
fours, as though thinking deeply.

"Which way div ah want to be?" he commenced again,
after awhile, and there being no immediate response,
embraced the opportunity for a little slumber.

Having slumbered pleasantly for a space on his hands
and knees without interruption, his head swaying in
circles close to the grass as though he were browsing, he
awoke of a sudden, under consciousness that he had
received no response to this question, and working the
muzzle of his hat diligently in all directions about him,
found to his surprise that he was alone.

The discovery troubled him, first of all, so that he
muttered darkly in his throat like distant thunder.  Then the
brewing turned to sparkles, and he laughed deliciously
on the grass, rolling over on to his back, and sprawling
with limbs in air as though he were a celestial baby,
brought up from the bottle of pure bliss.  Lastly, his
mind darkened to anger, and he rose to all fours, roaring
defiance after his departed enemy.  It took him some
time to find his hat after this, which had rolled away
from him during his Elysian laughter, but his knee trod
on it at last, and the moments expended in its discovery
were doubled in his efforts to apply it to his head.

A dozen times he clapped it down, sideways forward,
and the same number it rolled off him, and had to be
resought.

Last of all: "Nay, ah weean't be pestered wi' ye!" he
cried indignantly.  "Gen ye can't be'ave yersen proper,
an' stay where ye 're put, ye 'll 'a to gan."

And "gan" it did, sure enough, into the hedge bottom.

"Lig [lie] there, ye ill-mannered brute!" he shouted
after it, and filled with righteous wrath, picked up the
waggon-rope and staggered to his feet for departure.

"Come up wi' ye, ye lazy divvles!" he cried at his legs,
that, through their long inactivity, betrayed a certain
tendency to let him down.  "Div ye 'ear?  'Od up [Hold
up].  Dom yer eyes ... if ye weean't do better ah 'll
walk o' my knees an' shame ye."

"Gum! it 's tonnin cold," he decided, after some progress.

"Ah nivver knowed it ton so cold of a neet this time o'
year," he added, a while later.

And a short way further up the road:

"Gum ... bud ah feel it i' my yed [head] strangelins!"
he declared, and putting up an inquisitive hand to
learn the cause of it, was blankly amazed to discover
himself hatless.

"Well! of all ... bud that 's a caution!" he said, and
stopped as dead as his legs would let him.  "Well ... it 's
no use seekin' after spilt milk.  Noo ah s'll 'a to mek
best on it."

The best of it he made forthwith; and to compensate
for this frigidity of head he put such warmth of pace
into his advancement that at times—with his head a
body's length in front of his feet, and his feet churning
in the rear like twin-screws—his progress was considerable.
To have stopped under a road's length would have
been to fall as flat as a pancake.  Nothing short of the
most gradual arrest could preserve his equilibrium, and
as the easiest solution of the problem was not to stop at
all, he forged ahead till the wind whistled on either side
of his ears.  And this constant freshness, combined with
the exposed state of his head, so sobered and revivified
him that, by the time he was passing through familiar
Ullbrig, he already knew what houses were which, and
who lived in them; the day of the week; how long he had
been absent; and was commencing, in common with the
history of all these nocturnal or matutinal returns, to see
the evil of drink, and speak openly of wine as a mocker.

Moodily pursuing this well-trodden path of his conversion,
he slammed his way through the gates, one after
another, and passed Dixon's sleeping farm-stead with a
covetous eye upon its moonlit windows.

"Ay, you 've not slipped fi' pun [five pounds] doon yer
belly this 'arvest-time, Jan Dixon," he reflected, as he
turned his back to the scrambling white house, so calm
and self-contemplative in the moonlight, and cut across
towards the cliff.  All his loquaciousness leaked out of
him now, in sight of the goal which he had been three
days aiming at and missed up to the present, and he
tramped along with the impersonal passivity of a cow
being driven to market; untroubled as to fate, and almost
thoughtless.  The sea shook the cliff, as he walked, with
seismic shivers, and boomed noisily in his ears; but he 'd
known it off and on now for forty years, and minded
it—particularly at such moments as this—as little as the
buzzing of his own eight-day clock.  Of a sudden, however,
the sea-surge bore up a sound to him—a small,
shrill, penetrating sound, that pierced his passivity to its
vital marrow, and caused him to throw up his head, with
a gaping mouth to all quarters of the compass about him,
for the sound's location.  He was sufficiently sober by
this time to realise how very drunk he had been, and in the
desolating flatness of life's Sahara—lacking any pleasant
green oases of illusion—that he was laboriously traversing
now, he knew the sound to have been produced by
real, living, human lips; for his own brain was far too
stagnant to create fancies.  Therefore he eased the
wain-rope to the ground, and holding up his open mouth to
the sky, as though it were an ear-trumpet, he listened for
a repetition of this discordant note in Nature.

And again it came: small, faint, embosomed in the
roaring surge, but cutting as a diamond.

This time he had no doubt.  It came from over the
cliff, and had the despairing ring of death and danger in
it, that not even returning prodigals like Barclay can by
any means mistake, though they 'd gone away with
twenty pounds in their pockets instead of five.  And
bellowing response at the top of his lungs, he ran to the
cliff edge.

"A-a-a-a-ay!  'Ello!  Noo wi' ye!  What 's amiss?"
he cried, and dropping on hands and knees, thrust his
head recklessly over the brink of it.

And again the cry rang out from almost straight below
him—shriller and more terribly charged this time with
the agony of animated hope.

