CHAPTER VIIIPam had grown up in the sight of Ullbrig, variously loved and hated for her self-same virtues; and on a day when the time seemed not yet ripe (for fear some more enterprising spirit might pluck it green), the men of Ullbrig and of Whivvle, and of Merensea and of Garthston, and of Sproutgreen and of Ganlon, and of Hunmouth even, arose, gave a pull to their waistcoats, and took turns at offering themselves before her on the matrimonial altar. That, as you may imagine, made Pam more enemies than ever.Who the first man was to win the honor of her refusal has not been established on a sufficiently authoritative basis for publication in this volume, but after him came a constant stream of postulants. She could have had any man she liked for the lifting of her little finger; hardly one of them got married but took the wife he did because he could n't take Pam. George Cringle, indeed, from Whivvle way, boldly challenged her to marry him while his own banns were up with the daughter of the Garthston miller."Oh, George," said Pam, when he stopped her by the smock-mill on the Whivvle road and made his views known to her; too much shocked by his dreadful duplicity to exult over her sister's downfall as an Ullbrig girl might have done. "However could you.""Ah could very well," said George resourcefully, misconstruing the reproval into an encouraging query about how the thing was to be done. "An' ah 'll tell y' t' way. Ah 'd send my brother to let 'er know ah 'd gotten chance o' betterin' mysen, an' wor gannin' to tek it, an' we 'd 'ave me an' you's names called i' Oolbrig Choch. Noo, what div ye say?"Pam said "No," and preached one of the prettiest open-air sermons you ever heard. It was on love and marriage; telling how true love was essential to happiness, and how marriage without love was mere mockery, and how the man that betrayed the affections of a girl by demeaning her in the sight of another was not worthy to be called man at all; and how, if George did n't care for Rose, he ought never to have soiled his lips with the falsehood of saying he did ("Ay, ah do, bud ah care for you a deal better," said George); and how he ought to try and make himself worthy of Rose, and she of him; and how, if he really felt that that was impossible, he ought to stand forth boldly and proclaim so before it was too late ("Ah 'm ready, onnytime ye tell me," said George); but how Pam knew that George was a good fellow at heart ("Ah div n't say there is n't them 'at's as good," said George, modestly, "if ye know t' place to look for 'em"); and how, doubtless, he did n't mean any harm ("Ah-sure ah div n't"); and so on ... much as you 've seen it all put in books before, but infinitely more beautiful, because Pam's own dear face was the page, and Pam's lips the printed words; and George stood and watched her with his own lips reforming every word she said, in a state of nodding rapture."Gan yer ways on," he begged her, when at last she came to a stop. "Ah can tek as much as ye 've got to gie me.""I 've finished," said Pam."Ay; bud can't ye think o' onnythink else?" he inquired anxiously. "Ah like to 'ear ye—an' it mud do me some good. Rose could n't talk i' that fashion, ah 'll a-wander. Nay; Rose could n't talk same as yon. Not for nuts, she could n't. She 's a fond 'un, wi' nowt to say for 'ersen bud, 'Oh, George! gie ower.' What did ye tell me ah 'ad to prawclaim?" he asked, with a crafty attempt to lure Pam on again. "Ah want to mek right sure ah en 't forgotten owt."Whereupon Pam wrought with her wavering brother a second time..."Ay; it 's all right what ye 've telt me," he said, in deep-hearted concurrence, when her words drew to an end once more. "Ah know it is. Ye 've gotten right pig by t' lug, an' no mistek.... Well? What div ye say? Mun ah send my brother to tell 'er ah s'll not be there o' Monday week?"Pam ground her little heel into the dust for departure, and threw up her head with a fine show of pitying disdain."Some day, George Cringle," she told him in leaving, "you may be sorry when you think of this.""Ah can't be na sorrier nor ah am to-day, very well," George admitted sadly, "... if ye mean 'No.'""I do," said Pam, with emphasis."Well, then," George decided, "there 's nowt no more for it. Things 'll 'a to gan on as they are."Which they did.Any other girl might have been ruined with all this adulation; all these proposals open and covert; all these craning necks; these obvious eye-corners—but Pam was only sorry, and sheer pity softened her heart till many thought she had merely said "No" in order to encourage a little pressing. And indeed, Pam said "No" so nicely, so lovingly, so tenderly, so sorrowfully, so sympathetically, and with so little real negation about the sound of it, that one woke up ultimately with a shock to realise the word meant what it did. Some even found it difficult to wake up at all."What div ye keep sayin' 'Naw' for?" asked Jevons, with a perplexity amounting to irritation, when he had asked her to be the mother of two grown-up daughters and a son, ready-made, and Pam had not seen her way. "Ah s'll be tekkin' ye at yer wod, an' then 'appen ye 'll wish ye 'd thought better on. Noo, let 's know what ye mean, an' gie us a plain answer to a plain question. Will ye 'a me?""No..." said Pam again, shaking her head sorrowfully. Not N-O, NO, as it looks here in print—hard, grim, inexorable, forbidding; but her own soft "No," stealing out soothingly between her two lips like the caress of a hand; more as though it were a penitential "Yes" in nun's habit, veiled and hooded—a sort of monosyllabic Sister of Mercy."See-ye! There ye are agen," said Jevons, convicting her of it with his finger. "Noo, what am ah to mek on ye?""Oh, nothing at all, please," Pam begged of him, with solicitous large-eyed humility through her thick lashes. "Don't bother to try. It 's not as though I was worth it ... or ... or the only one. You 'll be sure to find plenty of somebody elses ... There are just lots of girls ... older than me too ... who 'd be only too glad to say 'Yes' ... and be better for you in every way.""Ay, ah know there is," Jevons assented, with refreshing candor. "Lots on 'em. Bud ah mud as lief finish wi' you sin' ah 've gotten started o' ye. T' others 'll 'ave to be looked for, an' ah can't reckon to waste mah time i' lookin' for nawbody. Work gets behint enough as it is. Noo, let 's come tiv a understandin'. 'Ave ye gotten onnything agen me?""Oh, no, no," said Pam, all her sympathies in alarm at the mere suggestion, lest it might have been derived from any act or word of hers. "Indeed I have n't.""Well," said Jevons himself, stroking down the subject complacently. "Nor ah div n't see rightly i' what way ye sewd. Ah 'm a widdiwer—if that 's owt agen a man? Bud if it is, ah s'll want to be telt why. An' ah 've gotten a family—so it 's no use sayin' ah en't. Bud it 'll be a caution if there 's owt agen a man o' that score. There 'll be a deal o' names i' Bible to disqualify for them 'at say there is. An' ah 've gotten seummut ah can lay my 'ands on at bank onnytime it rains—though it 'll 'a to rain strangelins 'ard an' all before ah do. Ah 's think ye weean't say 'at that 's owt agen a man?""Not a bit," said Pam conciliatorily. And then, with all the steadfast resolution of her teens: "I shall never marry," she told him.Only girls in their teens—taking life very seriously because of them—ever say that. When they get older they commit themselves to no such rash statement, lest it might be believed.Ginger's turn took place in the Post Office itself. He had been waiting for it for six weeks, so, of course, being fully prepared, it caught him at a disadvantage when it came. As he slipped into the Post Office his prayer was for Pam, but after he 'd got inside and remembered what he 'd sworn to do if it were, he prayed it might be the postmaster, until he thought he heard him coming, when his heart sank at another opportunity lost, and he changed the prayer to Pam again. He was still juggling with it from one to the other, with incredible swiftness and dexterity, when there was a sudden ruffle of skirts and Pam stood waiting behind the counter, with her knuckles on the far edge of it, in a delightful transcription of the postmaster's position."Well, Ginger," she said, nodding her beautiful head at him. (Ginger being also a surname, it was quite safe to call him by it.) "Do you want a stamp?""... Naw, thank ye. At least ... ah 'm not partic'lar. Ay ... if ye 've gotten one to spare..." said Ginger. "Bud ye 've n' occasion to trouble about it o' mah account. It's naw consequence. Ah 'm not so sure ah could lick it, evens if ye 'ad to gie me it; my mouth 's that dry ...""Let me get you a glass of milk, then," said Pam promptly, showing for departure."Nay, ye mun't," Ginger forbade her in a burglar's whisper, waking up suddenly to the alarming course his conduct was taking—as though he had come so far in a dream. "Milk brings me out i' spots i' naw time, thank ye ... an' besides, ah can do better wi'out. Wet's comin' back to me noo, ah think, an' ah s'll not want to use stamp while to-morrer, 'appen ... or day after; if then. 'Appen ah s'll sell stamp to my mother, when all 's said and done ... thank ye.... Did ye see what ah did wi' penny? It ought to be i' one o' my 'ands, an' it 's not no longer. Mah wod!" He commenced to deal nervous dabs at himself here and there as though he were sparring for battle with an invisible adversary, and one, moreover, he feared was going to prove the master of him. "Ah en't swallered 'er, ah 's think. There 's a strange taste o' copper an' all....""What 's that on the counter?" asked Pam."Ay ... to be sure," said Ginger, with a mighty air of relief, picking up the penny and putting it in his pocket. "There she is.... Mah wod, if ah 'd slipped 'er—she mud 'a been finish o' me. Well...." It suddenly occurred to him that he 'd been a tremendous time in the shop delaying Government business, and his teeth snapped on the word like the steel grips of a rat-trap. "Ah 'll wish ye good-night," he said abruptly, and made a bolt to go."Are n't you going to pay me, Ginger?" Pam asked from across the counter, with the soft simulation of reproach."What for?" Ginger stopped to inquire with surprise."For the stamp I gave you," said Pam."Ay ... noo, see-ye. Ah wor so throng wi' penny ah nivver thought no more about stamp. Did ye notice what ah did wi' 'er?"He seemed to be shaking hands with himself in all his pockets, one after the other."In your waistcoat," said Pam. "That 's it.... No; see!"—and as his hands still waltzed wide of the indicated spot, shot two little fingers over the counter, stuck straight out like curling-tongs, and into his waistcoat pocket and out again, with the stamp between them. "There you are," she said, holding it up before his eyes in smiling triumph as if it were a tooth she 'd extracted."Ay..." said Ginger, divining it dimly; "ye 're welcome tiv it."That touch of her hand on his waistcoat, and the little waft of warm hair that went with it, had almost undone him."Don't you want it?" asked Pam, scanning him curiously."Not if you do, ah don't," said Ginger. "Ah 'll mek ye a present on it.""Oh, but..." said Pam, with the tender mouth for a kindness, "it 's awfully good of you ... but we 've got such lots of them. As many as ever we want and more. You 'd better take it, Ginger.""Ay, gie it me, then," said Ginger, holding his waistcoat pocket open, "'Appen ye weean't mind slippin' it back yessen, an' ye 'll know ah 've gotten it safe." The little warm waft went over him again, and he shut his eyes instinctively, as though to the passage of a supreme spirit whose glory was too great to be looked upon by mortal man. "Diz that mek us right?" he asked hazily, when the power had gone by, and he awoke to see Pam looking at him."Yes," said Pam, feeling it too mean to ask for the penny again after Ginger's recent display of generosity. "That makes us all right, Ginger, thank you.""Same to you," said Ginger. "Ay, an' many on 'em." Then he knew his hour was come. "Ah want to know ..." he begged unsteadily, gripping himself tight to the counter's edge, and speaking in a voice that seemed to him to boom like great breakers on the shore, and must be audible to all Ullbrig, let alone the Post Office parlor—though Pam could hardly hear him, "if ye 'll remind me ... 