CHAPTER XI

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

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

You may judge, then, if Pam was busy.

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, he would be terrible cold.

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

Oh, no, no, no! Would he?

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

## act like one? How was he to know that?

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

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

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

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

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

It was a terrible moment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then he turned to the Spawer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And they sat down to table.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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