Or, "Ye 'll 'a seed a deal o' strange sights i' France, ah 's think!"

And goes to bed slapping his knees and saying: "Well, ah don't know!"

till Mrs. Dixon tells him, "Now, you 've been talking your nonsense

again," knowing well the tokens.

And for the rest, dispersed indiscriminately about the room, there are

Daudet's "Jack"; Tolstoi's "Sonate a Kreutzer"; half a dozen old

leather-bound volumes of Moliere, opening of themselves at "Le

Bourgeois," "Le Malade," or "L'Avare"; Turgenieff twice over in French

yellow; Swinburne's "Songs before Sunrise"; a litter of Brahms in his

granite Simrock livery; of Grieg in pale pink Peters; of red brick

Chopin; of Buelow's Beethoven; of Tschaikowsky; of Rachmaninov; of

Glazounow; of Balakirev--of Young Russia, in a word; of Hans Huber; of

Smetana; of Dvorak; of loose MSS. and blank music paper--all strewing

the chairs and sofa and table in ideal confusion, so that before the

Spawer may sit down on one seat he must mortgage another. A

letter-weight bust of Chopin on the round antimacassared table by the

window; by its side a signed Paderewski; on the mantelpiece the genial

Bohemian 'cellist, piercing the soul of the little room with his glowing

eyes from under the well-known silvery nimbus, and apostrophising his

"dear young friend," Maurice Ethelbert Wynne, in neatest English through

copper-plate German characters; Sarasate on the sideboard by the big

cupboard undermining the staircase, where the Spawer's table-bass goes

off in heat apoplexy, a bottle a day.

Elsewhere of literary features a few; of singers, of artists, of actors

even. Lastly, after an octave of days, comes the piano too, and takes

up the far angle by the window corner, its treble truss touching the

steel fender, its bass abutting the sill.

And the Spawer sets to work in earnest.

Not the Spawer of hitherto. No longer the smooth-browed son of leisure,

with laughter held lazily captive in the meshes of his moustache and an

unencumbered eye for the clear draughts of gladness, but a purposeful

demon with conspiring brows and deadly-looking hands clawing the keys

with a sinuous throttle in each finger, that draw forth a pencil

murderously from time to time, like a stiletto, to stab thought upon the

paper with the unpleasant despatch of assassination.

A pause for the day's dip and dinner, and on again; and a pause for a

stroll and tea, and on again; and supper and a chat with Dixon, and on

again. Till Dixon slaps his thigh when he comes back from anywhere and

hears it all in full progression, and asks:

"What! Is 'e still agate [on the go]?"

Pushing his hat from his brow to reply:

"Mah wod! It 's a caution, yon!"

For a second octave of days.

And then a strange happening, to check the buoyant current of the

Spawer's activity.

Very late one night the shadow of his head lingered upon the figured

print blind, drawn loosely down over the wide-opened window, and the

piano poured its unceasing treasury into night's immeasurable coffers.

Already, in the long musical decade since Dixon's departure, he had

risen to readjust the smouldering wicks, and gone back to a new lease of

light at the keyboard. The light was failing for the second time as his

fingers, slowing dreamily, sought the final shelter of Chopin. By many

winding ways they came at length to the hushed haven of the seventeenth

prelude, with the muffled A-flat bell booming its solemn death-message

over the waters, and the little tear-laden boat of melody cradling its

grief to silence on the ripples below.

The bell tolled no more; the little boat lay tremulous upon the echoes,

and in the lingering stillness that followed, before yet the player's

fingers had dared to break that sacred communion with the keys, fell all

abruptly a sudden human sob.

A sudden human sob out of the darkness beyond the blind. So near and

real and necessitous that the Spawer's elbows kicked backward from the

keys, and the pedals went off like triggers under his feet as he spun

round to the window. And yet, so far, so remote in probability, that

even while he turned, he found far easier to account for it as some

acute, psychical manifestation of his own emotions, rather than the

expression of any agency from without. Through faith in this feeling,

and no fear of it, he flung up the blind abruptly, and thrust forth his

head with a peremptory "Who's there?"

Outside, the world lay wrapped in a great breathing stillness. Night's

ultramarine bosom was ablaze with starry chain of mail. From the far

fields came faint immaterial sounds, commingled in the suspended

fragrance of hay, in warm revelations of ripening corn, in the aromatic

pungency of nettles, and all the humid suffocation of herbs that open

their moist pores at even. Distant sheep, cropping in ghost-like

procession across misty, dew-laden clover, contributed now and again

their strange, cutting, human cough. Came, as the Spawer listened, the

slow, muffled thud-thud of some horse's hoofs on the turf, as it plodded

in patient change of pasture, and the deep blowing of kine along the

hedge-bottoms. But these, with the soft sound of the sea, spreading its

countless fans of effervescing surf upon the sandy shore, were the only

answer to his challenge.

He threw it out again, with the mere indolent amusement of casting

pebbles into a pool, and swung one leg over the sill. Night allured him

with all her mystic altar lights. He was of a mind to sit there and

fling open his soul like a lattice to her seductive minstrelsy; drain

deep draughts of celestial gladness from the overflowing tankard of

stars. In the dead black porch of flowering tea, with one pale

planetary flame shining through its tabernacled branches, no stir. No

stir in the square black rug of long grass, softened in its centre to

grey silver-point. No stir in the massed shadow of trees, uprising rigid

like dim marine growths in a dense ocean of azure.

"Well?" he asked of the stillness, swinging his leg with a complacent

tattoo of heel against the brickwork, and smiling indulgence at his own

little extension in folly. "For the last time! One ... two ... three.

Or must I fire?"

The stars twinkled him in irresistible summons to the sea. Even the sea

itself raised its supplicative song a little louder, he thought, as he

listened, and called "Come!" The night was too full of blessings to be

suffocated untimely beneath the blankets; all his senses were making

outcry for its bounty, and the soul of him hearkened. Just one stroll to

the edge of the water and back before bed. It was no new thing for him

to do. He reached his hat from its insecure slant upon the pile of

music topping the piano, and clasped the sill with both hands for

descent.

As he did so, in the still pause presaging the act, he heard the

frenetic tugging of someone at the sticky orchard gate, that takes six

pulls to open and three and a kick to close, ever since Jabe Stevens

painted it drab, with black latch pickings. He heard the quick repeated

pant of the pulls; felt in a flash the desperate occasion that was

urging them; felt the very prayers surging about him on their way from a

soul in turbulent tussle against destiny, and next moment was down on

his feet before the window with a clear, arrestive "Hello!"

The click of the liberated latch; garments in swift full stir; a

prolonged rending, like the descent of some four-octave chromatic, and a

sudden breath-held, death-like stillness fell upon his landing. For a

moment he could elucidate nothing by the look. Sight was sealed up in

yellow lamplight. Two steps forward and the bondage was burst. He made

out the line of flat wood stakes bounding the orchard to its half width,

whence rough green rails complete the demarcation; and the gate, thrown

three quarters open; and by it, the dim, motionless figure of a girl.