'at ah've gotten seummut ... to ask ye?""I will if I can only remember," said Pam amiably, slipping a plump round profile of blue serge on the counter and swinging a leg to and fro—judging by the motion of her. "When do you want me to remind you, Ginger?""Noo, if ye like," said Ginger."This very minute?" asked Pam."Nay, bud ah think not," said Ginger, backing suddenly in alarm from the imminence of his peril. "It 's not tiv a minute or two. Some uvver day, 'appen, when you 're not busy.""Oh, but I 'm not busy now," said Pam, stopping her leg for a second at Ginger's recession, and setting it actively in motion again when she spoke, as though to stimulate his utterance."Ah 'm jealous y' are, though," said Ginger, with a rare show of diffidence at taking her word."Indeed I 'm not," Pam assured him. "I promise you I 'm not, Ginger. Do you think I 'd say that to you if I were? Now, what is it you want to ask me?""Can ye guess?" Ginger tested her cautiously, with a nervous, twisted smile—intended to carry suggestion, but looking more as though he 'd bitten his tongue. Pam thought over him for a moment, and shook her head."I 'm not a bit of good at guessing," she said."'Appen ye 'd be cross if ah telt ye," reflected Ginger. "Ay, ah 'd better let it alone while ah 'm right. Ah mud mek a wuss job on it.""Oh, Ginger, you aggravating boy," cried Pam, spurring a dear, invisible heel against the counter to urge him on, and slapping the oilcloth with her small flat hand till Ginger's ears tingled again in jealous delight. "... Go on; go on. You must go on. You 'll have to tell me now, or I 'll never be friends with you again—and I shall know you don't care, either.""Well, then," Ginger began, pushed reluctantly forward by this direful threat, "... it 's this." He held on to it as long as he could, taking breath, and then when he felt he could n't hold on any longer, he suddenly shut his eyes and let go, saying to himself, "Lord, help me!" and to Pam, "Will y' 'ave me?"—so quickly and indistinctly that it sounded like a cat boxed up under the counter, crying "Me-ow.""Oh, Ginger," Pam apostrophised him mournfully, when she 'd begged his pardon three times, and he 'd mewed after each one until at the third she 'd received the inspiration to know what they all meant. "I wish you 'd asked me anything but that.""There wor nowt else ah 'd gotten to ask ye," Ginger said gloomily."Because..." Pam proceeded gently to explain, "I shall have to say 'No.'""Ay, ah thought ye would," Ginger threw in. "Ah know very well ah 'm not good enough for ye.""You 're every bit good enough for me," said Pam, with swift tears of championship in her eyes, drawn there by his masterstroke of humility. "And you must never say that again, please, even if you don't mean it. It 's very, very good of you indeed to want me, Ginger. It 's awfully good of you; and I 'd as soon say 'Yes' to you as to any I 've ever said 'No' to. I 'm sure you 'd do all you could to make me happy....""Ay, that ah would," said Ginger, snatching hopefully at the small bone of encouragement. "Ah 'd try my best. Is it onny use me askin' ye agen after a while?—say to-morrer or Friday? Ah sewd n't think owt about trouble."Pam shook her head regretfully."I 'm afraid not," she said. "But you must n't imagine, Ginger, it 's because I don't care for you, or because I doubt you. It 's myself I doubt, if I doubt anybody, not you. If I could only be a hundred Pams instead of just a miserable one, I 'd have said 'Yes' to all those that asked me. I know I should. You can't think how it troubles me to have to keep on saying 'No'—but what am I to do? Everybody asks me to marry them ... at least, a few do ... and as I can only marry one, I 'm frightened it might be the wrong one. It 's so easy to make a mistake—unless you 're very, very sure. And I'm not; and I feel I might end by making both of us unhappy....""Ah 'd chance that," said Ginger, with resolution."But there ought to be no chance about it, Ginger," Pam reproved him gently. "Nobody ought ever to marry by chance. People that only marry by chance can only hope to be happy by chance—and that 's a dreadful idea.""Ay, ah see it is," said Ginger hurriedly. "Ah beg yer pardon.""Well, then," said Pam, "... you understand me, don't you, Ginger?""Ah 'm jealous ah do," said Ginger despondently."And you 're not angry with me ... for what I 've said to you?""Nay, ah 'm not angry wi' ye," said Ginger. "Ah 'm only sorry. Ah misdoot ah s'll not be i' very good fettle for my supper when time comes.""You 'll shake hands, though," said Pam, catching a certain indication that he was about to depart without."Ay, ah sewd like, sin' ye 're good enough to ask me," Ginger acknowledged eagerly, blundering hold of her fingertips, and dropping them like hot coals as soon as he felt the desire to linger over them. "'Appen ye 'll let me ... shek 'ands wi' ye ... noo an' agean," he asked Pam humbly, turning his coat collar up to go—not that there was any rain at the time, but that the action seemed somehow, in his conception of things, to befit the hopeless finality of departure."Whenever you like, Ginger," Pam promised him, with moist lashes."Thank ye," said Ginger, making for the door. "Ah div n't know ... at ah s'll trouble ye so offens ... but may'ap it mud save me ... fro' gannin altagether to bad if ah was ... to shak 'em noo an' agean."And with a husky farewell he dipped out of the office.CHAPTER IXSo Ginger went over to the great majority of those that loved Pam and lost her, and in his own hour was as sick a man as ever you might wish to meet outside the chapters of a mediæval romance, where gallant knights are wont to weep like women, and women stand the sight of as much blood, unmoved, as would turn the average modern man's stomach three times over. But anything like a complete account of all the hopeless loves that had Pam for their inspiration would crowd the pages of this book from cover to cover, and still leave material for a copious appendix, and any amount of lesser contributory literature. "Pamela Searle: her Time, Life, Love, and Letters," including several important and hitherto unpublished meat-bills rendered to Mrs. Gatheredge by Dingwall Jackson, with a frontispiece. "'Pamela Searle,' being a barefaced attempt to confound the thinking public as much as possible on the subject of this fascinating character, and present her to them in an altogether novel and unreliable light, as a means of catching their pennies—(truth being worse than useless for the purpose)—with a vindication of Sheppardman Stevens from sundry charges that have been customarily laid against him."—"'Ullbrig, Past and Present'—(also 'Rambles Round')—fully illustrated; containing a special chapter on Pamela and Father Mostyn in the light of recent investigation. Compiled to serve as a guide-book to the district." "'Pamela Searle, the Ullbrig Letter-Carrier; or, What can Little Ladies do?' A tale and a lesson. By Mrs. Griffin (Good Children Series, No. 105.)."It is no secret that the Garthston parson wanted Pam as badly as he wanted a new pair of trousers, and would have had her at a moment's notice if she 'd only asked him, but she never did; and he wore the old pair to the end. And the Merensea doctor wanted her too—the same that came in for six thousand pounds when his father died, and married his housekeeper—but Pam went very sad and soft and sorrowful each time he asked her (which was generally from his gig, driving some seven miles out of his way, by Ullbrig, to reach an imaginary patient on the Merensea side of Whivvle), and said "No," just the same as she said it to everybody else, with not the least shade of an eyelid's difference because he happened to be a doctor—which was the girl all over. No supplicant that ever supplicated of Pam was too mean or too poor, or too ridiculous or too presuming, in her eyes, ever to be treated with the slightest breath of contumely. When poor Humpy from Ganlon, whose legs were so twisted that he could n't tell his right from his left for certain without a little time to think, asked a Ganlon lass to have him, she screamed derision at him like a hungry macaw, and ran out at once to spread the news so that it should overtake him (being but a slow walker, though he walked his best on this occasion) before he had time to get home. When he asked Pam to have him, Pam could have cried over him for pity, to think that because God had seen fit to spoil a man in the making like this, human love was to be denied him; and though, of course, she said "No," she said it so beautifully that Humpy could hardly see his way home for the proud tears of feeling himself a man in spite of all; and if, after that, there had been any particular thing in the whole world that twisted legs could have done for a girl, that thing would have been done for Pam so long as Humpy was alive to do it.Lastly, two years before the Spawer's arrival, the old schoolmaster grew tired of teaching and died, and there came a new one in his place; a younger man, pallid and frail, with the high white student's forehead, worn smooth and rounded like the lamp globe he 'd studied under; the weak brown moustache and small chin, and a cough that troubled him when the wind was east, and took up his lodgment at the Post Office. Every day he sat four times with Pam at the same table—breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper. Every morning, when the clock struck ten, he manoeuvred over his toes for a sight of the roadway through the school-room window, and if the veins in his forehead swelled and his jaw muscles contracted:"Ah knaw 'oo yon 'll be," went the whisper round behind him.Once he was ill, drawing the breath into his lungs like great anchor chains dragged through hawse-holes, and Pam nursed him. Dressed the pillows under his head; laid her cool hand on his hot forehead; gave him his medicine; sat through the night with him, clasping courage and comfort and consolation into his burning fingers, wrote letters for him; read for him. "Noo we s'll be gettin' telt seummut before so long," said Ullbrig to itself. "A jug gans to pump adeal o' times, but some fond lass 'll brek it before she 's done,"—but the schoolmaster consumed in stillness like the flame of a candle. There were days when "Good morning, Yes, No, Please, Thank you, and Good-night" would have covered all that he said to Pam directly—and even then the veins in his forehead and the tightening muscles about his jaws reproved him straightway, as though he had already said too much. If, by any chance, Pam addressed him suddenly, the blood would mount up to his forehead and the outlines of his face would harden, like a metal cast in the setting, before he spoke, till it almost looked as though he were debating whether he should give her any reply. And the reply given, he would take the first opportunity of turning his back. Indeed, there were times when he barely waited for the opportunity, but clipped his sentence in the middle and threw an abrupt word over his shoulder to complete the sense of it, while Pam stood sorrowfully regarding the two familiar threadbare tail buttons and the shine about the back of the overworked morning coat, whose morning knew no noon, wondering if she 'd said anything to offend him. Once, when he had swung round more abruptly than usual, giving her the reply so grudgingly that it fell altogether short of her hearing, as though he had cast a copper to some wayside mendicant for peace's sake, Pam—who could never bear to leave anything in doubt that a word might settle—asked him softly if he were angry with her. The question fetched him suddenly round again, with the appearance of warding a blow."Angry with you?" he repeated. There was the hoarseness of suppressed emotion about his voice, and his lip trembled."You are angry with me now, though," said Pam mournfully, "for asking you."And indeed, by the way he had turned upon her and