"Lord Almighty!" said Barclay; "it 's a lass."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLIII

.. vspace:: 2

To this day the tale of that eventful midnight is told
in Ullbrig.  How Barclay, returning from Hunmouth
market, where he had sold three beasts and a
score of sheep, and drunk the money, heard Pam's last
despairing cries for assistance, beaten out of her by the
sea itself.  How he ran to the edge of the cliff, and looked
over, and saw the two drenched figures sticking to the
side of it like wet flies against a pudding basin.  How,
even while he watched them, the sea boiled up again as
though it were milk, and rose bubbling above where they
were, and made him shut his eyes with a groan for what
he might not see when the milk subsided.  How, praise
God, they were still there when the water sank down.
How he untackled his waggon-rope, shouting courage to
them all the while, and made a loop to one end, and
hitched the other to the adjacent stile-post, and cast the
slip-knot down the cliff.  And how, for an age, while he
swore at them from above, the girl would not come up
before the man; and the man would not come up before
the girl.  And how, owing to considerations which he did
not then know or understand, namely, that the man was
powerless to give any help to his own ascent, and the girl
feared their rescuer might be unable to haul him
unaided—the girl slipped the noose under her shoulders, and
struggled and clambered up the cliff-side while Barclay
pulled upon her.  And how, almost before she was on
the top, she had detached the securing loop and thrown
it down to the man.  And how he had just had time to
slip it over his neck and under his shoulders before the
next sea came, cursing and swearing because of the loss
of them, and seethed up three parts of the cliff, so that
the foam of it slashed their faces.  And how they felt
the rope first slacken and then go dead heavy in their
hands, and knew the man was off his feet, and would
have been swept away but for their hold upon him.  And
how they tugged together, the two of them, and how, at
certain intervals of progression, the girl had wound the
slack rope round the post, against all possible danger of
slip or relapse.  And how, in the end, the man's face
showed above the cliff-brink, and how they had toiled
him over; and how the girl had thrown herself beside
him, and taken him into her arms, and wiped his streaming
face, and called upon him by name, with a hundred
solicitations and endearments, and kissed him.

Till, in Barclay's own words: "Ah think theer 's one
ower monny on us," he told them.

And the tale, continuing, recounted how these two,
Barclay and the girl, made a seat with their hands, and
bore the man back to Dixon's between them; and how the
man, wringing wet though he was, kept falling asleep on
the shoulders of one or other of them, and telling Barclay
he was the boy for mushrooms, and he 'd eat them now
she 'd given him up.  And how they got him home at
last, and how Barclay took double handfuls of earth and
flung them up at Dixon's window, and how Dixon put
his head out first of all, and cried:

"Naay, Barcl'y, man!  Naay, naay!  Next farm.  Ye
want to tek more care i' countin' when ye come 'ome this
time o' daay."

And would n't believe Barclay's reasons for bringing
him down, till Pam joined her voice with his, when he
said: "Well!  Ah don't know!"—and the whole household
stood on its legs that same moment.

And then a mighty fire was roused up in the kitchen,
out of the grate's still hot embers, at Miss Bates'
blowing, and the blinds were pulled down carefully by
Mrs. Dixon, and all extraneous elements—men, and so
forth—were unceremoniously banished, and Pam, shivering,
crimson-eared, bright-eyed, and hectic—but wildly
joyous—let them skin her of her sodden habiliments as
though she had been a drowned rabbit, and was rubbed
dry with coarse kitchen towels till her white, starved
body glowed like a sunset over snow.  And Jeff, having
been despatched at Pam's instigation to the cliff, and
having run all the way there and all the way back,
thumped lustily against the outer panels of the kitchen
door, and Pam's parcel—looking, oh, so frail and pitiable
and shamefaced in its new surroundings—was drawn in
by Mrs. Dixon, and its contents bestowed, as the
circumstances demanded, upon Pam's own body.  And Pam
seemed so genuinely overcome with their kindness that
all questions of a controversial nature were by one
consent avoided; and not a word asked—beyond mere details
of the rescue—as to the strange juxtaposition of Pam and
her bundle, and Mr. Maurice Ethelbert Wynne, along
the cliff at this time of morning.  To such degree, indeed,
did Pam's own tearful, lip-quivering emotion of gratitude
play upon her two ministrants, that they discharged their
self-sought duties in a reflected emotion scarcely less
profound than the original; giving the girl tear for tear, and
quiver for quiver.

And when they had rubbed and towelled her, they
dressed her in the same loving, lavish way, and vied with
each other in finding articles from their own wardrobe
which might fit the girl; and when they had finished with
her, they looked upon her completed presentment as
proudly as though they 'd actually made her.

And while Pam was being in this way taken to pieces
and readjusted and put together again, Barclay and
Dixon did the same by the Spawer, upstairs in his own
bedroom; and laid him between the blankets with a
hot-water bottle at his feet, that was fetched from the
kitchen; and Arny harnessed Punch to the spring-cart and
drove off for Father Mostyn and the Doctor—not that
Father Mostyn's presence seemed called for on any urgent
or spiritual grounds, but that Pam knew what a slight he
would think had been administered upon his vicarial
office, were he to be left one moment uninformed of such
an occurrence as this.

And until the arrival of the Doctor, Pam's courage and
good hope had never once deserted her.  He for whom
she would have died gladly twice over was saved from
death; but now there were other vague things to fear.  And
as soon as she heard the ominous rattle of the spring-cart's
return, that well-known clear-cut voice of the ecclesiast,
and the sharp, Scotch, businesslike tones of the Doctor—as
direct and straight to their purpose as a macadamised
road ... she quailed, and her fortitude left her.  It
seemed as though the whole atmosphere were charged at
once with electrical dangers at lightning-point.

She sat with her face plunged in her hands, by the
side of the roaring kitchen fire, not daring to rise, or
move, or go out to meet these awful newcomers, lest her
movement might precipitate the danger.  All her hearing
was drawn out from her like wire, insupportably fine,
to the doors of that dread bed-chamber.  Sounds near at
hand, the roaring of the fire, the fall of cinders, the
subdued babel of downstairs voices, had no existence for
her.  Her hearing, as though it had been a telescope, was
aimed above them to some distant star, and missed these
terrestrial obstacles by miles and miles—but every sound
from the far landing, every whisper, every turning of the
handle, every creak of the bedroom floor-boarding, was
magnified a hundredfold.  To support such auricular
sensitiveness it felt she needed the strength of a hundred
bodies, instead of that poor tortured one.

But at last, lifting her face from her hands with the
blanched cheek of high tension for the very worst, she
heard the tread of general exodus; the resonant "Ha!"
of Father Mostyn, and the Doctor's little sharp-tongued,
Scotch-terrier voice, giving out its reassurance to the
applicants at the staircase foot.

