CHAPTER XXXIII

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"Ha! this is beautiful of you," his Reverence said, coming up to the Spawer after the service and enfolding his hand in that warm, balmy, beneficent softness of palm. "To come three miles on a morning like this for the sake of worshipping in the true Faith. Beautiful! beautiful! quite an example to our Ullbrig laggards, it 'll be talked of. Ullbrig has only three yards to come ... and it does n't come those, as you see. When Ullbrig comes, look for the Millennium or port wine--generally port wine. There 's no mistaking the symptoms. Mrs. So-and-So's liver 's no better. Put on your best black dress and go to church this morning, Janie; a bottle of his reverence's port would do her good. Take care and sit where he can see you and sing as loud as you can. Show him how capitally you can find all your places, and don't stare about you when he 's preaching. That 's our Ullbrig way. Go to church to get something out of it if you can. 'His reverence gets paid for preaching; we ought to get something for going. That 's only fair.' See what his reverence the vicar 's to put up with in a place like this. _Ex nihilo nihil fit_. That 's our motto; which, being rendered according to Ullbrig theologians, means: Nothing done without good value given for it in return. If Nonconformity had n't its tea-urns and its bath buns it would n't hold sway over Ullbrig another twenty-four hours. Plenty of hot tea and big bath buns, with plenty of flies and currants in 'em; that 's the way to subjugate the heathen bucolic beast. Music's no good--any more than the Church. We 're dogs with bad names to start with, both of us. Musicians are unscrupulous, dissipated vagabonds, such as you, that live by their wits, as everybody knows. Vicars of the Established Church are children of Satan and prophets of Baal. We 're both in the same boat. And," said he, picking up the dismembered mortar-board from its place by the water-bottle, "this morning we shall have to swim for it. You can't go back to Cliff Wrangham in the teeth of a storm like this that 's brewing."

"It 's awfully good of you..." the Spawer began. "But really, I counted the risks when I came. I 'm ready to take my chance."

"Ha! not a bit of it! not a bit of it!" his Reverence objected, lifting up his forefinger. "You shall take your chance with me. It 'll be a dry chance, if frugal. We don't get so many faithful here that we can afford to treat them with indifference. Come along with you. We 'll lock up and make a bolt for it. I daresay we can find something in the larder to serve us in lieu of lunch if the storm sets in. And judging by the sound of it"--a prolonged peal of thunder spread itself out above them and shook the hollow fabric of the church to its uttermost corner--"it 's going to be a stayer."

Together they made the round of the building, closing up all the swing windows against the deluge that must inevitably come, and giving the lock of the exterior vestry door two turns as the clerk had admonished them, set the thick fibre mat close against the lower chink to oppose any intrusive swill of water, and did what they thought best in such cases as those where a diamond pane lacked in the leaded windows; removing the hassocks from below, and spreading a mouldy cushion or two to absorb the bulk of what wetness came through.

They had only just completed the last of their preparations when a vivid streak of lightning flashed in the yellow, murky air like a knife-blade, and seemed to rip up the great baggy canopy of water suspended above them at one slice. A roar of enraged thunder followed the deadly thrust, and the rain fell whizzing to earth next moment like arrows.

His Reverence gathered up his cassock in both hands as far as the knees, and screwing up his mouth and aiming a way for himself with one eye through the thick downpour to the Vicarage gate--but a dozen paces or so from the porch--made a game dash for cover.

"Ha! capital! capital!" his Reverence was saying at the other side of the close, bruised, blistered, and by this time rain-soaked door, wiping the drops off his chin and nose-end, and running the handkerchief round the inner rim of his Roman collar. "That 's one of the beauties of living by your own porch. The elements have n't any terrors for you," and stamping his feet upon the flags to shake out the legs of his trousers, where he had rucked them over his shoes, he led the way into the sanctum sanctorum, so full for the Spawer with memories of by-gone happiness.

A dual sense of gladness and sadness possessed him as he walked forward. Here he was very close to, and here he was very far from, the spirit of Pam. Out of every tile he trod on some brooding remembrance of the girl rose up as though his foot had dislodged it; wound about him like the sorrowing smoke from a funeral pyre and dissolved. In every corner of the room they entered, the spirit of the girl seemed to linger. All about the room were the visible tokens of the girl's presence--tokens so acute that to each of them his mind's eye supplied the absent figure of the girl as she had been at the actual moment of its accomplishment. Here she was stooping to straighten the antimacassar of a chair; here she was smoothing a cushion; here she was adjusting the objects on his Reverence's writing-table.

And because the Spawer's heart was full of the girl, they did not touch upon Pam first of all. Instead, they talked of the storm, of the thunder, of the crops.

And all the while his Reverence was making excursions to various corners of the storm-darkened room; opened the cupboard door and plunged his hands with a rattle into a hidden knife basket; tried the blades on his thumb, and sprang them critically against his palm for selection; jingled amid silver forks, and counted them to his requirements, large and small; brought forth glasses, tumblers and wine glasses, and liqueur; then casters and bottled condiments; plates and napery, and laying them on the far end of the big dining-table, cleared that space near the window for their ultimate disposal.