spoken, he seemed like a man brought to the sudden flash-point of passion by some injudicious word."I am not angry with you," he said, in the same constrained, hoarse voice, and said no further, but put his shoulders between them again as though the subject were too unimportant to be discussed.Then Pam made a discovery."He does not like me," she told herself, and without showing that she held his secret, she set herself in her own quiet, gentle fashion to verify the fact by observation. He was never a man of many words at any time, but she saw he was never a man of so few as when he was with her. He had words for the postmaster; he had words for the postmaster's wife; he had words for Emma; he had words—stray, detached, pedagogic schoolroom words, read up aloud from the chalkings on an invisible blackboard—for the villagers. But for Pam—Pam saw herself—he had only the constrained, hard words between his teeth like the enforced bit of a horse, that he champed fretfully in the desire to break away from her.No. Pam knew what it was. He liked the postmaster because they could talk the papers over together, and predict terrible things about the country to each other; and he liked Emma because Emma was so straightforward and sensible and earnest looking—even if she was n't pretty, which perhaps, after all, she was n't—and never said silly things she did n't mean; and he liked Mrs. Morland because nobody could help liking her—she was so kind and motherly and sympathetic and talkative, and so full of allowances for other people. But Pam! ... Well, he did n't care about Pam because ... oh, because of heaps of things, perhaps. It was n't any use trying to put them all together. Because he thought she was a silly, empty-headed gad-about, who cared for nothing but showing herself around the countryside ... (but that was n't true a bit; he knew it was n't!) ... and being asked if she 'd have people....Pam doubled up one little hand in anguish, and stared at an invisible something in front of her—that seemed to be a bogey by the startled look she gave it—with a bitten underlip twisting and struggling like a red live thing to be free; and a drawn grey cheek—till the great round tear-drops gathered in her eyes and fell hotly on her knuckles one by one.But that was only for a moment.Then Pam dashed the tears aside and shook her glorious head with new-found resolve. Pam would be brave; and strong; and steadfast; and still; and modest; and nobly feminine; and true. And would show him by her actions that he had done her a wrong in his heart.Pam was still engaged upon the work of showing him when the Spawer took up his quarters at Cliff Wrangham.CHAPTER XOn the morning following the Spawer's session at Father Mostyn's, before James Maskill had yet flung himself round the brewer's corner, his Reverence threw open the blistered Vicarage door and sallied forth genially to the Post Office in a pair of well-trodden morocco slippers, screwing up his lips to inaudible cheery music as he went, and holding in his left hand a round roll of grey stuff which, judging by wristbands of a similar texture that showed beyond the crinkled cassock sleeves, appeared to be a reverend flannel shirt. Jan Willim was chalking their price on a pair of virgin soles when he heard the insidious slip-slap of heelless leather take the cobbles like the lipping of an advancing tide, and he put his head hurriedly round the little clean kitchen door at the sound of it."Noo, 'ere 's 'is Rivrence," he announced, with the loud double-barrelled whisper intended to do duty as a shout on the one side and be inaudible on the other, "... an' it 'll be Pam 'e 's after.... Noo, Pam lass!""Ha! The very girl I wanted to see," his Reverence told her, as Pam slipped her frank face deftly behind the counter to receive him, like a beautiful honest marguerite, fresh plucked and button-holed, with a friendly upward "Yes-s-s?" prolonged through her ivory petals, pink-tipped, and' a peep of rosy tongue. "The very girl! How 's Government this morning, John?" he inquired obliquely of the deferential shadow brooding by the inner door, where the sound of straining shoe-leather bespoke the presence of somebody striving to keep silence on his toes."She 's very well, ah think, yer Rivrence, thank ye," responded the postmaster, stepping forward the necessary six inches to show himself respectfully before the Vicar in the act of speaking, and retiring when his words were ended."Busy, is she?" asked his Reverence affably, commencing to unroll the grey bundle of flannel on the counter with a leisurely ordering of his hands—Pam lending assistant touches here and there."Ay, she 's busy," said the postmaster, showing again in the door-frame, and wiping his fingers on his apron, lest their inactivity might seem like disrespectful indolence before the Vicar. "Bud it 'll be slack time wi' 'er an' all before long. Theer 's not so many stamps selt i' 'arvest by a deal, nor so many letters written. Folks is ower throng i' field.""Ha! No doubt about it. The harvest field is a fine corrective forcacoethees scribendi," said his Reverence, disposing the shirt on the counter lengthwise, with limp, outstretched arms, for Pam's inspection, as though it were some subject on an operating table. "Buttons again, you see, Pam," he told her, pointing out where they lacked."My word, I see!" said Pam, running over the outlines of the article with a swift, critical eye. "And wristbands and collarbands as well. You want some new shirts badly. You 've only four now, with the one you 've got on—and that," she said, turning up his cassock sleeves to get a look at it, "is almost past mending. See how thin it is.... And will you have pearl buttons, then?" asked Pam, composing the shirt to seemly folds under soft, caressing fingers, and following every move of her hands with a fascinating agreement of head, "... or plain white?""Ha! Plain white ... by all means," said Father Mostyn. "Large plain white for his reverence the vicar—as large and as plain and as white as we can get 'em, that lie flat where they fall, and don't run all over the floor and try to find the crack in the skirting-board. Pearl buttons are for the young and flexible (incidentally too, for the profane), and not for aged parish priests, whose knees are stiffened with a life of kneeling.... Shirts and pearl buttons must n't let me forget, though," he admonished himself, drawing the solitary, backless cane-bottomed chair under him from below, and sitting to the counter with one hand drumming on its oilcloth and the other gripping a spindle, "what I really came about.""No," said Pam, watching his lips."We had a visit from our friend of the Cliff End last night."Pam's eyes were drawn for a moment to sundry faults in the folding of the shirt, and her fingers busied themselves with their correction."Yes," she said, looking up again. "But you did n't have any music? ... Did you?" she asked, with the sudden eagerness for a coveted opportunity gone by."All in good time—all in good time, dear child," Father Mostyn exhorted her indulgently. "Last night we made music with our mouths, but the next night we 're going to make a little with our fingers. Bach! Scarlatti! Beethoven! Mozart! Schumann! Palestrina! ... And then we shall have to have you with us.""Me?" asked Pam, with swift, desirous incredulity."You," said Father Mostyn.Pam plunged her face into her two hands straightway (which was a characteristic trick of hers at such times), as though the beauty of this thing were too great to behold. After a moment she let her fingers slide away into her lap of their own weight and threw back a brave head with the smile of tears about it, and the little double shake that remained over to her from the short while ago when her hair had fallen in sleek, black curtains on either side of her cheeks each time she stooped."Does he know I 'm to be there?" she inquired."To be sure he does, dear child.""But it was your idea ... to ask me," said Pam."It was my vicarage," said Father Mostyn.Pam made pot-hooks with her fingers."Yes..." she said, as though the word were only the beginning to a puzzled objection, but her breath went out in it in lingering, and she let it stand by itself as an assent. "What did he say?""When?""When you told him ... I was to be there? Perhaps he did n't say anything?"—with anxiety. "Did he?""And supposing he did n't?""Then perhaps it would mean he did n't want me. And perhaps it would n't ... but it might.""Ha! Might it? Let 's make our mind easy, dear child. He said lots of things.""About me?""Certainly. It was you we were discussing."There was only one question possible to ask after this on the direct line, and Pam drew up short, confronting it with a sudden air of virtue."I don't want to know what they were," she said."There 's no earthly reason why you should n't," Father Mostyn told her suavely, "so far as that goes.""Is n't there?" asked Pam; and then quickly: "... Of course, I did n't think there would be. Why should there?""Ha! Pam, Pam, Pam!" said his Reverence, raising his hand from the counter, and wagging a monitory loose forefinger at her. "All the doctrine of Church Catholic can't drive the first woman out of you quite, I fear. Curiosity in that little breast of yours is a blackbird in a linnet's cage, and may break away through the bars."Pam looked up from her pot-hooks sideways and laughed the soft, musical confession of guilt."All that was said about you last night," his Reverence assured her, "had to do with your music....""But you never told him," said Pam, locking her knuckles with a sudden alarm against the impending disclosure, and straining them backwards over her knee."To be sure I did.""Oh!" said Pain, and dipped her face into her basined fingers a second time. "... That 's dreadful. Now he 'll come to church."Father Mostyn stroked a severe, judicial chin. "Is that so dreadful? ... to go to church? You would n't have him go to chapel?""No, no," said Pam. "Not if he did n't want. But he never went ... anywhere before. And now he 'll laugh.""In church? ... I think not.""When he gets outside.""Why should he laugh when he gets outside?""Because.... Oh!" Pam twisted her fingers. "Because of me.""And why, pray, because of you?""Oh ... because.... Not because you have n't taught me properly, because you have, and been clever and kind, and more painstaking than I deserved ... ever. But because ... what must my playing sound like to him, when he plays so beautifully?""Pride, dear child, pride!" Father Mostyn cautioned her with uplifted finger. "Let 's beware of our pride. The Ullbrig pride that can't bear the humiliation of being taught.""I 'm sure I try," said Pam penitentially."Let's try harder, then," said his Reverence, with affable resolve. "Never let 's cease trying to try harder. The laughter you speak of is most assuredly a miasma; rising from the deadly quagmires of your own pride. If our playing merits the fate of being laughed at, why should we wish it to receive any better fate, or fear its receiving its just deserts. Is n't that a virulent form of Ullbrig hypocrisy?""I did n't mean it to be hypocrisy," said Pam sadly. "And I did n't think it swas till you showed me. Only ... somehow ... I can't help it. I seem to be growing more and more into a hypocrite every day.""Ha!" said Father Mostyn, welcoming the admission, "... so long as we recognise the sin, and the nature and the degree and the locality of it ... and have strength to confess it, dear child, salvation is still within our clasp. It 's only in sinning without knowing it that the deadliness lies. And that 's what the Church Catholic is to protect us from.... Are you listening, John?""Ah catch seummut o' what 's bein' said, yer Rivrence," the postmaster acknowledged cautiously, manifesting a certain diffidence about showing himself to this appeal, "... bud ah 'm not listenin' if it 's owt 'at dizz n't consarn me.""The Catholic Church," Father Mostyn instructed him solemnly, "concerns all men—even shoemakers—and you would be well advised to catch as much of what you hear her saying as you can. Truth may come to us some day by keeping our ears open to her, but be sure she won't come to us without.""Ah expeck she weean't," said a depressed voice from the shoemakery. "Thank ye.""You 're welcome, John. And now"—Father Mostyn turned to Pam in lighter vein—"enough of spiritual meats for our soul's digestion, dear child. Far from laughing at you, as your little momentary lapse from discipline permitted you to imagine, our Cliff End friend was most genuinely interested in your musical welfare; inquired diligently concerning your state of proficiency; whether—""Oh!" Pam had been torturing her ten fingers over her knee while the list proceeded. "Did n't you just tell him I knew nothing at all?" she begged pathetically."Patience, dear child, patience!" Father Mostyn adjured her, with episcopal calm. "I did better than that. I told him the truth. Ha! told him the truth. Told him you were willing at heart to learn, but headstrong, and apt to be careless. Explained where the grave shortcomings lay.""