"Na doot he 's had a narra squeak, an' ah 'm no goin'
to say he 's oot o' the wood yet," she heard him tell them.
"His back will have had a nasty twist, an' there 's some
concussion, but there 's naethin' broken, and no dislocation.
Na, na, he 's no sae bad.  Shock 's the worrst o' 't.
Dinna mek yerselves onhappy, he 'll mend verra nicely.
Oh, he 'll mend fine!"

And going on beneath the Doctor's voice like an organ
pipe, to support and sustain and enrich it with ecclesiastical
authority, was the voice of his Reverence.

"Ha!  No doubt about it.  Concussion.  That 's the
mischief.  But nothing broken.  No fractures or dislocation.
No injury to the clavicle, or more important still,
to the dorsal vertebra.  It's purely a case of shock.  Keep
him well wrapped up in blankets, get some hot brandy
and water for him, and see that the bottle is n't allowed
to grow cold.  Ha! that's the way.  Beautiful! beautiful!
We 'll soon bring him round again."

And the tale, as it is told, goes on to tell how in Dixon's
kitchen that morning—for day was breaking now—Pam
made long confession of something to his Reverence the
Vicar.  Nobody in Ullbrig knows for sure what that
confession was, except the Doctor, who did not share the
Dixons' delicacy in withdrawing, but sat in Dixon's chair
on the other side of the fire, with his steaming toddy
glass—compounded out of the sleeping man's decanter—and
stirred the fire with the poker when it needed it, and
was heard quite plainly to level his voice on such direct
interrogation as:

"But ye hae not explained ... so-and-so."

Or, "He may thank his guid stairs ye were there to
hear-r-r!  But hoo cam ye by the cliff at midnight?"

But as Pam would have told him freely anything about
her body if illness had required it, and as she could trust
him like Father Mostyn's second self, it would have been
cruelly, distrustfully invidious to divide her carnal and
spiritual confidences on this occasion with so fine a line;
and since the Doctor felt no compunction in their acceptance,
Pam felt quite tranquil in their bestowal.  To these
two men she told the history of her past few days, shielding
everybody save herself; how she had come to love the
Spawer, and how he had told her of his departure; and
how she had wept on her bed; and how she had feared
facing him that morning, lest she might weep betrayal of
herself, and of a love she had no right to let him see, or
trouble him with; and how, while she was trying to gain
time for her terror, he came on her before she was aware;
and how she had plunged the letter into her pocket; and
how she had taken it back with her, not daring to deliver
it after that ... and how ... and how...

Here, in her desire to screen the guilty partner of her
trouble, her nervous narrative seemed all plucked to
pieces.  Her words, indeed, were less for the purpose of
telling than for the purpose of stopping their own lips
from asking.

"... And so ... he said he wanted me ... and he
said he loved me....  I know he loved me, because he 'd
told me so before.  Only then....  And after that...."

But the Doctor, comfortably ensconced in Dixon's fireside
chair, with its red chintz cushion in the small of his
back, and half a steaming tumblerful of toddy inside
him, was in no mood to be put off with such ambiguous
verbal impressionism.

"Stop, stop, stop!" said he, holding up an arrestive
toddy-tumbler at her.  "I haena got the sense o' that.
What d' ye say happened to the letter?"

"Oh ... I cannot ... I cannot," Pam said, the
tendons of her narrative relaxing suddenly as though
never could they be brought to bear her over this part of
the history.  But in the end, with point-blank questions
from the Doctor, and gentle leading-words from the
Vicar, Pam passed over that rocking bridge of all that
had happened—only, every admission made against the
man's interest was coupled with a pleader for his great
love of her.  And she imparted to them, with a face
glorified, how that, when nothing seemed sure but death,
the Spawer had told her his other attachment was broken.
and had confessed his love of her all the time, and she
had poured out her love of him ... and ... and they
knew the rest.

"Ay, it 's a very quairr complaint, this love!" the
Doctor reflected, pulling out his pipe, "... an' harrd to
diagnose.  Ye never can tell.  Ye never can tell.  But
losh! ah thocht ye were clean gyte when ah hairrd ye
were goin' ta marry yon fellow!"

But Father Mostyn was n't astonished in the least;
waltzed gravely on his feet with a superior, restrained
tightness about the corners of his mouth, and a far-away
sparkle in his keen grey eyes, as of one to whom revelation
is no new thing.

"Beautiful! beautiful!" he mused, when Pam had finished,
and was looking with a timid, sub-radiant eagerness
from one to the other.  "There 'll be a scandal, of course.
That 's the proper penalty for not having confided your
trouble into the care of Holy Church."  Here the Doctor
made a savage thrust with the poker through the gratebars,
and stirred and stirred up the red coals till they glowed to
incandescence.  "But better late than never.  Leave it to
me.  Leave it to me, dear child.  Our spiritual Mother
never yet turned away from any supplicant that sought
her with true faith and humility.  We 'll do our best for
you.  Of course, the business is not so bad as it would be
if it had been unexpected.  But fortunately, we 've been
prepared for it.  No mistaking the symptoms."

And the tale, as Ullbrig will tell it to you to this day,
goes on to relate how Pam would not return to the Post
Office, but took up her post as nurse by the Spawer's
bedside, and could hardly endure to let a bite pass her lips
thereafter, for her care of him, till he made the mend.

And that same morning, news traveled to Ullbrig that
the schoolmaster had been found, roaming and raving
like a madman, in the neighborhood of Prestnorth—where
a married cousin of his was living—and was in
bed now at her house, with brain fever.  Not likely to get
better, the rumor said, but therein it proved false, for a
fortnight later he resigned the mastership of Ullbrig
School, and wrote, at the same time, to Miss Morland,
requesting that his effects might be despatched to him by
carrier as soon as she could conveniently find leisure to
undertake the commission.  Another letter accompanied
it, addressed to Pam in his clear Board School script.  In
proclamation it was a penitential acknowledgment of his
sins; in effect it was a cacophonous outburst of reproach,
love, despair, and recriminations.  She sorrowed for the
man and his hard lot—for if he had loved her so torturingly
it was no fault of his own, but he had taught her
to fear him, and sympathy can never truly subsist in the
same bosom where fear is.