*CHAPTER III*

All that had been silence before was swallowed up at a gulp in the

sudden deeps of discovery. The Spawer, with legs planted forcefully

apart, chin thrown forward, and sidelong listening ear, tugged at the

tawny end of his moustache. It is not altogether a child's task,

whatever may be thought to the contrary, to address discreetly a panting

feminine figure in the darkness at five paces, that has drawn the

undesirable fire of our attention nearing midnight, and may be either a

common garden thief or a despicable henroost robber; or a farm wench,

deflected by the piano on her way home; or a mere tramp, bungling the

matter of a free straw bed, and in trouble because appearances are

against her; or none of these things at all, but something quite other,

utterly beyond the scope of divination. And since it is neither

generous to approach distress through the narrow portals of suspicion,

nor desirable to doff one's hat in premature respect to what may turn

out, after all, mere unworthy fraud, the Spawer held his peace a while

in courteous attendance upon the girl. Before him her black silhouette

remained rigid, stilled unnaturally, like a bird, in that last tense

moment of surrender beneath the fowler's fingers. She stood, part way

through the gate, with averted head--one hand straining the gate-post to

her for strength and stay--the other clutched to quell the turbulence at

her breast. In such wise, for a short century of seconds, discoverer

and discovered waited motionless the one upon the other.

Pity for the girl's confusion, after a while, moved the Spawer when it

seemed she meant to make no use of the proffered moments. He broke up

silence with a reassuring swing of heel, though without advancing.

"I 'm sorry if I frightened you," he said, in an open voice, devoid of

any metallic spur of challenge or odious trappings of suspicion. "I did

n't mean to do that.... But..." He paused there for a moment, with the

conjunction trailing off in an agreeable tag of stars for the girl's

use, and then, when she caught her breath over a troubled underlip, took

it up himself. "... We 're not accustomed to callers quite so late ...

and I came out in a bit of a hurry. Is there anything I can do for

you?"

Beautiful question of solicitude for a guilty conscience, that he smiled

over grimly as he said it. He knew well enough that the very utmost he

could have done for her would have been to keep the other side of the

sill till she made good her escape. And he knew, too, that some part of

her must have suffered tear by a couple of yards or so, but that was a

matter might very well wait over awhile. For the present, all he wanted

was a little enlightenment; later, the floodgates of compassion could be

liberally loosened if required. He despatched his words, and dipped a

hand into his trouser's pocket, making a friendly jingle of keys and

coppers. The unperemptory tone of his voice, the kindness of the

undiminished distance he kept, and this last show of leisurely

dispassion did their work and raised the girl's head.

"Oh, I 'm sorry ... and ashamed!" she gulped, battling forth into the

open through a threatening tumult of tears. "It 's all my fault ...

every bit of it. I ought never to have come." She stopped momentarily,

midway through her words, gripping on to fortitude in silence as to a

hand-rail, till the big looming sob had gone by. "... So close. And I

ought n't to have come ... at all, I know. But it 's too late now.

Wishes won't do any good. Oh ... forgive me, please."

Her voice, even in the listening stillness of leaves, was almost

inaudible, but there was the rare mellow sweetness of blown pipes about

it such as the Spawer had not been prepared to hear at this time, and in

this place. The musical ear of him opened swiftly wide to its magic

like a casement to some forerunning spring breeze; and his heart stirred

on a sudden to wakefulness--keen bird with a most watchful eye.

Whatever else, it were absurd to couple vulgar delinquencies with so

soft a mouthpiece. He flung the lurking idea afar, and a delightful

flame of wonder grew up within him, illuminating possibility.

"Certainly," he said, in answer to her petition, striving to lull the

girl's alarms with his manner of easy consequence. "I 'll do my best.

But tell me first what for."

"For ... for what I 've done," said the girl unsteadily, each word

tremulous with a tear. "I did n't mean--to disturb you. I ought to

have spoken--when you called--first of all. But I could

n't--somehow--and I never expected you--by the window. I

thought--perhaps--the door. And I feel so mean--and miserable--and

wretched...." Her voice suddenly went from her to an interminable

distance, falling faintly afar like the unreal voice that wanders

aimlessly about the slopes of slumber. "And oh, please--will you give

me a glass of water?"

With that, and a residuary shaky sigh of her little store of breath left

over, her head fell limply forward. There was no mistaking this last

tell-tale token of physical extremity; and he was by her side in a

moment.

"Hello!" he called on the way, encouraging her by voice to resolution,

till he reached her, "what a great iron-shod beast I am, jumping out and

scaring you in this fashion. Hold up a little. You 're not going to

give up the ghost on my account, surely!"

She made a futile effort to move her lips for reply, and lifted her head

in the supreme spurt of conscious endeavor, but it tumbled straightway

across the other shoulder uncontrolled, and swung a helpless semi-circle

before her breast. She would have been down after that, all the length

of her, but that his arms were quick to intercept the fall. The shock of

sudden succor checked her in her collapse.

"Thank you," she panted, in a voice that stifled its words, and

striving, in a half-unconscious and wholly incompetent fashion, to free

him of the necessity of her further support. "... I 'm better now."

Words came no more easily to her under recovery than under the original

discovery, though he knew well enough that it was because her lips were

overburdened with them, and through no poverty of desire.

"Better?" he echoed, transplanting her own convictionless admission into

the pleasantest prospect possible. "Come, come! That 's gladdening.

There! ... Do you think you can stand all right?"

He loosened the clasp of his arms for a moment, and she swayed out

impotently in their widening circle.

"I think so," she said, giving desperate lie to proof positive under the

strenuousness of desire.

He laughed indulgently, and caught her in again.

"Capital!" he said, "if only you were trying to sit down. But you must

n't sit down here. See." He took a tighter hold of her. "... If I

help you--so.... Do you think you can manage to the door? It 's only a

step."

He urged her into motion with a gentle insistence of arm, and set her

the example of a leisurely foot forward. For the first time he felt the

exercise of her power in resistance.

"Oh, no, no!" she told him, turning off the two little panting negatives

in their sudden hot breath of shame, and stiffening at the suggestion of

advance.

"No?" he queried, in audible surprise. "You 're not equal to that? But

you must n't stay out here. You need to sit down and have something to

pull you up." He brought the other arm about her in a twinkling.

"Here, let me lift you," he said. "I 've helped drunken men up three

flights of stairs before to-day, fighting every bit of the way. I ought

to be able to tackle you as far as the door!"

Before she could absorb the intention through his words he had got her

begirt for the raising. The consciousness, coming upon her at such

short notice, in company with the action itself, found her without

preparation other than a gasp of blank amaze. Then her hand went out to

stay him.

"Oh, let me!" she said, with a horrified desire to avert this fresh

imposition upon his credulity or good-nature. "I can walk--very

well...."

She finished the petition in mid-air, and the sound of his amused,

wilful laughter just beneath her ears, as he waded with her through that

odious short sea of lamp-light to the black porch.

"There!" he said, to another note of laughter, lowering her carefully

till her feet found the square slab of scoured stone, with the scraper

set in it, and strove hastily to reassert themselves. "That 's better

than bartering in yes's and no's. Thank you for keeping so beautifully

still and not kicking me; you could if you 'd tried. So!"