... About the thumbs going under?" Pam prompted anxiously."Ha! ... and your fatal tendency to depart from the metronomic time as adjudicated by the old masters. Have no fear, dear daughter. I told him all your musical offences that I could remember at the moment. He knows the dreadful worst, and has most kindly promised to lend a helping hand and assist us to make better of it if the thing can be done."Pam gulped, with her eyes fixed on Father Mostyn, as though she had been swallowing one of Fussitter's large-size three-a-penny humbugs."Does a helping hand ... mean lessons?" she asked, in a still, small voice, after the humbug had settled down."Not so fast; not so fast," Father Mostyn reproved her. "I feared what my words might induce. Let 's beware of the fatal trick of jumping at conclusions. It does not appear at present what a helping hand, in its strictest interpretation, may mean. You see ... we 've got to remember ... our friend is n't like the common ruck of 'em. No mere bread-and-cheese musician, dependent on the keyboard for his sustenance, but a dilettante ... a professional patron of the muse, so to speak, who is n't solely concerned with its sordid side of pounds, shillings, and pence. I told him he 'd have to let us feed him the next time he came to see us. Not dine him ... but feed him. And he seemed to cotton to the idea. So now, dear child, what are we going to do about it?""Oh!" Pam pressed a hand flat to each cheek and fastened a look of round-eyed, incredulous delight on Father Mostyn's face. "Is it to be a party?""Not altogether a party." Father Mostyn pursed up his lips dubiously over the word. "Let 's beware of confusions in our terms, dear girl. Not a party. Nothing set or fixed or formal. Not a dinner. No, no; not a dinner. A feed. That 's what it 's to be.""Yes," said Pam, sticking close to the suggestion as though she were afraid of losing it, and nodding her head many times with an infinity of understanding. "I know. A feed. What sort of a feed?"Father Mostyn's judicial eyebrow shot up like the empty end of a see-saw."That 's what we 've got to settle. I rather fancied.... You see—the weather 's so hot ... we must consider. My idea was ... I thought, perhaps ... we 'd have something rather cooling. Something, say, in the nature of a cold spread.... But anything you like, dear child," he allowed her. "Just think out for yourself—when I 've gone—the very best you can do for us, and we 'll subscribe to it in success or failure when the time comes. And now, let 's settle when the time 's to be. When can we manage it, think you?""To-night? ... were you thinking of?" said Pam."Ha!" Father Mostyn wagged his hands free of all part in the proposal. "I was thinking of nothing. But to-night 's a little too precipitate, dear child. To-morrow night, then, let us say, and I 'll ride up to the Cliff myself some time this morning, and take the invitation."So it was arranged, and the post rattled up over the cobbles, and his Reverence departed, after a genial word with James Maskill."Ha! Here comes the joyful-hearted James," he said to the figure of the postman, that showed hot and angry through the doorway, gripping the neck of his red-sealed canvas bag as though it were a doomed Christmas turkey, and waiting sullenly sideways for his Reverence to pass by. "No need to ask how the joyful-hearted James is. Fit and smiling as ever. Not even the burden of other people's letters can disturb his equanimity. Splendid weather for you, James. Don't stand; don't stand. Come in, and let 's see what you 've got inside your lucky-bag this morning—anything for the Cliff End at all? Eh, Pam?"Thereupon James brushed past the reverend cassock buttons with a grunt like a felled ox, that might have been apology or anathema, or neither, and brought down the post-bag on the counter like a muffled thud."No," said Pam, when she 'd taken it from him with a smiling nod of recognition and thanks, and run its contents deftly under her fingers. "There 's nothing for farther than Stamway's this morning.""And nothing for his Reverence?"Pam ran over the letters again before his Reverence's eyes, to show him that she was n't merely making use of the word "No" to save her a little trouble, and shook her head."Ha! Capital! capital!" said his Reverence, preparing to go. "At least, it means there 's nobody petitioning for new drain-pipes or a cow-shed roof by this post.""Ay," pronounced the postman darkly after him, watching the retreating shoulders with an explosive face like a fog-signal. "Yon sod ought to 'ave 'is dommed neck screwed round an' all.""Sh! James, James, James!" cried Pam, biting a lip of grieved reproof at him across the counter, and seeking to melt his hardness with a sorrowing eye. "How can you bear to say such wicked things?""Ah sewd run after 'im an' tell 'im o' me, if ah was you," James taunted her, free of any anxiety that the challenge might be accepted. "'E weean't 'a gotten so far.""You know very well I would n't do it," said Pam."Ah know nowt about what ye 'd do," James denied obstinately, shaking admission away from him like raindrops gathered on the brim of his cap-shade. "Nor ah don't care.""You know very well I would n't do that, anyhow," said Pam, with a trembling lip for the injustice. "And it 's wrong of you to say I would.""Ah know ah 'm a bad 'un," said James. "Let's 'a my letters an' away.""You 're not a bad one," Pam protested, with a more trembling lip than ever, "but you try to make people think you are. And some of them believe you.""They can think what they like. Folks is allus ready to believe owt bad about a man," said the postman bitterly, "wi'oot 'im tryin'. Ah sewd 'ave seummut to do to mek 'em think t' other road, ah 'll a-wander, ne'er mind whether ah tried or no. Nobody 's gotten a good wod for me.""I 've got a good word for you," said Pam.There was silence over the postman's mouth for a moment, and in that moment his evil genius prevailed."Ye can keep it, then," he said ungraciously, swinging on his heel. "Ah nivver asked ye for it."And the silence was not broken again after that. Pam went on sorting her letters steadily, but every now and then she turned her head to one side of the counter, and for each stamp on the envelope there were a couple—big, blurred, swollen, and rain-sodden, with a featureless resemblance to James Maskill about them—that danced before her eyes.Only, later in the day, when there was no postmaster to prejudice matters with his presence, Pam heard James Maskill whistling the Doxology outside the door with his heel to the brickwork, and she slipped round and took him prisoner by his coat lapels."James..." she said softly, and the Doxology stopped on the sudden, as dead as the March in Saul. "You did n't ... mean it, did you?"The postman dropped his eyelids to their thinnest width of obstinacy, and said nothing. Pam waited, looking persuasively at his great freckles (so unlike her own), and still holding him up against the brickwork, as though he were Barclay, in need of it on Saturday night."You did n't really ... think I would do such a thing.... Did you now, James?" she asked him, after a while, trying to gain entrance to his heart by a soft variation on the original theme."There 's some on 'em would," James muttered evasively through his lips, when it seemed that Pam meant going on looking at him for ever. "... Ay, in a minute they would.""But not me," Pam pleaded."Ah did n't say you," James answered, after another pause. "Ah said ah did n't know.""But you do know, don't you?" Pam urged him. "You know I would n't; don't you, James?"The postman changed embarrassed heels against the brickwork."'Appen ah do," he said, with his eyes closing."Say you do," Pam begged. "Without any 'happen,' James."There was an awful period of conflict once more, in which James showed a disposition to clamp both heels against the brickwork together, but this second time his good genius conquered."... Do," he said, with his eyes quite shut; and Pam let go the lapels."I knew you did," she said, but without any sting of exultation about the words—only pride for the man's own victory—and went back to her work again (which had reference to hard-boiled eggs and chickens) with a brightened faith in the latent goodness of humanity.And when James was standing on the cobbles before the Post Office that night, loosing the knot in his reins prior to departure, Pam slipped out with a neat little parcel done up in butter paper, and put it into his hands."Ay, bud ye 're ower late," said the postman tersely, with no signs of the recent softening about him, and sought to press it back upon her. "Bag 's made up.""But it is n't for the bag," said Pam, resisting the transfer. "It 's for you, James.""What 's it for me for?" demanded the postman, with the old voice of ire."To eat," said Pam. "It 's a chicken pasty I made on purpose for you, with a savory egg and a sponge sandwich. The egg 's in two halves with the shell off, and it 's quite hard. You can eat it out of your fingers if you like. I thought they 'd be nice for your tea."The postman exchanged the parcel from hand to hand for a while, as though he were weighing it, slipped it after deliberation under the seat, gathered the reins, gripped the footboard and splasher, pulled them down to meet him, treading heavily on the step, till the whole cart appeared to be standing on its side, and rocked up into place with a send-off that looked like shooting him over the saddler's chimney. For James Maskill to thank anybody for anything was an act of weakness so foreign to his nature that there were few in all the district who could accuse him of it; and from the present signs Pam did not gather she was to be among the number."Good-by, James," she said wistfully, stepping back from the wheel as he sat down—for James Maskill's starts were sudden and fearful events, not unattended with danger to the onlooker, "... and I hope you 'll like them.""Kt, Kt!" was all James vouchsafed (and that not to Pam) out of a threatening corner of his mouth; but as the bay mare leaned forward to the traces, and Pam gave him up utterly for lost, he turned a quick, full face upon her. "Good-neet ... an' thank ye," he said. And in a smothered voice that seemed to issue from under the seat, turning back again: "Ah 'll try my best."Then he set his teeth and brought the whip down hissing venomously, as though desirous to get clear of the sound of his own words and weakness. The bay mare sprang up into the sky like a winged Pegasus, taking James Maskill and the trap along with her, and before Pam's eye could catch on to them again, they were gone in a cloud round the brewer's corner.
CHAPTER VIII
Pam had grown up in the sight of Ullbrig, variously loved and hated for her self-same virtues; and on a day when the time seemed not yet ripe (for fear some more enterprising spirit might pluck it green), the men of Ullbrig and of Whivvle, and of Merensea and of Garthston, and of Sproutgreen and of Ganlon, and of Hunmouth even, arose, gave a pull to their waistcoats, and took turns at offering themselves before her on the matrimonial altar. That, as you may imagine, made Pam more enemies than ever.