"Let 's see ... one, two ... did I bring the forks? To be sure. What am I thinking of? Capital! capital! I 've been so long in other people's clover, you see, that I 'm forgetting how to graze on my own meagre grassland. That 's better--and the salt. Well! and what 's the concerto been doing all this time? Made headway, has it?"

He picked open a folded table-cloth by its two corners, and shook it out of its stiff, snowy creasing.

The Spawer told him that he was afraid ... it had n't been doing much. To tell the truth (that candid truth at which the Spawer was becoming such an adept), the weather had corrupted him. First of all it had been too fine ... and then it had been too wet. This rain had unsettled him. It had washed out all his inspiration. He 'd only felt inclined to stick his fingers in his pockets and shiver over fires. The keys were too cold and damp. There was no warmth about them.

His Reverence gathered the cloth, and spread it over the table. "Indeed? I suppose you 've not seen much of Pamela ... since I left?" he asked casually.

The Spawer's heart hit him under the chin.

"Pam?" he replied, as though for the moment nothing had been further than this girl from his thoughts. "Very little. Let 's see. One ... no, twice, I believe. Yes; twice to speak to since you 've been away."

"Ha!" said his Reverence, and smoothed the cloth scrupulously down all its creases and over the corners of the table.

What did that oracular "Ha!" mean? Did it mean that his Reverence knew the whole history of those two times--or suspected it? ... or knew nothing; suspected nothing? There are moments when an ambiguous monosyllable is more potent than the wisest of words--and this was one of them. The Spawer waited a little space, while his Reverence passed his smooth palm backwards and forwards over the snowy surface, in the hopes that he might add something to that unexplanatory "Ha!" But his Reverence said nothing. He might have been waiting too.

"I 've heard, though..." the Spawer began, feeling the discomfort of that monosyllable like a drop of cold water down his neck, and stopped there suggestively.

"Ha!" His Reverence passed a concluding hand over the table-cloth, and straightened himself with puckered mouth and portentous brows. "... Unfortunately true. Unfortunately true. Yes."

"Unfortunately" true! The Vicar, then, was his ally.

"... At first," he said, professing suddenly that the destiny of two drops, trickling slowly towards each other on the window-pane, was of more moment to him than the matter of the girl, "... at first ... I hardly believed it. I suppose, though ... you say there 's no mistake."

His Reverence shook his head, and passed over to the cupboard again.

"A very great mistake," he said, stooping on one knee and speaking into the cavernous recesses of the shelves; and after a moment: "A very great mistake," he said. "I 'm not surprised at your incredulity. Of course, being ignorant of circumstances, you 've nothing but your judgment to guide you--and plainly judgment would lead you to pronounce against such a form of proceeding. Yes!" He raised himself from the floor with the twisted face for a rheumatic twinge in his knee, and returned once more to his table preparations. "I must admit that the girl has disappointed me. Of course ... ever since the beginning--as Ullbrig will tell you if you care to pay it the compliment of asking (which I don't suppose you will)--this has been a contingency to reckon with. But I 'd hoped. You see ... it 's different. Things latterly had looked so favorable. I thought the musical experiment was likely to succeed. Ha! and the French too. Yes, yes; the French too. It seemed to have stimulated the girl to aspirations altogether beyond Ullbrig. I thought we 'd trained her palate to require daintier food in every respect than Ullbrig could give her. And then ... all at once ... to be beaten on the post. Of course--" he drew attention to what followed with a quiet gesture, as though it were really quite obvious enough without the superfluous emphasis of pointing out--"... it would be quite possible for me to forbid the thing--veto it completely and put a stop to it once for all. But then..." he screwed up his mouth for a moment's reconsideration of what such an act would effect, "for the present I have n't quite found my justification for this extreme measure."

"He is ... a schoolmaster?" the Spawer hazarded.

"Exactly; our Ullbrig schoolmaster. A worthy enough man, no doubt, in his own particular way--but it is n't the way I had in my mind for Pam. I believe he excels somewhat in free-hand and rule of three. These are his specialties. His father--if my memory serves me right--" here the Vicar appeared to interrogate his memory through fringed lashes, "... was a--ha!-small greengrocer and mixed provision dealer--Knaresbro' way, I believe. Of course, under ordinary circumstances, I should have had no alternative but to nip the whole affair in the bud; pack Pam away, if need be, and arrange meanwhile for the fellow to be transplanted in some peculiarly far and foreign soil. But as it is ... that seems an unnecessary setting of the mills to grind without grist. If we stop this marriage..." His eye roamed over the table, where knives and forks and spoons and plates and glasses commenced to array themselves with a semblance of order beneath his fingers. The Spawer's eye shifted, as a meeting seemed imminent. "... Perhaps, when I 'm dead and gone, she may contract a worse. Situated as she is, without friends or society, we can't hope to place her in life as by right and reason she should be placed. Perhaps, if one could only finance the girl, and secure fashionable influence for her, and float her upon the social sea, she might repay the investment cent for cent. But on the other hand ... there 's always a fear. Knowing nothing of the temptations of society life, she might fall to the first barrel like a lame pigeon. Besides, the girl shows no hankerings after the flesh-pots. There 's not a pinch of mundane salt in her nature. So why apply it with one's own fingers, and spoil her in the seasoning? Ha! why indeed? Therefore, as things stand, she must be sacrificed. This man wants her and she wants him--more strongly than even I 'd supposed--and when all 's said and done, we might only make worse of it if we tried to twist human nature to our own preconcerted theories. At least, the fellow has no positive vices--they are mostly negative. He is steady, sober, respectable; a hard worker, likely--so far as one can foresee--to provide the girl with a certain home for life. For an indefinite period they may remain at Ullbrig, where--except for those inevitable little disturbances which we may expect under conditions of matrimony--her existence will be but slightly changed. Of course, she will have to relinquish her postal duties, but her parochial work will suffer no modification.