There were those in Ullbrig at first, as Father Mostyn
had predicted, who, with their sharp tongues, whittled
the affair to a fine point of scandal; those who considered
the schoolmaster an ill-used man, and Pam a conscienceless
hussy who had jilted him under circumstances that
would not too well bear the stress of investigation; those
who whispered; and those who nodded their chins with
compressed lips of meaning.  But they had the melancholy
dissatisfaction of fearing, each one in his own
heart, that these things might not after all be true.
Before such a man as Barclay it would never have been
politic to repeat this primitive creed at any time.  A
champion of Pam's from the beginning—when he cried
reproof upon them for their uncharitableness towards the
child—he was doubly her champion now; strode up and
down over the district like a mighty sower, spreading seed
of her heroism broadcast from both his hands.  And so
it came to be that the real history of the girl burst its
early grain of scandal, as though it had been sprouting
wheat, and sent up its produce into the clear blue heaven
of truth.  To-day, when Ullbrig tells you of that Monday
midnight, it only gathers breath of proud inflation to
breathe how one of its daughters—by name Pam—went
down the cliff for the man she loved, and how Barclay
saved them both.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLIV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLIV

.. vspace:: 2

But for Pam and the Spawer, the true tale of their
history only began after the terrible events that
give Pam her place among the heroines of the district.
They used its remembrance as a steel on which to sharpen
the blades of their present bliss, but it was not an inherent
part of their story.  That commenced when the horror of
this was over; when the Spawer woke up finally, with a
lasting wakefulness, on his bed, and saw Pam, and smiled.

Ah!  What a beautiful opening chapter that was—full
of a golden tremulousness on the girl's side, as of timid
sunlight peeping through the curtains of a May morning
when a great day is in the balance.  For there had crept
into the girl's heart while she watched him a strange little
dark bird, that fluttered ... and was still, and fluttered
again ... and again was still, gathering its strength and
grew, and was fledged and flew up—almost into the clear
skies of her reason, though not quite—and sang plaintive
melodies to her; among others, that the man she thought
of as Maurice had made love to her in his madness; that
he was not free; that he had never loved her; that she
was only tending him back to consciousness for the cruel
happiness of finding that his consciousness on the
intellectual side meant unconsciousness on the emotional; that
he would remember nothing of his delirious words, and
that his love had been but the outcome of bodily
weakness.  Last of all, she grew to dread his waking for the
news it might tell her.  When he stirred ... she closed
her eyes momentarily, with swift apprehension of the
worst.  When he lay a long while still, she prayed he
might wake promptly and put her out of her misery.

For it was become a long misery of suspense.  All her
happiness was laid aside like fine raiment; she dared not
look at it or think of it; her heart made ready to wear
mourning.  And oh, the anguish of that moment, when
at last—while her swift blood turned suddenly turbid in
her veins, and the very breath in her lungs curdled thick
to suffocation—he came out of his sleep, and his eyes
opened incomprehendingly upon her ... and she, drawn
back in apprehension, with her hands clasped up to her
lip ... met his gaze, and knew not how to respond to it.

And then that glorious burst of certainty when
recognition woke in him wanly and illuminated him like pale
glad sunlight, and he struggled to free his arms of their
coverings, and held them out to her ... and she had
gone into them like a dove descending ... and put her
own red, moist lips to his dry ones ... and kissed his
lingering soul back to life and happiness.

Ah!  To have lived that one brief moment, as Pam
lived it, was to have lived a lifetime abundantly.  Now
indeed that she knew he loved her for certain, and had
had the true sign and seal of it, she was ready to die
forthwith, if need were.  It was enough to have held his
love once in her own soul's keeping, as a child treasures
the moment's confidence of some precious breakable vase.
Pam was not greedy.  She would have been quite
content with no more.

But Heaven was kinder to this dear terrestrial angel
than that, and filled every moment of her days henceforth
with gladnesses as great, and greater.  At times she
wanted to get right away from everywhere and everybody;
Heaven seemed to keep her plate replenished with
celestial meats quicker than her soul could consume them.
She wanted to dally with the taste of them, and extract
their last nutritive juices of virtue.  But she ... well,
she was only human, after all, and said grace, and ate
what was set before her.

In a way, Pam's prayer was almost of gratitude and
rejoicing that her love had been given to her in this hour
of his weakness.  While he lay there, helpless upon his
bed, following her mutely with his eyes, the fact of his
belonging to her seemed set forth and glorified to an
extent almost apocalyptic.  In image he was a little child,
dependent upon her breasts for subsistence.  Every
moment furnished her with opportunities for feeding him
with the living love that flowed in her own body.  Oh,
truly, truly, he seemed hers when she nourished him thus
back to life with her ceaseless attentions; with caresses;
with sudden fondlings—such as only his helplessness
could have made possible; with a thousand ministrations
thoughtful and divine.  Her thoughts were always of
him; her every movement showed him plainly as the
motive power.  All the love of him that had been gathering
in the stillness of her soul flowed out towards him
now in a great psychic stream—as warm and broad as a
beam of sunlight.  From her fingers when they touched
him; from her lips when they rested on him; from her
attitude when she turned towards him—flowed this
constant current of love, love, love.  Like a very planet was
the life of Maurice Ethelbert Wynne in these days—a
luminous orb swimming in pure ether of love.  The love
of a true, good woman is great and wonderful, but the
love of this girl was so great and so wonderful that in
the strong tide of it the Spawer lay half incredulous on
his bed and blinked.  It was no love of laughter; no love
of jingling words; no love of triflings or pretty affectations.
It was a strong, tense, electric current of unselfish
feminine devotion that set the very atmosphere a-quiver.
When she came near him he could almost hear it humming
æolian music, as though he had laid his flat cheek to
a telegraph post.

