Chapter VII: Part 7

"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.

*CHAPTER XVII*

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:

DEPARTURE OF THE SPAWER.

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.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

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.

*CHAPTER XIX*

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.