CHAPTER X

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No," said Pam, watching his lips.

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

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

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

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

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

"You," said Father Mostyn.

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

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

"To be sure he does, dear child."

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

"It was my vicarage," said Father Mostyn.

Pam made pot-hooks with her fingers.

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

"When?"

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

"And supposing he did n't?"

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

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

"About me?"

"Certainly. It was you we were discussing."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"To be sure I did."

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

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

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

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

"When he gets outside."

"Why should he laugh when he gets outside?"

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

"And why, pray, because of you?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And nothing for his Reverence?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But not me," Pam pleaded.

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

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

The postman changed embarrassed heels against the brickwork.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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