He steered her down the narrow darkness of the porch, with his hands

protectively upon her elbows from behind, through a rustle of leaves and

the springing of flexible branches. She went before him, without any

words. Only when his arm slid past her to throw open wide the door did

she seem about to offer any furtherance of demur. But the dreadful

publicity of burning wicks lay forward, and the still more dreadful

publicity of his face lay behind against retreat, and she went dumbly

round the door, and so into the room. He could feel the sudden

shrinkage of her being as the full force of the episode surged back upon

her in a vivid hot wave out of the lamp-light, and was sorry. She would

have dropped down, in the penitential meekness of submission, upon the

triangle of chair that showed itself from beneath a litter of the

Spawer's music immediately by the door as they entered, but his arm

resisted the tell-tale bend of her body.

"No, no," he said, realising her desire for the penance of discomfort

rather than the comfort of repose, and jerking the chair out of

consideration, "... not there." He thrust the table far out into the

room with a quick scream of its castors at being so rudely awakened, and

pushed her gently to the sofa.

"That's better," he said, with a great evidence of content, as she sank

back upon it before solicitous pressure. "The cushions are hard, but the

passengers are earnestly requested to place their feet upon them." He

drew in the table again, so that she might have its rest for her arm or

her elbow, and deferring the moment for their eyes to make their first

official meeting, bustled off to the sideboard. "Please excuse the grim

formality of everything you find here," he continued, in light-hearted

purpose, and commingling his words with an urgent jingling of glass,

"but I 'm a musical sort of man, and like the rest of them, a lover of

law and order. A time and place for everything, that 's our motto, and

everything in its place. It 's a little weakness of ours....

Therefore"--his voice suddenly went cavernous in the recesses of the big

cupboard--"... where on earth 's the brandy? Ah!" he emerged again on

the interjection smiling, as on a triumphal car. "Here it is. Now I 'm

going to give you a little of this ... it 's better than any amount of

bad drinking water, and does n't taste half so nasty. Oh, no, no,

no"--in answer to the intuition of a quick protesting turn of head from

the sofa--"... not much. I won't let you have much, so it 's no use

asking. Only as much as is good for you. Just a lit--tle drop and no

more." He measured out the drop to the exact length of the accented

syllable, and the stopper clinked home under a soft, satisfied "So-o-o!"

The syphon took up the word, seething it vigorously into the glass, and

next moment his arm had spanned the table to an encouraging: "Here we

are! Take a good pull of this while it fizzes."

A soft, tremulous hand, nut-brown to the wrist, stole out in timid

obedience over the table, and the Spawer perceived his visitor for the

first time.

If the mere sound of her voice had aroused his wonder, the sight of the

girl's face added doubly to his surprise. A face as little to be looked

for in this place and at this time, and under these conditions, as to

make quest for orchids down some pitmouth with pick and Davy lamp. He

could not maintain the look long, for before satisfying his own inquiry

he sought to establish the girl's confidence, but he noted the wide

generous forehead, the big consuming eyes, burning deep in sorrowing

self-reproach and giving him a moment's gaze over the uplifted tumbler;

the dispassionate narrow nose, sprinkled about its bridge and between

the brows with a pepper-castor helping of freckled candor; the small

lips, parted submissively to the glass rim over two slips of milky

teeth; the long, sleek cheeks; the slender, pear-shaped chin; the soft,

supple neck of russet tan, spliced on to a gleaming shaft of ivory,

where it dipped through her dress-collar to her bosom; the quick

throbbing throat, and the burning lobes of red, like live cinders, in

her hair.

As to the girl herself, her whence and where and whither, the Spawer

could make no guess. She wore a shabby pale blue Tam-o'-Shanter, faded

under innumerable suns, and washed out to many a shower, but on her head

it appeared perfectly reputable and self-supporting, and identified

itself with the girl's face so instantly and so completely that its

weather-stain counted for preciousness, like the oaten tint of her skin.

A storm-tried mackintosh-cape, looped over her arms and falling loosely

down her back from the shoulders, and the print blouse, evidenced by her

bust above the table and her sleeves, and the serviceable skirt of blue

serge that the Spawer had caught sight of in the cleft between the table

and sofa, completed the girl as revealed through her dress. Everything

about her was for hard wear and tear, and had stood to the task. There

was not a single button's worth of pretension in the whole of her

attire; not a brooch at her throat, nor a bangle on either of her wrists

to plead for her station. She had dipped her nose meekly into the

tumbler and was letting the sparkles play about her lips momentarily,

with dropped eyelids; then the glass went down to the table, and her

eyes opened wide upon the Spawer as though casting up the full column of

her liabilities, resolved to shirk nothing.

"You don't drink," he said, with a voice of solicitude. "I have n't made

it too weak for you? ... Surely! I took great care--I might have been

making it for myself. Or is there anything else you 'd rather have?"

He found her soft voice entangled in his inquiry, and stopped.

"... Ever so much," he drew up in time to hear. "But it 's not that..."

The frank lips were wrestling to pronounce sentence upon her crime, but

they broke down in the task and transferred their self-imposed judgment

to him. "I don't know what you must think of me..." she said.

The Spawer laughed light-hearted indulgence upon the admission.

"To tell the truth," he said, "I hardly know what to think myself, so it

's no use saying I do. I thought perhaps ... poultry, first of all; but

your voice does n't sound a bit like poultry, and I 'm sure you don't

look it. And I don't think it was apples either, though you 'd got the

right gate for those. Besides, apples don't count ... that way. I 've

gathered them myself at this time of night before now, and been hauled

back over the wall by a leg. We don't think anything of that."

"It was the piano," she explained unsteadily, and for a moment the

steadfast flames in her eyes flickered under irresolute lids.

"The piano?" The Spawer raised his voice in amused interrogation.

"Heavens! you were n't going to try and take that away, were you? It

took ten of us and a bottle of whiskey to get it in, and threepence to

Barclay's boy for sitting on the gate and telling us by clockwork 'Ye

'll get stuck wi' 'er yet before ye 're done,' and half-a-crown to the

man that let the truss down upon my toes. Surely you were n't thinking

of tackling an enterprise like that single-handed, were you?"

For the first time he drew forth the faint fore-glimmering of what the

girl should be like in smiles; a sudden illuminated softening of the

features, as when warm sunlight melts marble, that spread and passed in

a moment.

"I was listening," she said.

"But that 's a dreadful confession." His eyebrows went up in tragic

surprise and his voice departed to the mock-horrified aloofness of a

whisper. "Listeners never hear any good of themselves, you know, and

never come to any." He slipped from the pseudo-serious with a sly

laugh. "Tell me the worst," he begged. "How much did you hear?"

"Oh! I don't know...." She searched his inquiry for a space with her

luminous eyes. "Only very little. Perhaps ... perhaps I 'd been half an

hour."

"Half an hour," he said, "with the classics. Lord! you 've been

punished for your offence."

"But I was n't by the window all the time," she made haste to assure

him. "I was standing in the lane ... by the kitchen gate." And then,

with the vial of confession in her fingers, she let it drain before him

in dropped sentences. "And I did n't mean to come any nearer than that.