And in a way, too, he was glad to be thus helpless on
his back, for the glory of being cradled in such a love, and
learning his love all over again, like an infant its alphabet,
from the lips and looks and actions; the dear,
large-hearted ABC Primer of Pam.  Her very love of him,
issuing towards him from every pore of her body, fertilised
the girl's own beauty, like the sap in the lush hedgerows
at spring.  Her soft, velvet eyes, that had been dark
enough and deep enough before, darkened and deepened
for the accommodation of this love till they were beyond
all plumb of mortal gaze.  Her lips, that had been red
enough and tender, colored now to a deeper, clearer
carmine, with little pools of love visible lurking in the
corners of them; love that stirred and eddied when she
spoke, and settled down again into their ruby hollows
when the lips reposed.  Her lashes, that had been black
enough, and long enough, and thick enough, lengthened
almost under sight of the man; grew black as ebony and
so thick that when she looked upon him from above, they
lay in unbroken flatness upon her cheek.  And her
freckles too—those dear little golden minstrels on the
bridge of her nose and brow—grew more purely golden,
till at times almost they gleamed like minute bright insets
of the precious metal itself, and sang love like a cluster of
caged linnets.  At whiles, when the Spawer looked at
her, such a proud and tearful tenderness floated into him
that had he been another woman, sure he must have
wept.  Her confidence in him; her self-sacrifice; her
unceasing devotion; her countless ministrations—frightened
him for what his own conduct must be ever to repay
them.

"Little woman..." he was moved to tell her, during
that first day of his convalescence, "... do you know
... I think I don't ever want to get out of bed or on my
legs again."

Pam was plainly alarmed, for it seemed to her he had
suddenly caught the desire of death which comes at times
to those whose days are numbered.  But he made haste
to reassure her.

"I just feel..." he explained to her, "... as
though I could wish to lie here, like this, for ever and
ever and ever, with you by me to look at and make me
happy.  Kiss me again, Pam, will you?  It does me good."

Then Pam stooped over him, as she was always doing,
and slipped her linked fingers under his neck, and looked
into his face first, and kissed him (praying for him the
while, though he did not know that), and buried her face
by his, and lifted it to look at him once more, and kissed
him again.  For who was there now to lay a forbidding
hand between their lips?  Who should stop her now from
telling him she loved him, loved him, loved him?





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLV

.. vspace:: 2

And rapidly the Spawer drew back, from its intricate
shadowy by-paths, to the great broad highway of Life.

How it would have fared with him but for that revitalising
power of love, if there had been no Pam to cling to
and sustain him, no man can positively say.  The lonely
Maurice Ethelbert Wynne of our latter chapters, void of
hope or happiness or aim, might have turned up his hands
and sunk under the deep sea without a struggle.  But Pam
was hands and eyes, and feet and lips, and thinker for
them both.

Emma Morland brought the letters round in these early
days, but Pam opened them, at the Spawer's express
bidding, and read them to him aloud in her musical fluty
voice—the voice that had won her a place in his heart
before even he had set eyes upon her.  And as she read,
the Spawer, sitting in the big chair by the open sunlit
window, with cushions under him of Pam's placing, would
explain to her the various allusions; let her into his life;
throw open all its gateways to the girl.  In the inmost
shelter of his soul he felt as though he needed the
comfort of Pam's companionship.

"Nixey" stood for So-and-So, he would explain to her;
and "Jack" was the brother of So-and-So—the fellow
that did this and that and the other that he 'd told her
about, did n't she remember?

And did n't Pam remember?  Oh, my Heaven!  Pam
remembered.  Not a word he ever said to her that she
forgot.

Then, if there were any letters to answer, Pam would
seat herself at the table, with his writing-case thrown
open, and dip deft fingers here, for envelopes; and deft
fingers there, for paper; and draw forth the pen, and
wield it as though armed for the fray; and would spear
the ink-pot with it, and wait upon his words with a
persuasive "Yes, dear?"

And the Spawer would make prodigious pretensions of
thinking, and not a word come to him sometimes, because
of the girl's face.  His mind held up its thought as an
obstinate cow does milk, and never a drop could he
squeeze from it.  All he could think of was Pam.

"Oh, bother the letters!" he would tell her.  "They stop
my thinking about you.  Why must I pawn my attention
to a horrid old business screed when I want never to take
it from you?"

"Don't you?" says Pam gladly, and melts over him with
her smile, wrapping him up in such a heavenly mantle of
indulgence and love and devotion that he almost feels
himself among the saints.

And oh! the joyousness of that return to the outer life,
when Pam led the Spawer out at last, she carrying a
cushion and a little net-bag of literary food (a French
reader and the like); and they betook themselves to the
harvest-field, and sat down under the blue sky in the
stubble, with their backs against the golden stocks, and
watched the elevated figure of Arny riding over the sea
of waving corn, like another Neptune, turning off the
wheat from the tip with rhythmic sweeps of his trident;
his eyes steadfast upon the tumbling crest of corn beside
him; and they contemplated the busy shirt-sleeves of the
band-makers, pulling out their two thin wisps of straw
from the recumbent "shawves," splicing them dexterously,
and twisting them—across their chests and under
their arm-pits, till their arms flap like the wings of a
crowing rooster—into a stout-stranded band, that they lay
out in the stubble alongside the flat heaps of fallen grain;
and they watched the harvestmen following, who rake up
the loose corn into a round bundle against the flat of their
leg, walk with it, so clipped, to the ready-made band,
depose it there, stoop, gather the two ends of the band in
their strong hands, squeeze the sheaf in with the knee,
bind it, make a securing tuck with the straw, and taking
up the trim-waisted shock by its plaited girdle, cast it
aside out of the path of the reaper on its next round.

And then, when "lowance" time was proclaimed, this
stock where Maurice and his Pamela were seated would
be made the headquarters of the repast.  Here would
come the welcome brown basket, and the carpet bag with
its bottlenecks protruding; the blue mugs and the tin
pannikins; the cheese and the bread; the pasties and the
sweet cakes; the tea and the beer.  And here would come
Dixon's genial voice, greeting them from afar:

"Noo then, Mr. Wynne!  'Ow div ye fin' yersen ti
morn?  Very comfortable, bi t' looks of ye.  Ye 're in
good 'ands, it seems."

.. vspace:: 2

And when the Spawer grows equal to it, it becomes a
daily obligation for them to wander across the intervening
stubble and pasture to Barclay's farm—where the
sails of his reaper can be seen churning the blue sky above
the hedge level, like the paddle of a steamer—just to give
Barclay's stocks a turn, and show themselves not
forgetful of their deliverer.  The time comes, of course,
when they must cease thanking him with their lips, but
Pam's mere gaze upon him is a gratitude, and Barclay
would have missed it, if she failed him one day, as he
would miss his pipe or his "lowance."