Who the first man was to win the honor of her refusal has not been established on a sufficiently authoritative basis for publication in this volume, but after him came a constant stream of postulants. She could have had any man she liked for the lifting of her little finger; hardly one of them got married but took the wife he did because he could n't take Pam. George Cringle, indeed, from Whivvle way, boldly challenged her to marry him while his own banns were up with the daughter of the Garthston miller.
"Oh, George," said Pam, when he stopped her by the smock-mill on the Whivvle road and made his views known to her; too much shocked by his dreadful duplicity to exult over her sister's downfall as an Ullbrig girl might have done. "However could you."
"Ah could very well," said George resourcefully, misconstruing the reproval into an encouraging query about how the thing was to be done. "An' ah 'll tell y' t' way. Ah 'd send my brother to let 'er know ah 'd gotten chance o' betterin' mysen, an' wor gannin' to tek it, an' we 'd 'ave me an' you's names called i' Oolbrig Choch. Noo, what div ye say?"
Pam said "No," and preached one of the prettiest open-air sermons you ever heard. It was on love and marriage; telling how true love was essential to happiness, and how marriage without love was mere mockery, and how the man that betrayed the affections of a girl by demeaning her in the sight of another was not worthy to be called man at all; and how, if George did n't care for Rose, he ought never to have soiled his lips with the falsehood of saying he did ("Ay, ah do, bud ah care for you a deal better," said George); and how he ought to try and make himself worthy of Rose, and she of him; and how, if he really felt that that was impossible, he ought to stand forth boldly and proclaim so before it was too late ("Ah 'm ready, onnytime ye tell me," said George); but how Pam knew that George was a good fellow at heart ("Ah div n't say there is n't them 'at's as good," said George, modestly, "if ye know t' place to look for 'em"); and how, doubtless, he did n't mean any harm ("Ah-sure ah div n't"); and so on ... much as you 've seen it all put in books before, but infinitely more beautiful, because Pam's own dear face was the page, and Pam's lips the printed words; and George stood and watched her with his own lips reforming every word she said, in a state of nodding rapture.
"Gan yer ways on," he begged her, when at last she came to a stop. "Ah can tek as much as ye 've got to gie me."
"I 've finished," said Pam.
"Ay; bud can't ye think o' onnythink else?" he inquired anxiously. "Ah like to 'ear ye—an' it mud do me some good. Rose could n't talk i' that fashion, ah 'll a-wander. Nay; Rose could n't talk same as yon. Not for nuts, she could n't. She 's a fond 'un, wi' nowt to say for 'ersen bud, 'Oh, George! gie ower.' What did ye tell me ah 'ad to prawclaim?" he asked, with a crafty attempt to lure Pam on again. "Ah want to mek right sure ah en 't forgotten owt."
Whereupon Pam wrought with her wavering brother a second time...
"Ay; it 's all right what ye 've telt me," he said, in deep-hearted concurrence, when her words drew to an end once more. "Ah know it is. Ye 've gotten right pig by t' lug, an' no mistek.... Well? What div ye say? Mun ah send my brother to tell 'er ah s'll not be there o' Monday week?"
Pam ground her little heel into the dust for departure, and threw up her head with a fine show of pitying disdain.
"Some day, George Cringle," she told him in leaving, "you may be sorry when you think of this."
"Ah can't be na sorrier nor ah am to-day, very well," George admitted sadly, "... if ye mean 'No.'"
"I do," said Pam, with emphasis.
"Well, then," George decided, "there 's nowt no more for it. Things 'll 'a to gan on as they are."
Which they did.
Any other girl might have been ruined with all this adulation; all these proposals open and covert; all these craning necks; these obvious eye-corners—but Pam was only sorry, and sheer pity softened her heart till many thought she had merely said "No" in order to encourage a little pressing. And indeed, Pam said "No" so nicely, so lovingly, so tenderly, so sorrowfully, so sympathetically, and with so little real negation about the sound of it, that one woke up ultimately with a shock to realise the word meant what it did. Some even found it difficult to wake up at all.
"What div ye keep sayin' 'Naw' for?" asked Jevons, with a perplexity amounting to irritation, when he had asked her to be the mother of two grown-up daughters and a son, ready-made, and Pam had not seen her way. "Ah s'll be tekkin' ye at yer wod, an' then 'appen ye 'll wish ye 'd thought better on. Noo, let 's know what ye mean, an' gie us a plain answer to a plain question. Will ye 'a me?"
"No..." said Pam again, shaking her head sorrowfully. Not N-O, NO, as it looks here in print—hard, grim, inexorable, forbidding; but her own soft "No," stealing out soothingly between her two lips like the caress of a hand; more as though it were a penitential "Yes" in nun's habit, veiled and hooded—a sort of monosyllabic Sister of Mercy.
"See-ye! There ye are agen," said Jevons, convicting her of it with his finger. "Noo, what am ah to mek on ye?"
"Oh, nothing at all, please," Pam begged of him, with solicitous large-eyed humility through her thick lashes. "Don't bother to try. It 's not as though I was worth it ... or ... or the only one. You 'll be sure to find plenty of somebody elses ... There are just lots of girls ... older than me too ... who 'd be only too glad to say 'Yes' ... and be better for you in every way."
"Ay, ah know there is," Jevons assented, with refreshing candor. "Lots on 'em. Bud ah mud as lief finish wi' you sin' ah 've gotten started o' ye. T' others 'll 'ave to be looked for, an' ah can't reckon to waste mah time i' lookin' for nawbody. Work gets behint enough as it is. Noo, let 's come tiv a understandin'. 'Ave ye gotten onnything agen me?"
"Oh, no, no," said Pam, all her sympathies in alarm at the mere suggestion, lest it might have been derived from any act or word of hers. "Indeed I have n't."
"Well," said Jevons himself, stroking down the subject complacently. "Nor ah div n't see rightly i' what way ye sewd. Ah 'm a widdiwer—if that 's owt agen a man? Bud if it is, ah s'll want to be telt why. An' ah 've gotten a family—so it 's no use sayin' ah en't. Bud it 'll be a caution if there 's owt agen a man o' that score. There 'll be a deal o' names i' Bible to disqualify for them 'at say there is. An' ah 've gotten seummut ah can lay my 'ands on at bank onnytime it rains—though it 'll 'a to rain strangelins 'ard an' all before ah do. Ah 's think ye weean't say 'at that 's owt agen a man?"
"Not a bit," said Pam conciliatorily. And then, with all the steadfast resolution of her teens: "I shall never marry," she told him.
Only girls in their teens—taking life very seriously because of them—ever say that. When they get older they commit themselves to no such rash statement, lest it might be believed.
Ginger's turn took place in the Post Office itself. He had been waiting for it for six weeks, so, of course, being fully prepared, it caught him at a disadvantage when it came. As he slipped into the Post Office his prayer was for Pam, but after he 'd got inside and remembered what he 'd sworn to do if it were, he prayed it might be the postmaster, until he thought he heard him coming, when his heart sank at another opportunity lost, and he changed the prayer to Pam again. He was still juggling with it from one to the other, with incredible swiftness and dexterity, when there was a sudden ruffle of skirts and Pam stood waiting behind the counter, with her knuckles on the far edge of it, in a delightful transcription of the postmaster's position.
"Well, Ginger," she said, nodding her beautiful head at him. (Ginger being also a surname, it was quite safe to call him by it.) "Do you want a stamp?"
"... Naw, thank ye. At least ... ah 'm not partic'lar. Ay ... if ye 've gotten one to spare..." said Ginger. "Bud ye 've n' occasion to trouble about it o' mah account. It's naw consequence. Ah 'm not so sure ah could lick it, evens if ye 'ad to gie me it; my mouth 's that dry ..."
"Let me get you a glass of milk, then," said Pam promptly, showing for departure.
"Nay, ye mun't," Ginger forbade her in a burglar's whisper, waking up suddenly to the alarming course his conduct was taking—as though he had come so far in a dream. "Milk brings me out i' spots i' naw time, thank ye ... an' besides, ah can do better wi'out. Wet's comin' back to me noo, ah think, an' ah s'll not want to use stamp while to-morrer, 'appen ... or day after; if then. 'Appen ah s'll sell stamp to my mother, when all 's said and done ... thank ye.... Did ye see what ah did wi' penny? It ought to be i' one o' my 'ands, an' it 's not no longer. Mah wod!" He commenced to deal nervous dabs at himself here and there as though he were sparring for battle with an invisible adversary, and one, moreover, he feared was going to prove the master of him. "Ah en't swallered 'er, ah 's think. There 's a strange taste o' copper an' all...."
"What 's that on the counter?" asked Pam.
"Ay ... to be sure," said Ginger, with a mighty air of relief, picking up the penny and putting it in his pocket. "There she is.... Mah wod, if ah 'd slipped 'er—she mud 'a been finish o' me. Well...." It suddenly occurred to him that he 'd been a tremendous time in the shop delaying Government business, and his teeth snapped on the word like the steel grips of a rat-trap. "Ah 'll wish ye good-night," he said abruptly, and made a bolt to go.
"Are n't you going to pay me, Ginger?" Pam asked from across the counter, with the soft simulation of reproach.
"What for?" Ginger stopped to inquire with surprise.
"For the stamp I gave you," said Pam.
"Ay ... noo, see-ye. Ah wor so throng wi' penny ah nivver thought no more about stamp. Did ye notice what ah did wi' 'er?"
He seemed to be shaking hands with himself in all his pockets, one after the other.
"In your waistcoat," said Pam. "That 's it.... No; see!"—and as his hands still waltzed wide of the indicated spot, shot two little fingers over the counter, stuck straight out like curling-tongs, and into his waistcoat pocket and out again, with the stamp between them. "There you are," she said, holding it up before his eyes in smiling triumph as if it were a tooth she 'd extracted.
"Ay..." said Ginger, divining it dimly; "ye 're welcome tiv it."
That touch of her hand on his waistcoat, and the little waft of warm hair that went with it, had almost undone him.
"Don't you want it?" asked Pam, scanning him curiously.
"Not if you do, ah don't," said Ginger. "Ah 'll mek ye a present on it."
"Oh, but..." said Pam, with the tender mouth for a kindness, "it 's awfully good of you ... but we 've got such lots of them. As many as ever we want and more. You 'd better take it, Ginger."
"Ay, gie it me, then," said Ginger, holding his waistcoat pocket open, "'Appen ye weean't mind slippin' it back yessen, an' ye 'll know ah 've gotten it safe." The little warm waft went over him again, and he shut his eyes instinctively, as though to the passage of a supreme spirit whose glory was too great to be looked upon by mortal man. "Diz that mek us right?" he asked hazily, when the power had gone by, and he awoke to see Pam looking at him.
