CHAPTER V

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And the face beneath it was the face he had been trying to remodel this morning, out of the obstinate stiff clays of remembrance. There were the dear, kissable, candid freckles, powdered in pure gold-dust about the bridge of the nose and the brows--each one a minstrel to truth; there were the great round eyes, shining smoothly, with the black-brown velvety softness of bulrushes; there were the rapt red lips, no longer baffling his gaze, but steadfast and discernible; there was the big beneficence of hair; the oaten-tinted cheeks, showing their soft surface-glint of golden down where the sunlight caught them; the little pink lobes; the tanned russet neck, so sleek and slim and supple, and the blue Tam-o'-Shanter topping all, as though it were a part of her, and had never moved since last the Spawer had looked upon it.

In every other respect she was the same girl that had sat in Dixon's place on the sofa last night. She wore still the simple skirt of blue serge, cut short above her ankles for freedom in walking (showing too, at close quarters, a cleverly-suppressed seam running down to the hem on the left side, like a zig-zag of lightning), and the plain print blouse, pale blue, with no pattern on it, ending at the throat in a neat white collar borrowed from the masculine mode, and tied with a little flame of red silk. Only the light rain-proof cape was wanting, but over her shoulders, in place of it, was slung the broad canvas belt of a post-bag that flapped bulkily against her right hip as she strode, with her right hand dipped out of sight into its capacious pocket. She came swinging along the hedge at a fine, healthy pace, as though the sun were but a harmless bright new penny, making rhythmic advance in a pair of stubborn little square-toed shoes, stoutly cobbled, with a pleasing redolence of Puritanism about their austere extremities; and so into the Spawer's presence, all unconscious and unprepared.

The sight of him, waiting over the gate, with his elbows ruling the top bar, his chin upon linked fingers, and a leisurely foot hoisted on to the second rail, broke the rhythm of her step for an instant on a sudden tide of color, and brought the hand out of the bag to readjust the shoulder-strap in a quick display of purpose. But she showed no frailties of embarrassment. She came along with simple self-possession to the greeting point, giving him her eyes there in a queer little indescribable sidelong look that a mere man might ponder over for a lifetime and never know the meaning of--a queer little indescribable, smileless, sidelong look, sent out under her lashes, that had nothing of fear or favor, or friendship or salutation, or embarrassment about it, but was pure, unmingled, ingenuous, feminine, stock-taking curiosity, as though she were studying him dispassionately from behind a loophole and calculating on his conduct with the most sublime, delicious indifference. The Spawer could have thrown up his head and laughed aloud at the look. Not in any spirit of ridicule--angels and ministers of grace defend us!--but with fine appreciative enjoyment, as one laughs for sheer pleasure at a beautiful piece of musical phrasing or an unexpected point of technique. If he had opened the gate with a grave mouth and let her through, not a doubt but she would have passed on without so much as the presumption of an eyelash upon their last night's relations, and never even looked back over a shoulder. But he stood and barred the way with his unyielding smile, and when she came up to him: "Are n't you going to speak to me?" he asked meekly.

At that the quick light of recognition and acknowledgment poured through the loophole. Not all the gathered sunbeams, had the girl been of stained glass, could have flooded her to a more surpassing friendly radiance than did her own inward smile. No word accompanied it, as if, indeed, with such a perfect medium for expression, any were needed. She drew up to the gate, and casting herself into a sympathetic reproduction of his attitude at a discreet distance down the rail, shaded a glance of gentle curiosity at him under her velvety thickness of lashes.

"To think," said the Spawer, looking at her with incredulous enjoyment, "here I 've been waiting innocently for the post, and wondering what it would be like when it came, and making up my mind it never was coming--and it 's you all the time."

"Did n't you know?"

"Sorra a word."

"I wanted to tell you all the time ... last night, who I was."

"I wanted badly to ask."

"But I dared n't."

"And I dared n't either. What a couple of cowards we 've been. Let 's be brave now, shall we, to make up for it? I'll ask and you shall tell me. Who are you?"

She dipped an almost affectionate hand into the post-bag, and extended it partly by way of presentation.

"I 'm the post-girl," she said.

He looked at the bag, and then along the extended arm to her.

"Really?" he asked, visibly uncertain that the post-bag was not merely part of a pleasing masquerade, or that the girl might not have put herself voluntarily under its brown yoke for some purpose as inexplicable as the trudging to Cliff Wrangham by starlight.

"Really and truly," she said. "I know I ought to have told you ... at first. But I thought, perhaps..." She plucked at a blade of grass, and biting it with her small, milk-white teeth, studied the bruised green rib with lowered eyes. "... Thought perhaps you 'd taken me for somebody different. And I was frightened you might be offended when you knew who it was."

