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.CHAPTER XXXISunday 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.CHAPTER XXXIIIt 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.CHAPTER XXXIII"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."CHAPTER XXXIVAnd 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.
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.
CHAPTER XXXI
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.
CHAPTER XXXII
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.
CHAPTER XXXIII
"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."
CHAPTER XXXIV
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.