"Ah," said he, on a certain occasion, looking over with
a manifest nice eye of critical observation, and finding no
fault, "If ah 'd 'ad a lass like you to tek me at start, ah
mud 'a been a better man, an' a richer."

"But there are others," Pam told him encouragingly,
"... besides me."

"Ay," Barclay cut in, with a grim humor.  "There is.
Ower monny, lass.  Bud they 'd 'ave to be good uns after
ah 've 'ad you to sample.  Ah would n't tek onny rubbish
noo, an' it 'd 'ave to be rubbishin' stuff 'at 'd tek me.
Ah 'm ower well known 'ereabouts.  'Appen ah mud get
chance wi' next farm if ah change."

But the seed of resolution germinated in Pam's breast,
and some days later, getting Barclay to herself, it pushed
its pure blades through the warm soil all suddenly.

"... Oh, Mr. Barclay," she begged him, going
close under his broad chest, and showing the peeping
hands of petition.  "You won't be angry with me
... please?"

"Nay, that ah weean't," Barclay protested staunchly.
"Oot wi' it!  What 'ave ah been doin' noo?"

"I want to ask you something," Pam continued, a little
more softly, and a little more rapidly.  "... Something
very particular.  I want you to promise something."

"Ay," said Barclay assentively.  "Ah can promise ye,
lass.  Ah can promise onnybody, so far as that gans.
But it's keepin' of it 'at's not i' mah line."

"If you promise *me* ... you 'll keep it," Pam insinuated
very softly, but with an almost irresistible forcefulness.

"Ah 'm none so sure," Barclay reflected.  "Ah know
what ye want to ask me."

"What?" said Pam.

"Ye want to ask me to gie it up."

"Yes," said Pam, after a pause, "I do."

"Ah 've tried ... lots o' times," Barclay admitted.

"But not for *me*!" Pam urged.  "Not for the sake of
anybody.  Oh, Mr. Barclay ... you don't know how
unhappy I 've been at times about you, of late ... to
think that you 've saved my life—and his life—and put
this happiness in our way ... and all the time you 're
not taking any care of your own life ... at all."

"Why, lass," Barclay told her, but visibly troubled
about the eyes by her solicitude.  "Ah 'm sorry ye 've let
me be a trouble to ye.  Ah 've been nowt bud trouble to
missen an' ivverybody.  But where would ye be? ... an
'im too, if ah 'd kep' pledge sin' last time ah signed 'er?
Eh?"

"I know; I know," Pam admitted.  "I 've thought of
that, too."

"Ay," Barclay took up, pleased with her admission.
"It's a caution when ye come to think on it.  If ah 'ad n't
been mekkin' a swill-tub o' missen, an' walked back when
ah did—it 'd 'a been good-by to ye, an' long live
teetawtallers.  It just seems as though Lord 'ad called me to
Oommuth for t' puppos—though ah did n't know it at
time.  An' 'ow am ah to know, if 'E calls o' me ageenn,
same road ... 'at 'E 'as n't seummut else 'E 's wantin'
doin'?  Eh noo?"

"Perhaps..." Pam suggested pleadingly, "... perhaps
it was n't God that called you, Mr. Barclay ... but
it was God that sent you back.  Don't you think it might
be that?"

"Noo, ah sewd n't wonder," Barclay decided, with obvious
admiration for the girl's ingenuity.  "But it 'll be a
rum un for me to know which way 'E wants me to gan
... or which end 'E 's at."

"... And you 'll promise me, won't you?" Pam besought
him, and took hold of his watch-chain.  "You 'll
promise me to fight your very best ... for my sake."

"Ay," said Barclay, after a pause.  "Ah can bud try."

"You 'll try hard, though?" Pam adjured him—finding
too much fatalism in the tone of his promise for her
satisfaction.

"No....  when ah say ah 'll try, ah mean ah 'll try!"
Barclay reassured her.  "Ah s'll try my very best for t'
sake of 'oo asked me."

.. vspace:: 2

And Father Mostyn and the Doctor are constant attendants
upon the Spawer's recovery too, and stay for meals
whenever they want them; and tell him when the whiskey
flask is running low.

.. vspace:: 2

And it comes to be decided that their marriage shall not
take place for a year.  And meanwhile the Spawer is
going to stay where he is; and Pam is to push on with
her music, and her French, and with her English, and
fill her dear little head with the intellectual fare for which
it has always hungered.  And she is to do no more
letter-carrying.  Father Mostyn has inhibited her from that
with an *ex cathedra* usage of the great signet.  To remain
at the Post Office in an official capacity in face of present
circumstances would be an act of rebellion towards the
Church, and exceedingly offensive to Jehovah.  As the
girl's spiritual and corporeal guardian, he charges himself
with her care until she can be decently and respectably
married.  And they will go, all three of them, to
Hunmouth at times, by Tankard's 'bus (oh, bliss! oh,
heavenly rapture!) for purposes of shopping ... and the
sheer pleasure of it.

And the Spawer talks seriously of coming back to Ullbrig
after the honeymoon, and fitting up a little place for
their own two selves, where they can be near Father
Mostyn, and all their old friends; and where he can work
earnestly, and without distractions; and where they can
escape all the jealousies and soul-corrupting ambitions of
towns and places where they "live."

"Oh, little woman!" he tells Pam, "I can't bear to think
of your giving up your own dear self, and letting your
soul be shaped to the conventional pattern of the world.
I want you to be what you are—and for what I love you.
You shall see all the big places, of course, dear.  We 'll
save up our coppers and manage that somehow.  But
let 's see 'em from the outside.  Let 's go and look at
them through glass windows, as though they were so
many great shops, and come back to our own humble
happy life, and break bread and be thankful.  The world
for us, dear, is just our two selves.  We 're two little
human hemispheres that go to make our one globe, and if
we 're only happy in ourselves ... why, let the other
planets go hang!  Because you love me I just feel I don't
care how many people hate me.  They can hate their
heads off.  They can cry 'pish' to my music.  They can
turn aside their faces when I go by, as though I were a
pestilence.  What I do I want to do now for you.  I feel
I would rather write a little song that pleases you, love,
than compose a Beethoven symphony for the world to
bow to.  And why?  Because, dearest, I know that the
world is as ready to kick me as to bestow one ha'porth of
its kindness ... but You!  All the pleasure I can give
to you ... is just an investment, which you can pay
back to me in love at a thousand per cent."