All I wanted was the music. Only ... when you played ... what you

played last..." Her voice stumbled a little with her here, but she

picked up the falter with a quick, corrective tilt of the nose, and

walked more wardedly down the path of speech, her eyelids lowered, like

one who moves by spiritual impulse. "I felt ... oh! I don't know how I

felt--as though, somehow, somebody were beckoning me to the window,

where the music was. And so I came. And then, when I 'd got there, all

of a sudden things came back upon me that I knew I 'd known once ... and

forgotten. I saw my mother ... as she was ever so many years ago,

before she died, playing to me ... and crying over the keys; and the old

room--ever so plain--that I could hardly remember, even when I tried.

And all at once a great lump came up into my throat. I could n't help

it.... And I sobbed out loud--as I 'd sobbed before when I was a little

girl. And then..."

The tears, never wholly subjugated since their first turbulent

rebellion, rose up swiftly against her words at the recital here. She

made a valiant endeavor to ride through the tumult on her trembling

charger of speech, but memory plucked at the bridle, and unhorsed her

into the hands of her besetters; a fair, virginal captive--beautiful

under subjection.

"And then..." he said, catching up the girl's own words, and simulating

a careless stroll towards the window to give her time, "... _I_ came

in--came out, I mean." He flicked a chord off the treble end of the

keyboard in passing that drew the girl's eyes towards him at once,

watchful through tears. "But we won't talk about that part of the

business, if you 'll be so good as not to mind. One of us needs kicking

very badly for his share in it, and knows he does." He stooped down to

resolve the chord briefly with both hands, and spun round, outspread

against the piano, with his fingers behind him, touching extreme treble

and bass. Only an inactive tear or two on the girl's lashes marked the

recent revolt, and the way to her eyes lay clear. He sent his words

pleasantly out to them at once in friendly hazard. "You don't mean to

say you 're a neighbor of mine?" he suggested, smiling interested

inquiry from his spread-eagle pinnacle by the piano, "... and I have n't

known it all this time?" For who was this strange nocturnal visitant of

his, with a soul for the sound of things? "... Or are you..."--the

alternative came twinkling in time to join the previous inquiry under

one note of interrogation--"just a ... spawer, I think they call it,

like me?"

The girl shook her head at the latter suggestion.

"It 's my home here," she said.

"At Cliff Wrangham?" he asked, and brought his right leg over the left

towards her, in attitude of increased attention.

"No-o."

She must have felt a sense of isolation in abiding by that one word; as

though it were a gate snecking her off from the Spawer's friendly reach

in conversation, for she passed through it almost immediately and added

the specific correction: "At Ullbrig."

"Ah!" His internal eye was soaring over the Ullbrig of his remembrance

in an endeavor to pounce upon stray points of association for the girl's

identity. "I 'm afraid," he said, "that I don't know my Ullbrig very

well. It 's a part of my education here that 's been sadly neglected.

But you were n't going to walk back there alone? To-night, I mean?"

She looked at him with mild surprise.

"Oh, yes," she told him.

"Jove!" he said. "Are n't you afraid?"

"Afraid?" She gathered the word dubiously off his lips. "What of?"

"Oh," he laughed. "Of nothing at all. That 's what we 're most afraid

of, as a rule, is n't it? Of the dark, for instance."

She smiled, shaking her head.

"I 'm not afraid of that," she said.

"Ah," he decided enviously, "you 're no newspaper reader. That 's

plain." Then taking new stock of inquiry. "But we 're not in the habit

of passing by ... at this time, are we?" he asked. "I thought all good

people were between the blankets by nine in the country?"

A queer little flame of resolve began fighting for establishment about

her lips, like the flickers of a newly-lighted taper, that burnt up

suddenly in speech.

"I was n't ... passing by," she said, the flame reddening her to candor.

"No?"

"I came ... on purpose."

The Spawer's eyebrows ran up in a ruffle of surprise and friendly

amusement.

"Not ... to hear me?"

She clasped her teeth in repression upon her lower lip, and nodded her

head.

"And you 've actually trudged all the way out from Ullbrig?"

"It 's nothing," she said apologetically.

"But at night!" he expostulated, in friendly concern.

"There was no other time..." she explained. "Besides ... I

thought--They said ... it was only after supper."

"Only after supper?" echoed the Spawer. "What 's that? Indigestion?

Nightmare?"

"The music," she said.

"I see." He laughed, nodding his head sagaciously. "So they 've got my

time-table. And I thought I was n't known of a soul! What an ostrich I

've been!"

"Everybody knows of you," she said, in wonder he should think otherwise.

"I 'm sure they do," he assented. "What sort of a character do they

give me? ... Would just about hang me at the Assizes, I suppose?"

"They say you 're a great musician..." she said, with watchful eyes of

inquiry.

"Palestrina!" he exclaimed. "However did they come by the truth?"

"... And no one can play like you...."

"Yes?"

"... And you 've come here away from people to compose a great piece ...

and don't want anybody to ... to hear you."

The tide of her words ebbed suddenly there, leaving her eyes stranded

upon his. The same thought came up simultaneously to them both.

"And so ... that 's why you did n't come."

She dropped her eyes.

"I knew it was mean," she said humbly, "taking things when your back was

turned. I felt like stealing, at first. I could n't listen for shame."

"And what 'll be to pay for it all ... when you get back?" said he.

The fringe of her lashes was raised while her eyes reconnoitred, and

dropped again.

"Nothing," she told him.

"And no questions asked?"

"No."

"And nobody sitting up for you, ready to put the clock on half an hour,

and point a finger at it when you return?"

"No-o...." She twirled the tumbler jerkily between soft thumb and

forefinger. "They think I 'm in bed. And I did go," with a sudden

resurrection of self-righteousness. "Only"--the self-righteousness went

under here--"... when they were all asleep ... I slipped out and came to

Cliff Wrangham."

"So-o-o!" said the Spawer, spraying his comprehension hugely this time

with the word, as though it were a shower-bath to enlightenment. "That

's the secret of things at last, is it?" His eyes were spinning on the

girl like peg-tops in delicious amusement. "And I suppose I 've got to

guard it with my life's blood?"

A grateful face flashed thankfulness up at him for its relief from the

necessity of appeal.

"Here 's the bond," said he. "Subscribe, and say done." He threw out

an open palm of contract across the table, and the small hand crept into

it with the timorous, large-hearted trust for an unfamiliar shelter.

"And I 'm afraid," he said self-reproachfully, "that you 've torn your

dress?"

"Oh, no, ... a little." She made-believe to look at her skirt between

the table and sofa, and take stock of the damage done. "It 's nothing."

"At the time," said the Spawer, "it sounded terrible enough. I hope it

is n't as bad as the sound."

She drew up what appeared to be the ruined remnants of a phylactery, and

held it above the table-edge for his scrutiny, saying: "It does n't

matter," with a hopeful smile.

"But that 's awful," he said distressfully.

"It 's only an old skirt," she explained, making light of the raiment

with true feminine instinct, lest perhaps he might think she had no

better. "I can soon mend it."

"Shall I fetch you a needle and some cotton?" he asked, in a penitential

voice. "I have both upstairs."

The girl's eyes made a quick clutch at the needle and cotton, but her

lips hung back meekly to a suggestion of pins, with some murmur about

"trouble."