"Yes," said Pam, feeling it too mean to ask for the penny again after Ginger's recent display of generosity. "That makes us all right, Ginger, thank you."
"Same to you," said Ginger. "Ay, an' many on 'em." Then he knew his hour was come. "Ah want to know ..." he begged unsteadily, gripping himself tight to the counter's edge, and speaking in a voice that seemed to him to boom like great breakers on the shore, and must be audible to all Ullbrig, let alone the Post Office parlor—though Pam could hardly hear him, "if ye 'll remind me ... 'at ah've gotten seummut ... to ask ye?"
"I will if I can only remember," said Pam amiably, slipping a plump round profile of blue serge on the counter and swinging a leg to and fro—judging by the motion of her. "When do you want me to remind you, Ginger?"
"Noo, if ye like," said Ginger.
"This very minute?" asked Pam.
"Nay, bud ah think not," said Ginger, backing suddenly in alarm from the imminence of his peril. "It 's not tiv a minute or two. Some uvver day, 'appen, when you 're not busy."
"Oh, but I 'm not busy now," said Pam, stopping her leg for a second at Ginger's recession, and setting it actively in motion again when she spoke, as though to stimulate his utterance.
"Ah 'm jealous y' are, though," said Ginger, with a rare show of diffidence at taking her word.
"Indeed I 'm not," Pam assured him. "I promise you I 'm not, Ginger. Do you think I 'd say that to you if I were? Now, what is it you want to ask me?"
"Can ye guess?" Ginger tested her cautiously, with a nervous, twisted smile—intended to carry suggestion, but looking more as though he 'd bitten his tongue. Pam thought over him for a moment, and shook her head.
"I 'm not a bit of good at guessing," she said.
"'Appen ye 'd be cross if ah telt ye," reflected Ginger. "Ay, ah 'd better let it alone while ah 'm right. Ah mud mek a wuss job on it."
"Oh, Ginger, you aggravating boy," cried Pam, spurring a dear, invisible heel against the counter to urge him on, and slapping the oilcloth with her small flat hand till Ginger's ears tingled again in jealous delight. "... Go on; go on. You must go on. You 'll have to tell me now, or I 'll never be friends with you again—and I shall know you don't care, either."
"Well, then," Ginger began, pushed reluctantly forward by this direful threat, "... it 's this." He held on to it as long as he could, taking breath, and then when he felt he could n't hold on any longer, he suddenly shut his eyes and let go, saying to himself, "Lord, help me!" and to Pam, "Will y' 'ave me?"—so quickly and indistinctly that it sounded like a cat boxed up under the counter, crying "Me-ow."
"Oh, Ginger," Pam apostrophised him mournfully, when she 'd begged his pardon three times, and he 'd mewed after each one until at the third she 'd received the inspiration to know what they all meant. "I wish you 'd asked me anything but that."
"There wor nowt else ah 'd gotten to ask ye," Ginger said gloomily.
"Because..." Pam proceeded gently to explain, "I shall have to say 'No.'"
"Ay, ah thought ye would," Ginger threw in. "Ah know very well ah 'm not good enough for ye."
"You 're every bit good enough for me," said Pam, with swift tears of championship in her eyes, drawn there by his masterstroke of humility. "And you must never say that again, please, even if you don't mean it. It 's very, very good of you indeed to want me, Ginger. It 's awfully good of you; and I 'd as soon say 'Yes' to you as to any I 've ever said 'No' to. I 'm sure you 'd do all you could to make me happy...."
"Ay, that ah would," said Ginger, snatching hopefully at the small bone of encouragement. "Ah 'd try my best. Is it onny use me askin' ye agen after a while?—say to-morrer or Friday? Ah sewd n't think owt about trouble."
Pam shook her head regretfully.
"I 'm afraid not," she said. "But you must n't imagine, Ginger, it 's because I don't care for you, or because I doubt you. It 's myself I doubt, if I doubt anybody, not you. If I could only be a hundred Pams instead of just a miserable one, I 'd have said 'Yes' to all those that asked me. I know I should. You can't think how it troubles me to have to keep on saying 'No'—but what am I to do? Everybody asks me to marry them ... at least, a few do ... and as I can only marry one, I 'm frightened it might be the wrong one. It 's so easy to make a mistake—unless you 're very, very sure. And I'm not; and I feel I might end by making both of us unhappy...."
"Ah 'd chance that," said Ginger, with resolution.
"But there ought to be no chance about it, Ginger," Pam reproved him gently. "Nobody ought ever to marry by chance. People that only marry by chance can only hope to be happy by chance—and that 's a dreadful idea."
"Ay, ah see it is," said Ginger hurriedly. "Ah beg yer pardon."
"Well, then," said Pam, "... you understand me, don't you, Ginger?"
"Ah 'm jealous ah do," said Ginger despondently.
"And you 're not angry with me ... for what I 've said to you?"
"Nay, ah 'm not angry wi' ye," said Ginger. "Ah 'm only sorry. Ah misdoot ah s'll not be i' very good fettle for my supper when time comes."
"You 'll shake hands, though," said Pam, catching a certain indication that he was about to depart without.
"Ay, ah sewd like, sin' ye 're good enough to ask me," Ginger acknowledged eagerly, blundering hold of her fingertips, and dropping them like hot coals as soon as he felt the desire to linger over them. "'Appen ye 'll let me ... shek 'ands wi' ye ... noo an' agean," he asked Pam humbly, turning his coat collar up to go—not that there was any rain at the time, but that the action seemed somehow, in his conception of things, to befit the hopeless finality of departure.
"Whenever you like, Ginger," Pam promised him, with moist lashes.
"Thank ye," said Ginger, making for the door. "Ah div n't know ... at ah s'll trouble ye so offens ... but may'ap it mud save me ... fro' gannin altagether to bad if ah was ... to shak 'em noo an' agean."
And with a husky farewell he dipped out of the office.
CHAPTER IX
So Ginger went over to the great majority of those that loved Pam and lost her, and in his own hour was as sick a man as ever you might wish to meet outside the chapters of a mediæval romance, where gallant knights are wont to weep like women, and women stand the sight of as much blood, unmoved, as would turn the average modern man's stomach three times over. But anything like a complete account of all the hopeless loves that had Pam for their inspiration would crowd the pages of this book from cover to cover, and still leave material for a copious appendix, and any amount of lesser contributory literature. "Pamela Searle: her Time, Life, Love, and Letters," including several important and hitherto unpublished meat-bills rendered to Mrs. Gatheredge by Dingwall Jackson, with a frontispiece. "'Pamela Searle,' being a barefaced attempt to confound the thinking public as much as possible on the subject of this fascinating character, and present her to them in an altogether novel and unreliable light, as a means of catching their pennies—(truth being worse than useless for the purpose)—with a vindication of Sheppardman Stevens from sundry charges that have been customarily laid against him."—"'Ullbrig, Past and Present'—(also 'Rambles Round')—fully illustrated; containing a special chapter on Pamela and Father Mostyn in the light of recent investigation. Compiled to serve as a guide-book to the district." "'Pamela Searle, the Ullbrig Letter-Carrier; or, What can Little Ladies do?' A tale and a lesson. By Mrs. Griffin (Good Children Series, No. 105.)."
It is no secret that the Garthston parson wanted Pam as badly as he wanted a new pair of trousers, and would have had her at a moment's notice if she 'd only asked him, but she never did; and he wore the old pair to the end. And the Merensea doctor wanted her too—the same that came in for six thousand pounds when his father died, and married his housekeeper—but Pam went very sad and soft and sorrowful each time he asked her (which was generally from his gig, driving some seven miles out of his way, by Ullbrig, to reach an imaginary patient on the Merensea side of Whivvle), and said "No," just the same as she said it to everybody else, with not the least shade of an eyelid's difference because he happened to be a doctor—which was the girl all over. No supplicant that ever supplicated of Pam was too mean or too poor, or too ridiculous or too presuming, in her eyes, ever to be treated with the slightest breath of contumely. When poor Humpy from Ganlon, whose legs were so twisted that he could n't tell his right from his left for certain without a little time to think, asked a Ganlon lass to have him, she screamed derision at him like a hungry macaw, and ran out at once to spread the news so that it should overtake him (being but a slow walker, though he walked his best on this occasion) before he had time to get home. When he asked Pam to have him, Pam could have cried over him for pity, to think that because God had seen fit to spoil a man in the making like this, human love was to be denied him; and though, of course, she said "No," she said it so beautifully that Humpy could hardly see his way home for the proud tears of feeling himself a man in spite of all; and if, after that, there had been any particular thing in the whole world that twisted legs could have done for a girl, that thing would have been done for Pam so long as Humpy was alive to do it.
Lastly, two years before the Spawer's arrival, the old schoolmaster grew tired of teaching and died, and there came a new one in his place; a younger man, pallid and frail, with the high white student's forehead, worn smooth and rounded like the lamp globe he 'd studied under; the weak brown moustache and small chin, and a cough that troubled him when the wind was east, and took up his lodgment at the Post Office. Every day he sat four times with Pam at the same table—breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper. Every morning, when the clock struck ten, he manoeuvred over his toes for a sight of the roadway through the school-room window, and if the veins in his forehead swelled and his jaw muscles contracted:
"Ah knaw 'oo yon 'll be," went the whisper round behind him.
Once he was ill, drawing the breath into his lungs like great anchor chains dragged through hawse-holes, and Pam nursed him. Dressed the pillows under his head; laid her cool hand on his hot forehead; gave him his medicine; sat through the night with him, clasping courage and comfort and consolation into his burning fingers, wrote letters for him; read for him. "Noo we s'll be gettin' telt seummut before so long," said Ullbrig to itself. "A jug gans to pump adeal o' times, but some fond lass 'll brek it before she 's done,"—but the schoolmaster consumed in stillness like the flame of a candle. There were days when "Good morning, Yes, No, Please, Thank you, and Good-night" would have covered all that he said to Pam directly—and even then the veins in his forehead and the tightening muscles about his jaws reproved him straightway, as though he had already said too much. If, by any chance, Pam addressed him suddenly, the blood would mount up to his forehead and the outlines of his face would harden, like a metal cast in the setting, before he spoke, till it almost looked as though he were debating whether he should give her any reply. And the reply given, he would take the first opportunity of turning his back. Indeed, there were times when he barely waited for the opportunity, but clipped his sentence in the middle and threw an abrupt word over his shoulder to complete the sense of it, while Pam stood sorrowfully regarding the two familiar threadbare tail buttons and the shine about the back of the overworked morning coat, whose morning knew no noon, wondering if she 'd said anything to offend him. Once, when he had swung round more abruptly than usual, giving her the reply so grudgingly that it fell altogether short of her hearing, as though he had cast a copper to some wayside mendicant for peace's sake, Pam—who could never bear to leave anything in doubt that a word might settle—asked him softly if he were angry with her. The question fetched him suddenly round again, with the appearance of warding a blow.