"Is n't it funny?" says Pam, though without showing
the least appreciation of the avowed humor, "... what
love is.  I 've thought the same as you, too, but not put
so beautifully.  I just want us to try and be like what we
are now, in our hearts, as long as we live.  At times (do
you?) I like to think of you as belonging to me ... as
though you were every bit mine.  And at other times
... I feel frightened of having you.  The responsibility seems
somehow too great.  And then I just think of myself as
belonging to you.  And all I want ... is to creep into
your heart, dear, and for you to shelter me.  Oh,
Maurice!  To think.  Six months ago ... three months
ago ... I had no thought of you, or you of me!  And
we might never have met each other; never have loved
each other!  Is n't it dreadful?"

"What the eye does n't see, darling!" Maurice tells her,
"... the heart does n't grieve.  What we never know
we never miss.  But now we 're going to make up for
what might have been, are n't we?"

Pam says yes, they are.  "And oh," she says, "if you
had n't found me you might have found somebody else,
Morrie dear, do you think it possible that I may be
standing in the way of somebody you don't know at all
... that you might love better?"

"Very likely you are, dear!" Maurice says, acting Job's
comforter.  "But anyway, I 'm ready to risk you, and
take my chance of what may be for what is."

And this time Pam is ready to risk it too, and does not
tell the Spawer, as once she told Ginger:

"There must be no chance in love!"





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.. _`CHAPTER XLVI`:

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   CHAPTER XLVI

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One bright morning in late September, when the sky
dreamed as blue as June, and the sun shone August,
a stranger passed through into the churchyard by the
lich gate, and his Reverence the Vicar, having received
telepathic intimation of his presence, along one or other
of the invisible slender filaments that connect the
Vicarage with the churchyard, emerged shortly from his
retreat, like a fine full-bodied spider, and captured his prize
by the side wicket, with a "Ha!" of agreeable greeting.

"A stranger within our gates!" he observed, in courteous
surprise, rocking to and fro upon his legs in the
pathway, and balancing the ebony staff across both palms,
as though he were weighing theological propositions.  He
encompassed the sky with a comprehensive circle of
ferrule, and thrusting up a rapt nose to appreciation of
its beneficent blue, "You bring glorious weather!" he said.

The stranger acknowledged with marked politeness that
the weather was as his Reverence had been pleased to
state.  He was an elderly man, soberly habited in black,
and a compression of mouth that seemed to betoken one
whose office exacted of him either deference or discretion,
or perhaps both.

"A pilgrim to the old heathen centre of Ullbrig?" his
Reverence inquired.  "... An antiquarian at all?  A
connoisseur of tablets? or a rubber of brasses?—in
which case we 've nothing to show you."

The stranger said he was not exactly any of these
things.

"Ha! ... an epitaph hunter, perhaps?" his Reverence
substituted agreeably, as though desirous of setting
him at ease.

Nor scarcely an epitaph hunter ... in the precise
sense of the word, the stranger disclaimed.  He scanned
Father Mostyn sideways with a deferential regard of
inquiry.  "The Vicar, I presume?" he said.

His Reverence acknowledged the appellation by inclining
leniently towards it.

"I thought ... I could not be mistaken," the stranger
told him.  "As a matter of fact ... I had intended taking
the liberty of troubling you with a call, after giving
a glance round the gravestones here.  It is possible, if you
would be so kind, that you might be of considerable
assistance to ... to me in a matter of some importance."

Father Mostyn wagged the divining rod sagely over
his palms.

"A question of the register?  Births?  Deaths?  Marriages?
A pedigree in the issue, perhaps?"

"To a certain extent, sir, you are quite correct."  The
stranger compressed his mouth for a moment.  "I may
as well be explicit on the point.  Indeed, there is no
reason, sir, why any particular secrecy should be maintained.
I am here to pursue investigations on behalf of
Messrs. Smettering, Keelman & Drabwell, solicitors, of Lincoln's
Inn, who are acting according to instructions received
from a client of some importance.  Our object is merely
to trace and establish connection with a member of our
client's family—considerably to this member's advantage,
I may assure you."

His Reverence looked speculatively over the stick as
though the last few sentences had escaped his precise
observation, and he were trying now to reclaim the import
of them.

"... A military family at all?" he inquired.

The stranger eyed him with respectful surprise and
dubiety for a moment.

"... An old family of importance," he admitted
slowly.  "I should say it might be called a military
family."  Then he stopped.  "Perhaps..." said he, and
looked at his Reverence.

"Ha!" said his Reverence blandly.  "And the present
client?  An army man, is he?"

"The son of one, I believe, sir."

"To be sure.  Precisely.  The son of one.  Beautiful! beautiful!
One or two fat benefices in the family, do
you know?"

"I rather fancy ... there is one attached to the estate.
There may be more, for anything to my knowledge."  The
stranger followed the lead with the resignation of one
who plays void of trumps.  "If you know anything..."
he hazarded.

His Reverence stroked a gorgeous nose of wisdom.

"No mistaking the symptoms.  Not a bit of it.  Your
client seeks recovery of a daughter?"

The stranger demonstrated as much surprise as his
discretion and his respectfulness would let him.

"You can inform us ... where she is?"

"Certainly! certainly!  We have been expecting you.  I
thought you would n't be long in reaching us now.
To-morrow ... or Thursday, I thought."  His Reverence
cast a fine finger of effect towards the white headstone,
rising from the grass, beneath the east window.  "She is
there."

"Dead?" said the stranger.

"Your client is just a little matter of thirteen years too
late."

"Her married name was Searle?" said the stranger, as
though offering the fact for the priest's verification.

"To be sure.  On the gravestone.  On the gravestone.
'Sacred to the memory of Mary Pamela Searle.'  And her
father's name, of course, was..."

"... Paunceforth, since you know it, sir, ... of
Briskham Park, Hampshire."

"He will be getting an old man," said his Reverence.