"Trouble!" said the Spawer.

He spun the word up in contemptuous disregard as though it were a

shuttlecock, and slipped blithely up the little staircase. A second or

so later, when she had heard him drop the matches and rake over the

carpet for them with his finger-ends, and weave sundry spiderous tracks

across the ceiling, he was down again triumphantly extending the objects

of his quest.

All too quickly the girl whipped the serrated edges of serge together,

while he watched her--with a busy back and forth of needle--snapped the

thread round a determined small finger, shook the skirt into position,

and rose (conscientiously sheathing the needle in the cotton bobbin),

showing parted lips for gratitude and farewell. The latter, taking the

Spawer somewhat by surprise, awakened all at once his dormant

solicitude.

"But you 're not going ... now!" he said. The girl said softly, "If he

pleased." "Why, you have n't half finished!" he exclaimed, pointing to

the desolate tumbler, its contents untasted. The girl looked

remorsefully at the object of her neglect, and said, still more softly,

"If he did n't mind...."

"Not in the least," the Spawer reassured her. "But are you quite sure,"

he said anxiously, "that you 're strong enough to start back--just yet?

Do you think it 's altogether wise?"

The girl thought it so wise that the Spawer had no alternative but to

accept the cotton bobbin from her, a thing which his fingers (in their

concern for her welfare) showed a certain disinclination to do.

"At least," said he, "you 'll let me see you back as far as Hesketh's

corner?" But the girl said, "Oh no, please ... and thank you.... I 'm

accustomed to walk alone," so once again he felt constrained to abide by

her decision, not knowing how many secret considerations might have gone

to the making of it.

"But ... look here," he said, in a conclusive spurt of candor, brought

about by the imminence of their parting; "... we 're not saying good-by

for good, are we?"

"I--I hope not," said the girl, and something stirred her lips and

lashes as though a breeze had blown across them.

"Well, I hope not too," said the Spawer. "For that would make me feel

sad. I must n't keep you any longer now, I know, for I don't want you

to get into trouble; but it 's awfully good of you to have come, and

believe me, I 'm really grateful. If there 's anything in music I can

do for you, I want you to know that you 've only to ask, and it shall be

done for you with pleasure. Honest Injun. You won't forget, will you?"

The girl said she could never forget ... his kindness.

"It 's a promise, then?" said the Spawer.

Again the little unseen breath blew across her features at the question,

and to his surprise he could have almost sworn to tears upon her lashes

when he looked up for affirmation in the girl's eyes. To cover any

confusion that his words might have wrought, he put out a friendly hand

for parting.

"All right," said he, in voice of cheerful agreement. "So _that's_

settled," though a dozen questions were fighting for first place on his

lips as he said it. The little brown hand stole for the second time

into the shelter of his own with a solemnity that, at other moments, he

could have laughed at, and a moment later the Spawer was left gazing at

the orchard gate, thrown three quarters open, as he had done in that

first memorable moment, with the girl's soft footsteps merged every

second more deceptively in the starry stillness of night.

*CHAPTER IV*

Whatever the Spawer might choose to say of himself for purposes of humor

(not, I am afraid, an invariable pole-star to truth), he was no

sluggard. By agreement, dated the first night of his arrival, Jeff Dixon

was to get a penny a day for bringing up the bath-water and having him

into it at seven in the morning. Something short of the hour Jeff would

stumble up the little steep staircase, with his tongue out, behind a big

bucket of cold water (the last of three drawn to get the full freshness

of the pump), and anticipating a few minutes in his statement of the

time, make preliminary clamor for the Spawer's acknowledgment before

departing to fetch the hot. From which moment forth the Spawer was a

marked man, whom no subterfuge or earthly ingenuity could save. Once a

drowsy voice begged Jeff to be so good as to call again.

"An' loss my penny!" cried Jeff, with fine commercial scorn at the

suggestion. "Nay, we 'll 'ave ye oot o' bed an' all, noo we 've gotten

started o' ye."

And tramped diabolically downstairs after the second bucket.

But though a little comedy of this sort, now and again, served to test

the validity of the agreement, and show the Spawer that nothing--short

of repealing the penny--could save him from the inexorable machinery

that his own hand had set in motion, there was little real need of the

bond, except to guarantee that the bath-water should be up to time.

More often than not Jeff came upon a man alertly drawn up in bed, with a

full score spread across his knees, who had been writing and erasing

hard since sunrise.

Early in the morning after the girl's visit the sun peeped over the

Spawer's sill according to custom, and the Spawer jumped out of bed to

let him in. Already Nature's symphony was in full swing--a mighty,

crescive, spinning movement of industry, borne up to him on a whirr of

indefatigable wings. The sun had cleared the cliff railings and was

traveling merrily upward on an unimpeded course, though still the

grassland lay grey in the shadow beneath its glistening quilt of dew,

and every spider's web hung silver-weighted like a net new-drawn with

treasure from the sea. He stayed by the window a space, and then let go

the curtain with an amused, reminiscent laugh.

"I wonder who on earth she is?" he said.

He scooped up the bulky armful of music-sheets that constituted his

present labors at the concerto, and went back to bed with them. But

though he made a determined desk of his knees and spread the papers out

with a business-like adjustment of pages, the work prospered but poorly

when it came to the pencil. After a short spell of it he sat back in

bed, with his hands locked under his neck staring at the window. For

the events of last night were a too inviting vintage to be left uncorked

and untasted, and out of this glowing wine of remembrance he attempted

to win back the girl's face, and did not altogether succeed. He

reclaimed certain shifting impressions of red lips exaggeratedly curled;

of great round eyes; of multiplied freckles about the brows and nose; of

a startling white throat beyond where the sun had dominion; of a shabby

blue Tam-o'-Shanter and a perfect midnight of hair--but all of them seen

grotesquely, as it might be at the bottom of the cup, with himself

blowing on the wine.

"The thing is," he decided, "I was a fool not to stare harder and ask

more questions. This comes of trying to act the gentleman."

Duly before seven came Jeff Dixon stumbling up the staircase, and dumped

the first bucket down at the Spawer's door with a ringing clash of

handle.

"Noo then," he called under the door, when he had summoned the Spawer

lustily by name, and hit the panel several resounding flat-handers (as

specified in the agreement). "It 's tonned [turned] seven o'clock, an'

another gran', fine day for ye an' all. Arny 's gotten ye some

mushrooms--some right big uns an' some little conny [tiny] uns, a gret

basket full oot o' big field. Will ye 'ev 'em for breakfast?"

"Will I?" The Spawer shot together the loose sheets gathered in

attendance upon an idle muse, and tossed them dexterously on to the

nearest chair, as though they were a pancake. "Ah, me bhoy! me bhoy!"

he called out, in the rich, mellow brogue of one whose heart was on a

sudden turned to sunlight.

"Ay, will ye?" inquired the mouth behind the door-crack.

"Ay, wull Oi?" echoed the voice of glowing fervor. "Wull Oi, bedad! me

bhoy? Mushrooms, ye say! Is 't me the bhoy for mushrooms! Arrah,

thin, me bonny bhoy, is 't me the bhoy for mushrooms!"