"Angry with you?" he repeated. There was the hoarseness of suppressed emotion about his voice, and his lip trembled.
"You are angry with me now, though," said Pam mournfully, "for asking you."
And indeed, by the way he had turned upon her and spoken, he seemed like a man brought to the sudden flash-point of passion by some injudicious word.
"I am not angry with you," he said, in the same constrained, hoarse voice, and said no further, but put his shoulders between them again as though the subject were too unimportant to be discussed.
Then Pam made a discovery.
"He does not like me," she told herself, and without showing that she held his secret, she set herself in her own quiet, gentle fashion to verify the fact by observation. He was never a man of many words at any time, but she saw he was never a man of so few as when he was with her. He had words for the postmaster; he had words for the postmaster's wife; he had words for Emma; he had words—stray, detached, pedagogic schoolroom words, read up aloud from the chalkings on an invisible blackboard—for the villagers. But for Pam—Pam saw herself—he had only the constrained, hard words between his teeth like the enforced bit of a horse, that he champed fretfully in the desire to break away from her.
No. Pam knew what it was. He liked the postmaster because they could talk the papers over together, and predict terrible things about the country to each other; and he liked Emma because Emma was so straightforward and sensible and earnest looking—even if she was n't pretty, which perhaps, after all, she was n't—and never said silly things she did n't mean; and he liked Mrs. Morland because nobody could help liking her—she was so kind and motherly and sympathetic and talkative, and so full of allowances for other people. But Pam! ... Well, he did n't care about Pam because ... oh, because of heaps of things, perhaps. It was n't any use trying to put them all together. Because he thought she was a silly, empty-headed gad-about, who cared for nothing but showing herself around the countryside ... (but that was n't true a bit; he knew it was n't!) ... and being asked if she 'd have people....
Pam doubled up one little hand in anguish, and stared at an invisible something in front of her—that seemed to be a bogey by the startled look she gave it—with a bitten underlip twisting and struggling like a red live thing to be free; and a drawn grey cheek—till the great round tear-drops gathered in her eyes and fell hotly on her knuckles one by one.
But that was only for a moment.
Then Pam dashed the tears aside and shook her glorious head with new-found resolve. Pam would be brave; and strong; and steadfast; and still; and modest; and nobly feminine; and true. And would show him by her actions that he had done her a wrong in his heart.
Pam was still engaged upon the work of showing him when the Spawer took up his quarters at Cliff Wrangham.
CHAPTER X
On the morning following the Spawer's session at Father Mostyn's, before James Maskill had yet flung himself round the brewer's corner, his Reverence threw open the blistered Vicarage door and sallied forth genially to the Post Office in a pair of well-trodden morocco slippers, screwing up his lips to inaudible cheery music as he went, and holding in his left hand a round roll of grey stuff which, judging by wristbands of a similar texture that showed beyond the crinkled cassock sleeves, appeared to be a reverend flannel shirt. Jan Willim was chalking their price on a pair of virgin soles when he heard the insidious slip-slap of heelless leather take the cobbles like the lipping of an advancing tide, and he put his head hurriedly round the little clean kitchen door at the sound of it.
"Noo, 'ere 's 'is Rivrence," he announced, with the loud double-barrelled whisper intended to do duty as a shout on the one side and be inaudible on the other, "... an' it 'll be Pam 'e 's after.... Noo, Pam lass!"
"Ha! The very girl I wanted to see," his Reverence told her, as Pam slipped her frank face deftly behind the counter to receive him, like a beautiful honest marguerite, fresh plucked and button-holed, with a friendly upward "Yes-s-s?" prolonged through her ivory petals, pink-tipped, and' a peep of rosy tongue. "The very girl! How 's Government this morning, John?" he inquired obliquely of the deferential shadow brooding by the inner door, where the sound of straining shoe-leather bespoke the presence of somebody striving to keep silence on his toes.
"She 's very well, ah think, yer Rivrence, thank ye," responded the postmaster, stepping forward the necessary six inches to show himself respectfully before the Vicar in the act of speaking, and retiring when his words were ended.
"Busy, is she?" asked his Reverence affably, commencing to unroll the grey bundle of flannel on the counter with a leisurely ordering of his hands—Pam lending assistant touches here and there.
"Ay, she 's busy," said the postmaster, showing again in the door-frame, and wiping his fingers on his apron, lest their inactivity might seem like disrespectful indolence before the Vicar. "Bud it 'll be slack time wi' 'er an' all before long. Theer 's not so many stamps selt i' 'arvest by a deal, nor so many letters written. Folks is ower throng i' field."
"Ha! No doubt about it. The harvest field is a fine corrective forcacoethees scribendi," said his Reverence, disposing the shirt on the counter lengthwise, with limp, outstretched arms, for Pam's inspection, as though it were some subject on an operating table. "Buttons again, you see, Pam," he told her, pointing out where they lacked.
"My word, I see!" said Pam, running over the outlines of the article with a swift, critical eye. "And wristbands and collarbands as well. You want some new shirts badly. You 've only four now, with the one you 've got on—and that," she said, turning up his cassock sleeves to get a look at it, "is almost past mending. See how thin it is.... And will you have pearl buttons, then?" asked Pam, composing the shirt to seemly folds under soft, caressing fingers, and following every move of her hands with a fascinating agreement of head, "... or plain white?"
"Ha! Plain white ... by all means," said Father Mostyn. "Large plain white for his reverence the vicar—as large and as plain and as white as we can get 'em, that lie flat where they fall, and don't run all over the floor and try to find the crack in the skirting-board. Pearl buttons are for the young and flexible (incidentally too, for the profane), and not for aged parish priests, whose knees are stiffened with a life of kneeling.... Shirts and pearl buttons must n't let me forget, though," he admonished himself, drawing the solitary, backless cane-bottomed chair under him from below, and sitting to the counter with one hand drumming on its oilcloth and the other gripping a spindle, "what I really came about."
"No," said Pam, watching his lips.
"We had a visit from our friend of the Cliff End last night."
Pam's eyes were drawn for a moment to sundry faults in the folding of the shirt, and her fingers busied themselves with their correction.
"Yes," she said, looking up again. "But you did n't have any music? ... Did you?" she asked, with the sudden eagerness for a coveted opportunity gone by.
"All in good time—all in good time, dear child," Father Mostyn exhorted her indulgently. "Last night we made music with our mouths, but the next night we 're going to make a little with our fingers. Bach! Scarlatti! Beethoven! Mozart! Schumann! Palestrina! ... And then we shall have to have you with us."
"Me?" asked Pam, with swift, desirous incredulity.
"You," said Father Mostyn.
Pam plunged her face into her two hands straightway (which was a characteristic trick of hers at such times), as though the beauty of this thing were too great to behold. After a moment she let her fingers slide away into her lap of their own weight and threw back a brave head with the smile of tears about it, and the little double shake that remained over to her from the short while ago when her hair had fallen in sleek, black curtains on either side of her cheeks each time she stooped.
"Does he know I 'm to be there?" she inquired.
"To be sure he does, dear child."
"But it was your idea ... to ask me," said Pam.
"It was my vicarage," said Father Mostyn.
Pam made pot-hooks with her fingers.
"Yes..." she said, as though the word were only the beginning to a puzzled objection, but her breath went out in it in lingering, and she let it stand by itself as an assent. "What did he say?"
"When?"
"When you told him ... I was to be there? Perhaps he did n't say anything?"—with anxiety. "Did he?"
"And supposing he did n't?"
"Then perhaps it would mean he did n't want me. And perhaps it would n't ... but it might."
"Ha! Might it? Let 's make our mind easy, dear child. He said lots of things."
"About me?"
"Certainly. It was you we were discussing."
There was only one question possible to ask after this on the direct line, and Pam drew up short, confronting it with a sudden air of virtue.
"I don't want to know what they were," she said.
"There 's no earthly reason why you should n't," Father Mostyn told her suavely, "so far as that goes."
"Is n't there?" asked Pam; and then quickly: "... Of course, I did n't think there would be. Why should there?"
"Ha! Pam, Pam, Pam!" said his Reverence, raising his hand from the counter, and wagging a monitory loose forefinger at her. "All the doctrine of Church Catholic can't drive the first woman out of you quite, I fear. Curiosity in that little breast of yours is a blackbird in a linnet's cage, and may break away through the bars."
Pam looked up from her pot-hooks sideways and laughed the soft, musical confession of guilt.
"All that was said about you last night," his Reverence assured her, "had to do with your music...."
"But you never told him," said Pam, locking her knuckles with a sudden alarm against the impending disclosure, and straining them backwards over her knee.
"To be sure I did."
"Oh!" said Pain, and dipped her face into her basined fingers a second time. "... That 's dreadful. Now he 'll come to church."
Father Mostyn stroked a severe, judicial chin. "Is that so dreadful? ... to go to church? You would n't have him go to chapel?"
"No, no," said Pam. "Not if he did n't want. But he never went ... anywhere before. And now he 'll laugh."
"In church? ... I think not."
"When he gets outside."
"Why should he laugh when he gets outside?"
"Because.... Oh!" Pam twisted her fingers. "Because of me."
"And why, pray, because of you?"
"Oh ... because.... Not because you have n't taught me properly, because you have, and been clever and kind, and more painstaking than I deserved ... ever. But because ... what must my playing sound like to him, when he plays so beautifully?"
"Pride, dear child, pride!" Father Mostyn cautioned her with uplifted finger. "Let 's beware of our pride. The Ullbrig pride that can't bear the humiliation of being taught."
"I 'm sure I try," said Pam penitentially.
"Let's try harder, then," said his Reverence, with affable resolve. "Never let 's cease trying to try harder. The laughter you speak of is most assuredly a miasma; rising from the deadly quagmires of your own pride. If our playing merits the fate of being laughed at, why should we wish it to receive any better fate, or fear its receiving its just deserts. Is n't that a virulent form of Ullbrig hypocrisy?"
"I did n't mean it to be hypocrisy," said Pam sadly. "And I did n't think it swas till you showed me. Only ... somehow ... I can't help it. I seem to be growing more and more into a hypocrite every day."
"Ha!" said Father Mostyn, welcoming the admission, "... so long as we recognise the sin, and the nature and the degree and the locality of it ... and have strength to confess it, dear child, salvation is still within our clasp. It 's only in sinning without knowing it that the deadliness lies. And that 's what the Church Catholic is to protect us from.... Are you listening, John?"