"Seventy-four ... or five," the stranger responded,
"... and very feeble.  He has had one seizure already,
and is anxious to make amends, before he dies, for an act
of early severity.  At one stage of the proceedings there
was a child involved.  A daughter.  Is she still living?
If you can give me any information likely to lead to her
recovery, I may tell you that expense will be no object at
all.  No stone is to be left unturned, by our client's
instructions, to trace matters to their final step.  And I may
add that ... as this is now the last surviving branch of
our client's family ... and he is a gentleman of
considerable wealth..."

"Exactly," said his Reverence.  "I think it will not be
difficult to conclude matters to your client's entire
satisfaction.  His granddaughter has been, and still is, under
my safe care....  Just come along with me as far as the
Vicarage.  There are a few things there in my possession.
... Beautiful! beautiful!  Quite an Indian summer
we 're having."

And that same day, before dinner, the news is racing
all over Ullbrig that Pam's grandfather had sought for
her and found her; and that she is to be a real lady at
last, and ride horses, and drive carriages, and order
servants of her own, and live in a great big house in a great
big park, where deer are grazing and peacocks stalk the
terraces, and will never come back to Ullbrig any more,
but give them all the go-by now, and set her nose up
higher than ever; and the Spawer is only marrying her
for her money.

Steggison says to himself with a Satanic joy:

"Noo all s'll get a chance at post-bag.  She promised me
ah sewd 'ave fost try at it if owt 'appened 'er.  Mah wod!
Bud ah 'll gie 'em James Maskell an' all.  They 'll 'a t' run
when ah call of 'em—ne'er mind if they weean't!"

And James Maskill stands forlornly with his back
propped against the post-house bricks, and a heel hitched
up to the wall beneath him, and his hands in his pockets,
and his mouth screwed to a spiritless whistle that can't
produce the ghost of a sound; staring at nothing, and
thinking of nothing; and feeling nothing—for life in
front of him is nothing now, and he would n't have the
heart to fetch Dingwall Jackson his promised bat across
the lug, even if you caught him and held his head up for
the purpose.

And Emma Morland is bursting with pride, and weeping
with the misery of losing Pam—for this fashionable
interment of Pam in the classic vaults of High Society
fills her with a more terrible sense of their severance than
a little green grave in Ullbrig churchyard.

And the postmaster makes an impressive chief mourner,
standing by the counter with set face and lowered eyes as
though it were a coffin, and telling his daughter, when she
comes hither to embarrass him with her demonstrations of
grief:

"It 's all for t' best, lass no doot.  We s'll larn to get
ower it i' time."

And Mrs. Morland, her mingled gladness and sorrow
commingling to reminiscence, tells, through fond tears,
how Pam did this, and Pam did that; and how she 'd
always thought of others before herself; and what a
strange sad house it would be without her—and wept
herself into perspirations, and wiped her tears and her
steaming forehead with large double sweeps of her apron.  And
Ginger went off his food again—for though she 'd never
been his, at each new name with which hers was coupled,
he felt once more as though he 'd just lost her.

And Pam went dancing up to Cliff Wrangham that day,
hugging his Reverence's arm—as sad as any of them, and
so joyful that it seemed not earth she trod on, but the big
round prismatic blown bubble of a dream, shivering warningly,
all ready to puff into nothing and let her down into
nowhere.  And when they came to Dixon's, Pam
went into the little parlor, and looked at the Spawer, and
said, "Oh, Morrie!" in a doleful voice of preparation.
For, to tell the truth, though she was come here intended
to play a little comedy on him, with a triumphant *dénouement*,
her own conviction in things actual (including, for
the time, their own happiness) had been so surprisingly
shaken that, despite her errand's being presumably of
gladness, she looked, as she looked at him, for all the
world as though she had seen a ghost.

"Good gracious, darling!" said the Spawer, in concern,
when he saw her.  "Whatever 's been happening now?"

"Oh, Maurice!" said Pam again, trying hard to win
back assurance that he and she were not two mere unsubstantial
figments of somebody else's dream, but flesh and
blood, and dear and bend to each other.  "I 've something
to tell you, dear—I mean, to ask you, dear.  Do you love me?"

"Do I love you?" repeats the Spawer, with a look of
incredulous surprise, and a tinge, in his tones, of severity.
"What a remarkable question to ask a man—and at such
short notice!  Really, Miss Searle ... I must confess
you surprise me."

"Oh, but do you, do you?" begs Pam.

"Well, it 's dreadfully, horribly sudden," says Maurice.
"And you put me quite in a flutter.  But since you 're
rather an attractive girl ... well, yes, I do."

"Oh, but suppose ... suppose..." says Pam, going on....

"Yes, little riddle-me-ree?"

"Suppose ... suppose I was n't what you 've always
thought me.  Suppose it were found that ... I was n't
a lady at all.  Suppose I was somebody altogether
different from what Father Mostyn said I was."

Sundry speculative shadows rise up in the Spawer's
mind, but he is not dismayed, and feels no flinching.

"Well?" says he encouragingly.  "And suppose you were?"

"Would it make no difference?" Pam asks tremulously,
it must be confessed, for oh ... if now it should!

"Darling," says the Spawer firmly, "not the least little
bit."

Pam wants then and there to clasp his avowal and
proclaim her mission.  Her soul has scarcely strength for
further dissimulation, but for the full crop of joy that
she hopes to reap in the end, she keeps her hand to the
plough.

"Would you want to marry me ... just the same?" she asks.

"More!" says Maurice Ethelbert.  "A hundred times more."

"Why more?" Pam inquires vaguely; her curiosity
suddenly fanned to seek the reason of this strange great
increase in his affection for her.

"Because," the Spawer tells her, "the less you are to
the world, dear, the more you must be to me.  The less
claim the world can make upon you, the more I feel I 've
got you all to myself."

"You would still marry me, under any conditions?"
persists Pam.

"Under any and all."

"And you won't let me go?"

"I won't let you go."

"Whatever people say?"

"Whatever people say."

"You 'll hold me as tight ... as you held me when
we thought we were going to die ... that night."

"Tighter, darling, tighter."

"Even if..."

"If what?"

"... I should turn out ... just a bit of a lady,
after all, dear?"

The Spawer is going to answer, but he stops suddenly,
lifts up the girl's face, and looks straight into her eyes.

"Pam!" says he.

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   THE END

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