In the clear frankness of her confession, and the soft, inquiring fearlessness of eye with which she encountered his glance at its conclusion, there was no tincture of abasement. As she stood there by the gate, with the broad badge of servitude across her girl's breast, she seemed glorified for the moment into a living text, attesting eloquently that it is not toil that dishonors, and that the social differences in labor come but from the laborer. In such wise the Spawer interpreted her, and embraced the occasion for belief with an inward glad response.

"But why should I be offended at the truth?" said he at length, his eyes waltzing all round hers (that were vainly trying to bring them to a standstill) in lenient laughter. "And how on earth could I take you for somebody different," he asked, drawing the subject away from the awkward brink of their disparity, "when you 're so unmistakably like yourself? Sakes alive! Nobody could mistake you."

She lowered eyes and voice together, and made with her fingers on the rail as though she were deciphering her words from some half-obliterated inscription in the wood.

"I want to tell you," she began, and the dear little golden freckles on her nose seemed to close in upon each other for strength and comfort, "how very sorry I am ... for what happened last night."

"You can't be sorrier than I am," the Spawer said. "It 's been on my conscience ever since. I was a beast to jump out as I did, and I admit it."

"I don't mean you," the girl cut in, with quick correction.

"Who then?" asked the Spawer.

"Me..." said the girl. "You were as kind as could be. Nobody could have been kinder ... under the circumstances ... or helped me to be less ashamed of myself."

"Please not to make fun of the poor blind man," the Spawer begged her, "... for he can't see it, and it 's wicked."

"Oh, but I mean it," said the girl. "I never got to sleep all last night for thinking of the music, and how badly I 'd acted."

"To be sure," said the Spawer, "your acting was n't altogether good. If, for instance, you had n't mistaken your cue when I came out through the window, I should never have known you were there at all."

"Should n't you?" asked the girl, with the momentary blank face for an opportunity gorgeously lost.

"Indeed, I should n't."

"All the same ... I 'm glad you did," she said, with sudden reversion of humility.

"Ah. That 's better," the Spawer assented. "So am I. It shows a proper appreciation of Providence."

"Because," the girl proceeded to explain, "when you 're found out you feel somehow as though you 'd paid for your wrong-doing, don't you? And, at least, it saves you from being a hypocrite, does n't it?"

"Oh, yes," said the Spawer, with infectious piety. "Capital thing for that. Splendid thing for that."

"Father Mostyn..." she began. "You know Father Mostyn, don't you?"

The name brought an uncomfortable sense of visitorial obligations unfulfilled to the Spawer's mind.

"Slightly," he said, the diminutive seeming to offer indemnity for his neglect.

"Yes, I thought so. He said you did," the girl continued. "You 're going to call and see him sometime, are n't you?"

"Sometime," the Spawer acquiesced. "Yes, certainly. I 'm hoping to do so when I can get a moment to spare. But I 'm very busy." He shifted the centre of conversation from his own shoulders. "Father Mostyn ... you were saying?"

"Oh, yes! Father Mostyn 's always warning us against being Ullbrig hypocrites. But it seems so hard to avoid." She sighed in spirit of hopelessness. "I seem to grow into an Ullbrig hypocrite in spite of everything."

"Never mind," said the Spawer consolatorily, casting a glance of admiration along the smooth, sleek cheek and neck. "It looks an excellent thing for the complexion."

"That?" The girl ran a careless hand where his eye had been without making any attempt to parry the compliment. "Oh, that 's being out in the rain. Rain 's a wonderful thing for the complexion. Father Mostyn says so. But it can't wash these away," she said, touching the little cluster of freckles with a wistful finger. "These are being out in the sun."

"I was looking at those too," said the Spawer frankly. "I rather like them."

"Do you?" asked the girl, plucking up at his appreciation. "Yes, some people do--but not those that have them. Father Mostyn says they 're not actually a disfigurement, but they 're given me to chasten my pride. He says whenever I 'm tempted to look in the glass I shall always see these and remind myself, 'Yes, but my nose is freckled,' and that will save me from being vain. And it's funny, but it 's quite true."

"You know Father Mostyn well, of course?" said the Spawer, his question not altogether void of a desire to learn how far this estimable ecclesiast might be discussed with safety.

"Oh!" The girl made the quick round mouth for admiration, and held up visible homage in her eyes. "Father Mostyn's the best friend I have in the world. He 's taught me everything I know--it's my fault, not his, that I know so little--and done things for me, and given me things that all my gratitude can never, never repay. It was he allowed me to go round with the letters."