"Ah catch seummut o' what 's bein' said, yer Rivrence," the postmaster acknowledged cautiously, manifesting a certain diffidence about showing himself to this appeal, "... bud ah 'm not listenin' if it 's owt 'at dizz n't consarn me."
"The Catholic Church," Father Mostyn instructed him solemnly, "concerns all men—even shoemakers—and you would be well advised to catch as much of what you hear her saying as you can. Truth may come to us some day by keeping our ears open to her, but be sure she won't come to us without."
"Ah expeck she weean't," said a depressed voice from the shoemakery. "Thank ye."
"You 're welcome, John. And now"—Father Mostyn turned to Pam in lighter vein—"enough of spiritual meats for our soul's digestion, dear child. Far from laughing at you, as your little momentary lapse from discipline permitted you to imagine, our Cliff End friend was most genuinely interested in your musical welfare; inquired diligently concerning your state of proficiency; whether—"
"Oh!" Pam had been torturing her ten fingers over her knee while the list proceeded. "Did n't you just tell him I knew nothing at all?" she begged pathetically.
"Patience, dear child, patience!" Father Mostyn adjured her, with episcopal calm. "I did better than that. I told him the truth. Ha! told him the truth. Told him you were willing at heart to learn, but headstrong, and apt to be careless. Explained where the grave shortcomings lay."
"... About the thumbs going under?" Pam prompted anxiously.
"Ha! ... and your fatal tendency to depart from the metronomic time as adjudicated by the old masters. Have no fear, dear daughter. I told him all your musical offences that I could remember at the moment. He knows the dreadful worst, and has most kindly promised to lend a helping hand and assist us to make better of it if the thing can be done."
Pam gulped, with her eyes fixed on Father Mostyn, as though she had been swallowing one of Fussitter's large-size three-a-penny humbugs.
"Does a helping hand ... mean lessons?" she asked, in a still, small voice, after the humbug had settled down.
"Not so fast; not so fast," Father Mostyn reproved her. "I feared what my words might induce. Let 's beware of the fatal trick of jumping at conclusions. It does not appear at present what a helping hand, in its strictest interpretation, may mean. You see ... we 've got to remember ... our friend is n't like the common ruck of 'em. No mere bread-and-cheese musician, dependent on the keyboard for his sustenance, but a dilettante ... a professional patron of the muse, so to speak, who is n't solely concerned with its sordid side of pounds, shillings, and pence. I told him he 'd have to let us feed him the next time he came to see us. Not dine him ... but feed him. And he seemed to cotton to the idea. So now, dear child, what are we going to do about it?"
"Oh!" Pam pressed a hand flat to each cheek and fastened a look of round-eyed, incredulous delight on Father Mostyn's face. "Is it to be a party?"
"Not altogether a party." Father Mostyn pursed up his lips dubiously over the word. "Let 's beware of confusions in our terms, dear girl. Not a party. Nothing set or fixed or formal. Not a dinner. No, no; not a dinner. A feed. That 's what it 's to be."
"Yes," said Pam, sticking close to the suggestion as though she were afraid of losing it, and nodding her head many times with an infinity of understanding. "I know. A feed. What sort of a feed?"
Father Mostyn's judicial eyebrow shot up like the empty end of a see-saw.
"That 's what we 've got to settle. I rather fancied.... You see—the weather 's so hot ... we must consider. My idea was ... I thought, perhaps ... we 'd have something rather cooling. Something, say, in the nature of a cold spread.... But anything you like, dear child," he allowed her. "Just think out for yourself—when I 've gone—the very best you can do for us, and we 'll subscribe to it in success or failure when the time comes. And now, let 's settle when the time 's to be. When can we manage it, think you?"
"To-night? ... were you thinking of?" said Pam.
"Ha!" Father Mostyn wagged his hands free of all part in the proposal. "I was thinking of nothing. But to-night 's a little too precipitate, dear child. To-morrow night, then, let us say, and I 'll ride up to the Cliff myself some time this morning, and take the invitation."
So it was arranged, and the post rattled up over the cobbles, and his Reverence departed, after a genial word with James Maskill.
"Ha! Here comes the joyful-hearted James," he said to the figure of the postman, that showed hot and angry through the doorway, gripping the neck of his red-sealed canvas bag as though it were a doomed Christmas turkey, and waiting sullenly sideways for his Reverence to pass by. "No need to ask how the joyful-hearted James is. Fit and smiling as ever. Not even the burden of other people's letters can disturb his equanimity. Splendid weather for you, James. Don't stand; don't stand. Come in, and let 's see what you 've got inside your lucky-bag this morning—anything for the Cliff End at all? Eh, Pam?"
Thereupon James brushed past the reverend cassock buttons with a grunt like a felled ox, that might have been apology or anathema, or neither, and brought down the post-bag on the counter like a muffled thud.
"No," said Pam, when she 'd taken it from him with a smiling nod of recognition and thanks, and run its contents deftly under her fingers. "There 's nothing for farther than Stamway's this morning."
"And nothing for his Reverence?"
Pam ran over the letters again before his Reverence's eyes, to show him that she was n't merely making use of the word "No" to save her a little trouble, and shook her head.
"Ha! Capital! capital!" said his Reverence, preparing to go. "At least, it means there 's nobody petitioning for new drain-pipes or a cow-shed roof by this post."
"Ay," pronounced the postman darkly after him, watching the retreating shoulders with an explosive face like a fog-signal. "Yon sod ought to 'ave 'is dommed neck screwed round an' all."
"Sh! James, James, James!" cried Pam, biting a lip of grieved reproof at him across the counter, and seeking to melt his hardness with a sorrowing eye. "How can you bear to say such wicked things?"
"Ah sewd run after 'im an' tell 'im o' me, if ah was you," James taunted her, free of any anxiety that the challenge might be accepted. "'E weean't 'a gotten so far."
"You know very well I would n't do it," said Pam.
"Ah know nowt about what ye 'd do," James denied obstinately, shaking admission away from him like raindrops gathered on the brim of his cap-shade. "Nor ah don't care."
"You know very well I would n't do that, anyhow," said Pam, with a trembling lip for the injustice. "And it 's wrong of you to say I would."
"Ah know ah 'm a bad 'un," said James. "Let's 'a my letters an' away."
"You 're not a bad one," Pam protested, with a more trembling lip than ever, "but you try to make people think you are. And some of them believe you."
"They can think what they like. Folks is allus ready to believe owt bad about a man," said the postman bitterly, "wi'oot 'im tryin'. Ah sewd 'ave seummut to do to mek 'em think t' other road, ah 'll a-wander, ne'er mind whether ah tried or no. Nobody 's gotten a good wod for me."
"I 've got a good word for you," said Pam.
There was silence over the postman's mouth for a moment, and in that moment his evil genius prevailed.
"Ye can keep it, then," he said ungraciously, swinging on his heel. "Ah nivver asked ye for it."
And the silence was not broken again after that. Pam went on sorting her letters steadily, but every now and then she turned her head to one side of the counter, and for each stamp on the envelope there were a couple—big, blurred, swollen, and rain-sodden, with a featureless resemblance to James Maskill about them—that danced before her eyes.
Only, later in the day, when there was no postmaster to prejudice matters with his presence, Pam heard James Maskill whistling the Doxology outside the door with his heel to the brickwork, and she slipped round and took him prisoner by his coat lapels.
"James..." she said softly, and the Doxology stopped on the sudden, as dead as the March in Saul. "You did n't ... mean it, did you?"
The postman dropped his eyelids to their thinnest width of obstinacy, and said nothing. Pam waited, looking persuasively at his great freckles (so unlike her own), and still holding him up against the brickwork, as though he were Barclay, in need of it on Saturday night.
"You did n't really ... think I would do such a thing.... Did you now, James?" she asked him, after a while, trying to gain entrance to his heart by a soft variation on the original theme.
"There 's some on 'em would," James muttered evasively through his lips, when it seemed that Pam meant going on looking at him for ever. "... Ay, in a minute they would."
"But not me," Pam pleaded.
"Ah did n't say you," James answered, after another pause. "Ah said ah did n't know."
"But you do know, don't you?" Pam urged him. "You know I would n't; don't you, James?"
The postman changed embarrassed heels against the brickwork.
"'Appen ah do," he said, with his eyes closing.
"Say you do," Pam begged. "Without any 'happen,' James."
There was an awful period of conflict once more, in which James showed a disposition to clamp both heels against the brickwork together, but this second time his good genius conquered.
"... Do," he said, with his eyes quite shut; and Pam let go the lapels.
"I knew you did," she said, but without any sting of exultation about the words—only pride for the man's own victory—and went back to her work again (which had reference to hard-boiled eggs and chickens) with a brightened faith in the latent goodness of humanity.
And when James was standing on the cobbles before the Post Office that night, loosing the knot in his reins prior to departure, Pam slipped out with a neat little parcel done up in butter paper, and put it into his hands.
"Ay, bud ye 're ower late," said the postman tersely, with no signs of the recent softening about him, and sought to press it back upon her. "Bag 's made up."
"But it is n't for the bag," said Pam, resisting the transfer. "It 's for you, James."
"What 's it for me for?" demanded the postman, with the old voice of ire.
"To eat," said Pam. "It 's a chicken pasty I made on purpose for you, with a savory egg and a sponge sandwich. The egg 's in two halves with the shell off, and it 's quite hard. You can eat it out of your fingers if you like. I thought they 'd be nice for your tea."
The postman exchanged the parcel from hand to hand for a while, as though he were weighing it, slipped it after deliberation under the seat, gathered the reins, gripped the footboard and splasher, pulled them down to meet him, treading heavily on the step, till the whole cart appeared to be standing on its side, and rocked up into place with a send-off that looked like shooting him over the saddler's chimney. For James Maskill to thank anybody for anything was an act of weakness so foreign to his nature that there were few in all the district who could accuse him of it; and from the present signs Pam did not gather she was to be among the number.
"Good-by, James," she said wistfully, stepping back from the wheel as he sat down—for James Maskill's starts were sudden and fearful events, not unattended with danger to the onlooker, "... and I hope you 'll like them."
"Kt, Kt!" was all James vouchsafed (and that not to Pam) out of a threatening corner of his mouth; but as the bay mare leaned forward to the traces, and Pam gave him up utterly for lost, he turned a quick, full face upon her. "Good-neet ... an' thank ye," he said. And in a smothered voice that seemed to issue from under the seat, turning back again: "Ah 'll try my best."
Then he set his teeth and brought the whip down hissing venomously, as though desirous to get clear of the sound of his own words and weakness. The bay mare sprang up into the sky like a winged Pegasus, taking James Maskill and the trap along with her, and before Pam's eye could catch on to them again, they were gone in a cloud round the brewer's corner.