"Ha! now for the larder. Let 's see what there is to pick. Do you feel anything in the lobster way? Here 's a pie that Pam 's cooked and stuffed into the larder for me--knowing I should be back too late to lay in stock for Sunday. Dear girl. Why in the world could n't she think as beautifully for herself as she does for others? And here 's his reverence's brown loaf, and some beet, and some herring olives. Come, come! We shan't do so badly."

"You only got back last night?" the Spawer inquired.

"Last night only," his Reverence rejoined, dispersing his various acquisitions about the table. "Came along with Friend Tankard from Hunmouth. Poor Friend Tankard! I think he gets slower and slower. Some day, mark my words, he 'll set out from Hunmouth, and never reach Ullbrig at all. That 'll be the end of him. However, he did just manage to pull us through this time, and for the rest of the evening I was interviewing our errant sister. But she stood firm. I tried to shake her on all points; had her in tears even. Yes, poor girl, had her in tears. She rained copiously, but it only seemed to water the roots of her resolve. She used the tears of my making to beg to me with. Ha! Let 's see ... to be sure! The beer. You 're a beer man, at least, are n't you?--even though you stop short of whiskey. Capital! capital! I 'm going to offer you a little specialty of my own. It 's a local beer--not Ullbriggian, by the way--but from the district, and you 'll say you never tasted its equal. Foams like champagne and bites like a nettle. Mild withal."

He disappeared from sight on this new errand, and returned, after a remote sound of clinking, with half a dozen bottles of his specialty, three by the neck in each hand.

"Here we are! If the light were n't so bad, I 'd ask you to examine the color. But that 's no use. We 'll let that go, and judge by the taste alone.... And so--" By a skilful intonation he cleared his voice of the beer, and skipped back to the old topic where they had been before. "... In the end we allowed the matter to stand, and deferred judgment."

"And they will be married..." the Spawer began.

He was thankful beyond measure that the Vicar picked him up without delay, for his voice went suddenly as husky as bran.

"Not yet! not yet!" his Reverence said. "That's quite another thing. Though, for that matter, the girl wished to prevail over my scruples even there, and persuade me to an actual date and definite consent. But no. They must possess their souls in patience until I 've had opportunity to study them under these new conditions. I 'm prepared to let her go, since her happiness requires it, but I 'm not going to throw her. Besides ... a little object lesson of this kind appeared to me desirable. As I pointed out to Pam, the man's conduct in the matter left much to be desired. Had he been possessed of the natural instincts of a gentleman he would have approached me first, before intruding himself upon the girl's affections."

"Of course," the Spawer acquiesced hurriedly.

He loathed himself for a cowardly renegade as he did so, but the priest's eye, to his guilty vision, fixed him with such a meaning glance of severity that he felt anything short of verbal agreement would betray him.

"Of course," Father Mostyn repeated, with renewed emphasis. "The proper way--indeed, the only way for a gentleman--would have been to approach me in the first instance, and receive my sanction before unsettling the girl with a suit which subsequent events might prove to be undesirable. But there, of course, you have the man, unfortunately. I daresay his nature would be quite unable to appreciate the niceness of the point--even if you explained it to him. Now you and I"--here the terrible condemnatory look seemed to be fixed on the Spawer again--"know these little matters by instinct, as it were. Such things as those are in our blood. We don't work out our conduct by free-hand and rule of three. It 's inbred in us. We act upon them as spontaneously as a pointer points. Ha!" He ticked off the first and second fingers of the left hand with the magnetic index-finger of the right. "Bread ... corkscrew..." and hesitated at the third as though uncertain whether there did not exist some still further necessity. "Ha! to be sure," he said, and wagged his shoulders, "cheese." He ambled genially out of the room again, and returned presently with a loaf of white bread on a wooden trencher, a corkscrew, a lever, and a dish of Cheddar.

"Now, come along! come along!" he said, all his being fused in the glowing warmth of hospitality, and sending forth its comforting rays even to the Spawer's chill fibres. "There 's nothing to wait for--except grace from Heaven. That's it. Draw up your chair and make yourself at home."

And bending his head over the tinned lobster: "In the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

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