"That was very good of him," said the Spawer, with a tight mouth.

"Was n't it?" the girl said, showing a little glow of recognisant enthusiasm. "At first uncle was rather frightened--frightened that I ought not to do it, but we all thought six shillings a lot of money to lose (that 's what I get); and Father Mostyn said most certainly I was to have it."

"And so he gave it," said the Spawer. "Jolly kind of him."

"Oh, no! he did n't give it," the girl corrected, after a momentary reference to the Spawer's face. "Government gives it ... but he said I was to have it--and I have."

"And what did uncle say?" asked the Spawer amicably.

"Uncle? Oh, he said it was the will of Providence, and he hoped it would soon be ten; but it's not ten yet, and I don't think it will be for a long time. There were others who wanted the six shillings too, as badly as I did--and deserved it better, some of them, I mink. At one time I felt so ashamed to be going about and taking the money that seemed to belong to such a number of people who said they had a right to it, that I asked to give the bag up; but uncle seemed so sad about it, and said it was flying in the face of Providence to give anything up that you 'd once got hold of, and Father Mostyn said it was a special blessing of Heaven bestowed upon me (though I 'm sure I don't know) ... and so I kept it. It was a struggle at times, though--even though Father Mostyn used to walk with me all the way round by Shippus to keep up my courage.... And that reminds me," she said, showing sudden perception of responsibility, "I have to go that way this morning."

"What! have n't you got rid of all your letters yet, then?"

"All except two," she said, and thrusting open the flabby canvas maw with one hand, peered down into its profounds as though her look should satisfy him of their presence by proxy. "They 're for Shippus."

"And you have to walk round by Shippus ... now?"

She nodded her head, and said a smiling "Yes" to his surprise, letting fall the canvas and patting the bag's cheek with the consolatory dismissal for a dog just freed from dental inspection. Then, more reluctantly, as though the saying were as hard to come at as a marked apple at the bottom of the barrel, she said ... she must really ... be going. They would be expecting her. She 'd been kept rather long at Barclay's as it was, writing something out for him. And made to come through the gate.

"And, by Jove ... that reminds me," said the Spawer. "So must I."

She drew a covetous conclusion from his bathing equipment, and the blue sky, showing so deep and still beyond the cliff line, and was already half turned on a leave-taking heel (a little saddened, perhaps, at his readiness to assist the separation), when she found him by her side.

"But which way are you going?" she asked, for the sea lay now at their backs, and the Spawer, as was evident (and as we all know), had been going a-bathing.

"The same way as you are," he answered, "if you 'll have me."

And when Miss Bates (who had been watching them all the time from the end attic window, with Jeff's six-penny telescope stuck to one eye and a hand clapped over the other) saw this result of the girl's abominable scheming, she became very wroth indeed; filled to the brim and overflowing with righteous indignation that her sex could sink thus low. She snapped the telescope together so viciously that she thought she had cracked it, and when she found she had n't she was wrother than ever as compensation for this false alarm, and almost wished she had.

"Ay, ye may set ye-sen up at 'im, ye gret, cat-eyed, frowsy-'eaded 'ussy!" she said, hurling the javelins of her anger at the blue Tam-o'-Shanter (every one of which, so far as could be discernible at that distance, seemed to miss), "bud if ye think 'e 'll be ta'en wi' yer daft, fond ways ye think wrong an' all. Ay, _you_, ah mean. Ah 'd be sorry to set mysen i' onny man's road like yon, mah wod. Think shame o' ye-sen, ye graceless mynx. Ah know very well 'e 's wantin' to be shut o' ye."

And after much further vehement exhortation to this effect, flung herself gustily down the staircase, slamming all the steps in descent, like March doors, and carried the full force of her indignation into the kitchen, where she swept it from end to end, as though she were a tidal wave.

"Out o' my road!" she cried at Lewis, innocently engaged in fishing the big dresser with a toasting-fork for what it might yield; and before he could stop spinning sufficiently to get a sight of his assailant (though he had no doubts who it was), was on him again: "Away wi' ye an' all."

And had him (still revolving) round the table.

"Let 's be rid o' ye!"

And licked him up like a tongue of avenging flame by the big range.

"Div ye want to throw a body over?"

And was ready for him by the door.

"Noo, kick me if ye dare."

And whipped him out through the scullery like a top, with a parting:

"Tek that an' all."

Which he took, like physic, as directed; and ten minutes later, seeing his mother emerge from the calf-house, and being in possession of ample breath for the purpose, put Miss Bates' injustice on record in a historic howl.

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