After a pause: "D' ye mean yes?" asked the mouth dubiously, and with

meekness.

"Ah, phwat a bhoy it is to read the very sowl o' man an' shpake it! Yis

's the word, bi the beard o' St. Pathrick, iv he had wan (which Oi 'm

doubtin'), an' a small, inconsiderable jug o' rale cowld boilin' wather

whin ye retoorn convanient wid yer next bucket, me bhoy, bi yer lave an'

savin' yer prisince!"

"Will yon little un wi' yaller stripes do?" says the mouth, brimming

with the enthusiasm of willing, and making from the door-crack for

immediate departure.

Whereupon, in receipt of the Spawer's agreement, the boots stumbled down

the stairs again, as though there were no feet in them, but had been

thrown casually from top to bottom. A minute or so later, when they had

staggered up with the second bucket, and been cast down again to fetch

the jug, and come back with it, the owner of them bestrode all these

accumulated necessities laid out upon the little landing, and let

himself into the Spawer's room--a blue-eyed, fair-haired Saxon of

thirteen, with white teeth and a quick smile, sharpened like a razor on

the cunning whetstone of the district.

"'Ere 's yer cold," said he, stooping to lift it in after him. "An'

'ere 's yer warm," bringing to view the steaming wooden pail, with as

much reminiscence of milk about the water as we have to pay for by the

gill in town. "An' 'ere 's yer rale cold boilin'. 'Ow div ye fin'

yersen this mornin'?"

"In bed," says the Spawer, "thanking you kindly, where I put myself last

night."

"Noo then, noo then!" with that indulgent tone of grown-up wisdom which

is the birthright of every baby in Ullbrig, and on which it practises

its first lisp; "are ye agate o' that road already? Ye mun 'a got the

steel i' bed wi' ye, ah think--ye seem strange an' sharp, ti-morn." He

pulled the bath from its hiding under the bed, set the mats about it,

and brought the pails over within reach. "Noo, it 's all ready an'

waitin', so ye 'ad n't need to start shuttin' yer eyes. Let 's see ye

movin', an' ah 'll be away."

The Spawer made a feeble shuffle of legs under the blankets, and smiled

with the seraphic content of one who has done his duty.

"Nay, ah s'll want to see ye on end, an' all," Jeff said sternly,

"before ah gan mi ways. Come noo, Mr. Wynne--one, two, three!"

Thus adjured, the Spawer found strength to raise his eyelids after a few

moments of bland inertness under Jeff's regard, and turned out affably

(with them down again) on to the pegged rug alongside.

"That 's better," said Jeff, with conciliatory admiration.

"Is it?" the Spawer inquired sweetly, sitting down on the bedside to

think over the matter, and rubbing form contemplatively into his hocks.

"Oh! ... Then get me the third razor from the right-hand side of the

case, and I 'll kill myself. Also the strop and the brush and jug and

soap-tube...."

"D' ye mean a shave?" asked Jeff, with some curiosity.

"Merely another name for it," the Spawer told him.

"What div ye want ti get shaved for?" Jeff persisted.

"Oh!" ... The Spawer sifted a few replies under rapid survey, as though

he were rolling a palmful of grain, and picked out one at random. "...

For fun."

"Ah thought ye was n't gannin' to shave no more while ye 'd gotten that

there piece o' yours written!"

"Whatever put that idea into your head?" asked the Spawer, in surprise.

"You," said Jeff, with forceful directness. "It was you telt me."

"I? How wicked of me to tell such a story," the Spawer said warmly.

"Ah do believe you 're gannin' after some young lady or other," Jeff

declared, by a quick inspiration.

"How dare you," said the Spawer, rising from the bed in protest, "try to

put such ideas into the head of an innocent young man, old enough to be

your father. Hither with the razor at once," he commanded, "and let 's

shave your head."

But inside, out of sight behind all this laughter, he sent a knowing,

sagacious glance to his soul.

"The young divil!" he said.

He shaved, like the Chinese executioners, with despatch; whistled

blithely through his bath as though he were a linnet hung out in the

sun, and was downstairs as soon as might be. The little room greeted

him cheerfully in its cool breakfast array, holding forth a great,

heavenly-scented garland of wall-flowers and sweet-williams and

mignonette--for all the world like some dear, diminutive, old-fashioned

damsel in white muslin--and his eye softened unconsciously to an

appreciative smile. There, too, was the sofa consecrate to Dixon. He

looked at it with a more conscious extension of smile--thinking, no

doubt, of Dixon. Then he shook the bell for breakfast, being

an-hungered, and smelling the mushrooms.

The door flew wide to Miss Bates' determined toe, as she entered with

the mushrooms in company with the bacon and toast and steaming hot milk

and coffee on the big, battered tray of black Japan, securely held at

either foremost corner with a salmon-colored fist.

Now Miss Bates was Dixon's orphan niece, whose case deserves all the

pity you can afford to give it, as we shall see. Left quite alone in

the world by the death of her father (who had no more thought for her

future than to fall off his horse, head downwards, in the dark), she was

most cruelly abducted by her wicked uncle to Cliff Wrangham (much

against her will--and his own), and imprisoned there under the

humiliating necessity of having to work like one of the family. You

must not call her the scullery-maid or the dairy-maid or the

kitchen-maid, but rather, with the blood-right to give back word for

word and go about her day's work grumbling, you must appoint her a place

among the ranks of unhappy heroines--reduced, distressed, and

down-trodden beneath the iron-shod heel of labor. She was, indeed, the

persecuted damosel of mediaeval romance, brought up to modern weight and

size and standard--not the least of her many afflictions being that she

was forcibly christened Mary Anne by heartless parents, while yet a

helpless infant, and that nobody called her anything else. Her lips

were full of prophetic utterances as to last straws; as to what certain

people (not so very many miles away) would find for themselves one

morning (not so very far ahead) when they got up and came downstairs,

and said, "Where 's somebody?" and never an answer, and no need to say

then they were sorry, as if they had n't been warned!

"Now who," the Spawer inquired craftily, dipping a liberal measurement

of spoon into the mushrooms, and smiling confidentially at Miss Bates,

who was balanced gently by the door, with its edge grasped in her red

right hand, and her cheek pressed touchingly against the knuckles--"who

is the prettiest girl in Ullbrig?"

Miss Bates threw up her nostrils at this direct challenge of romance,

and squirmed with such maidenly desire to insist her own claims through

silence, that the tray in her left hand banged about her knees like

distant thunder.

"Cliff Wrangham allus reckons ti count in wi' Oolbrig," she said, coyly.

"But leaving Cliff Wrangham out of the question," suggested the Spawer,

in a voice of bland affability.

Miss Bates' knees stiffened.

"Ah see no ways o' doin' it," she declared, tossing her head as though

she were champing a bit.

So the Spawer was left smiling over his cup, knowing no more about the

blue Tam-o'-Shanter than ever. He enjoyed his mushrooms very much, and

went twice to coffee. Then, breakfast over, he crossed over to the

piano, ran his hands over the keys, and set himself to his daily

occupation without loss of time.

Thick saffron of sunlight filled the little room. Down below the

window-sash, about the shelterless roots of the rose-tree, moored along

the wall line in barge-like flotilla and at anchor over the hard,

sunbaked path, lay gathered the Spawer's faithful band of feathered

friends, awaiting recurrence of the bounty so liberally bestowed upon

them at meals. Each time the blind stirred they uprose in spires of

expectant beak, whereat the Spawer, squinting sideways, would see the

window space set with jeweled, vigilant eyes, while afloat on the wavy

green border of grass beyond the pathway a snow-white convoy of

ducklings drew their bills from beneath fleecy breasts and got under

soft cackle of steam, ready to sail for the window at the first signal

of crumbs.

After his departure, for an hour or more nothing but sunlight stirred

the Spawer's blind. Then the voice of Miss Bates was heard in close

proximity outside, and the next moment the Spawer's first crop of Cliff

Wrangham letters was extended to him in Miss Bates' gentle fist.

"Three letters, a post-card, an' a fortygraft," said Miss Bates,

relaxing the proprietary clench of thumb (tightened recently for

dominion over the downcast Lewis), and suffering the Spawer to gather

them from her confiding hand with all the romantic symbolism of a

bouquet. "It 's good to be you an' 'ev letters sent ye wi'oot nobody

pesterin' where they come fro'. Will there be onnything for 'post' to

tek back?"

"Let 's see..." said the Spawer, skimming the postcard more rapidly than

Miss Bates had done before him. "Is he waiting?"

"It 's not a 'e," Miss Bates replied, with no manifest relish of the

fact. "An' she 's stood at kitchen door. 'Appen she 's waitin' to be

asked twice to come in an' sit 'ersen down--bud she 'll 'ave to wait.

Once is good enough for most folk, an' it mun do for 'er."

The Spawer finished the post-card, tossing it on the table, and forced

his fingers beneath the flap of the next envelope.

"What?" said he, with a smile of amused surprise. "Is the postman a

lady, then?"

"Nay," repudiated Miss Bates, stripping the amusement off his surprise,

and treating the question in grim earnest. "She 'd onnly like to be. It

'd suit 'er a deal better nor tramplin' about roads wi' a brown bag ower

'er back."

"It sounds charming enough," said the Spawer, throwing himself with a

diabolical heartiness into the idea. "What sort of a postman is she?"

"No different fro' nobody else," Miss Bates gives grudgingly, "though

she 's 'ods [holds] 'er chin where most folk's noses is. They gie 'er

six shillin' a week for carryin' letters to Cliff Wrangham an' Far

Wrangham an' round by Shippus--an' it mud be ten bi t' way she sets up."

"Six shillings a week," the Spawer mused wonderingly. "Just a shilling a

day and be a good girl for nothing on Sunday. She 'll need all the

pride she can muster to help her through on that."

"There 's twenty for t' job onny day she teks into 'er 'ead to leave

it," Miss Bates reflected, with callous indifference. "She's n' occasion

to keep it agen [unless] she likes."

The Spawer put down the first letter and opened the second. It was a

bill. "There 'll be no answer to this," he said grimly, and passed on

to the third. He gave one glance at the green Helvetian stamps under

the Luzern post-marks, and toyed with it irresolutely unopened. "I

don't think the post need wait," he said, this time casting the office

considerately into the neuter gender.

"Ah 'll tell 'er to gan, then," Miss Bates decided, with a foretaste of

the asperity that would characterise the dismissal.

"Please," said the Spawer. "With my thanks for her kindness in

waiting."

"There 's na kindness in it," Miss Bates disclaimed. "She 's got to gan

back, onny road. An' 'appen she would n't 'ave offered bud ah was ower

sharp to call of 'er before she 'd chance to get away. She mun gan 'er

ways ti Far Wrangham, then."

The Spawer had opened the third envelope, and Miss Bates was blowing

herself out in great gusts like a strenuous candle, fighting hard

against extinction, when she heard herself suddenly recalled.

"After all," he said, "I 'm going to be a woman and change my mind. Who

writes quickly writes double, and saves two pages of apology. Then I

can get back to work with a clear conscience."

"Ah 'll tell 'er she 's got to stop, then," said Miss Bates. "An' if ye

'll ring bell when ye 've finished, Lewis 'll let me know, an' ah 'll

come for letter. Ye need n't trouble to bring it."

She blew herself out to total extinction this time, and the Spawer,

throwing a leg over the table-end, turned his attention to the letter in

hand--a thin sheet of foreign note-paper, covered on three of its pages

with a firm feminine handwriting. He read it very carefully and

earnestly, his eyes running from end to end of the lines like setters in

a turnipfield, as though they followed a scent, till they brought up to

a standstill by the signature. Then he took up the photograph.

It was the face of a girl, and he studied it in such stillness and

concentration that his eyelids, lowered motionless over the downward

gaze, gave him the semblance of a sleeper. Without being beautiful, the

face had beauty, but though it took all its features under individual

scrutiny, it seemed, less as though he were concerned with their

intrinsic worth than that he was searching through them the answer to a

hidden train of inquiry. Whether he came near it or not would be

difficult to tell. The smile with which he looked up at last and

dispersed the brooding cloud of concentration might have been purely

recollective, and with nothing of the oracular about it; for it set him

straightway to pen and ink and writing-paper, staying with him the

while, and through the next few minutes the sound of his industry was

never still. Not until well over on the fourth page did the pen stay

behind in the ink-pot, as he sat back to review what was written. Then

the pen was rapidly withdrawn again, to subscribe his name, and he

addressed the letter:

"Miss WEMYSS,

Luzernerhof,

Luzern,

Switzerland."

With this in his hand, and the big bath towel and red bathing drawers

slung over his arm from their drying place on the hot sill, he made off

down the baked pathway, whistling pleasantly like a new pied piper--a

whole throng of feathered followers at his heels. By the wooden gate,

where the red-tiled pump-walk makes junction with the front path at the

kitchen end, Miss Bates waylaid him, holding out damp semi-wiped

fingers, and saying an expectant "Thank ye."

"What for?" asked the Spawer, trying to dodge on either side of her

ample bosom with an active eye for the kitchen door.

"For t' letter," said Miss Bates, unperturbed, "if ye 've written it.

Ah 'll gie it to 'er as she gans back."

"Back where from?" inquired the Spawer, with a sudden thirst for

information.

"Fro' Far Wrangham," Miss Bates told him, "... wi' letters for Barclay.

But she 'll call again on 'er way 'ome, an' ah 'll see she teks it an'

all, then."

"Thanks..." the Spawer decided on consideration, "but I think I 'll see

her myself. I want to ask about posts...."

"There 's nobbut one," Miss Bates interposed hurriedly, "an' it gans out

at 'alf-past four."

"That 's not the one I mean," the Spawer explained, and tacked on very

quickly: "Which way does she come back?"

"It 's none so easy ti say," Miss Bates parried. "She mud come back bi

Barclay's road ... or bi--bi"--the task of devising a second route being

somewhat beyond her powers at the moment, she fell back upon a

generality--"bi some other road," adding for justification: "She 'd come

thruff [through] 'edge an' all if it suited 'er."

"It 's on my way, anyhow," the Spawer determined lightheartedly. "I 'll

sit on Barclay's gate and take my chance."

He had been sitting on Barclay's gate some time, and would have sold all

share of interest in the chance for a wax vesta, when suddenly he heard

the stir of someone swiftly coming, and turning a leisurely head--with a

hand laid ready to drop to his feet when they should reach the

gate--became in a moment keenly alert to an object that showed now and

again through the green hedge: a moving object that was neither a bird,

nor a blossom, nor a butterfly, ... but a blue Tam-o'-Shanter.

*CHAPTER V*

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.

*CHAPTER VI*

The sun had slipped away through Dixon's stackgarth and twilight was

subsiding slowly in soft rose amber, like the sands of an hour-glass, as

the Spawer wheeled round Hesketh's corner. Against a tremulant pink sky

the lich-gate stood out in black profile, edged with luminous copper;

the church tower was dipped in dull red gold as far as the luffer of the

belfry; and the six Vicarage windows gleamed bloodshot from behind their

iron bars when he came upon them for the first time. A group of happy

children, playing at calling names and slapping each other down the

roadway, stopped their pastime on a sudden and ran up to take awed stock

of this presumptuous stranger, who dismounted before his reverence the

Vicar's as though he actually meant to open the gate.

At the first contact of bicycle with the railings, the gathered gloom

about the Vicarage door seemed suddenly to be sucked inwards, and the

eddying dusk reshaped itself over the priestly dimensions of Father

Mostyn.

"Ha!" The word rang out in greeting like a genial note of prelude blown

on Gabriel's trumpet. "There you are. Capital! capital! I made sure

we should find you not so far away." He waltzed down the narrow path to

open the gate, balancing both hands as though they held an invisible

baby for baptism, and its name was "Welcome." One of these--a plump,

soft, balmy, persuasive, clerical right hand,--he gave to the Spawer by

the gate; threw it, rather, as Noah might have thrown his dove across

the face of the waters, with such a beautiful gesture of benediction

that in settling down upon the Spawer's fingers it seemed to confer the

silent virtue of a blessing.

"The bicycle too," he said, wagging humorous temporal greeting towards

it with his left. "Capital! capital! I thought we should n't be

walking to-night. There 's no evening post, you see, in Ullbrig." He

flung the gate backward on its hinges as far as it would go. "Come in;

come in. Bring your bicycle along with you. Not that anybody would

dare to violate its sanctuary by the Vicarage palings, but the saddle

would absorb the dew and--let me help you."

All the time, from the gate to the doorway, his hands were hovering

busily about the bicycle without once touching it; yet with such a

consummate suggestion of assistance that the Spawer with very little

prompting could have sworn before Justices that his Reverence had

carried the machine into the hall unaided.

It was a big, bare hall--square, flagged in stone, and ringing to their

footsteps with the sonority of a crypt. From the ceiling depended a

swing-lamp of brass at the end of a triple chain. On the left-hand side

stood a hard ecclesiastical bench of black oak, primarily provided, no

doubt, for the accommodation of those visitors to whom the privilege of

a front room audience would be denied. On the right side filed a long

line of austere wooden pegs in monastic procession. A canonical beaver

obliterated the first of them; two more held up the dread square

mortar-board against the wall between them, diamond-wise, each

supporting a corner. For the rest, some sticks and umbrellas--with the

ebony divining rod of far-reaching reputation conspicuous among

them--completed the movables of the hall. The bicycle followed the

mesmeric indication of Father Mostyn's hands into place along the wall

under the hat rack, and the priest saw that it was good.

By a magnificent act of courtesy he relieved the Spawer of his cap, and

swept his own black mortar-board down the rack to make place of honor

for it--though there were half a dozen unoccupied places to either side.

Then, taking up a matchbox from the oak bench, which he shook cautiously

against his ear for assurance of its store, he invited the Spawer to

follow him, and threw open the inner door.

"The Vicar, you see," he explained, as his shoulders dipped into the

dusk over the threshold, "is his own servant in addition to being

everybody else's. He acts as a chastening object-lesson to our Ullbrig

pride. We don't go out to service in Ullbrig. We scrub floors, we

scour front-door steps, we wash clothes, we clean sinks, we empty slops,

we peel potatoes--but, thank God, we are not servants. Only his

reverence is a servant. When anything goes wrong with our nonconformist

inwards--run, Mary, and pull his reverence's bell. That 's what his

reverence is for. Don't trouble the doctor first of all. Let 's see

what his reverence says. The doctor will go back and enter the visit in

a book, and charge you for it. If anything goes worse--run, Mary, again.

Never mind your apron--he won't notice. Pull the bell harder this time,

and let 's have a prayer out of his reverence to make sure--with a

little Latin in it. The pain 's spreading. For we 're all of us

reverences in chapel, each more reverend than his neighbor; but in

sick-beds we 're very humble sinners indeed, who only want to get better

so that we may be ready and willing to go when the Lord sees fit to take

us. Or if it 's a little legal advice you 're in need of--why pay six

and eightpence to an articled solicitor? Go and knock up his reverence.

He 's the man for you--and send him a turnip for his next harvest

festival."

Genially discoursing on the Ullbrig habit as they proceeded, with an

occasionally guiding line thrown over his shoulder in bolder type for

the Spawer's assistance: "... A little crockery to your left here. Ha!

... mind the table-corner. You see the chair?" he led the way into the

right-hand room--a room larger than you would have dared to imagine from

the roadway--lighted dimly by one tall, smouldering amber window of many

panes; heavy with the smell of tobacco, and heaped up in shapeless

shadow-masses of disorder. Two great bales of carpet stood together in

one corner like the stern roots of trees that had been cut down. On the

grained side-cupboard to the left hand of the fireplace were

glasses--regiments of glasses--of all sorts and shapes and sizes and

qualities. A cumbersome early-century round table, rising like a giant

toad-stool from a massive octagonal stalk, apparently constituted the

larder, to the very verge of whose circumference were cocoa-tins,

marmalade jars, tea-cups, tea-pots, saucers; sugar-bags red and blue;

some cross-marked eggs in a pie-dish; a brown bread loaf, about three

parts through, and some cold ham.

And yet, despite the room's disorder, entering in the wake of those

benignant shoulders; treading in the constricted pathways delineated by

those sacerdotal shoes (virtually and spiritually sandals); wrapped

about with the atmosphere of genial indulgence thrown forth this side

and that from those priestly fingers, as though they swung an invisible

censer--one lacked all power to question. A swing to the left, the

fault of the chair was forgiven; a swing to the right, what fear of

treading on crockery; a swing to the front, were he swinging a lanthorn

now the way could hardly be better lighted.

Such was the power of Father Mostyn.

So, swinging and censing, and asperging and exhorting, and absolving and

exorcising till all the ninety-nine devils of disorder were cast out,

the priest passed through to the window.

"Ha!" said he, with the keen voice for a conviction realised, when he

came there. "I knew we should catch sight of Mrs. Gatheredge somewhere

about. By Fussitter's steps for choice. She suffers dreadfully, poor

woman, from a chronic enlargement"--he paused to slip his fingers into

the rings of the shutters--"of the curiosity. I believe the disease is

incurable. It will kill her in the end, I 'm afraid, as it did Lot's

wife. Nothing can be done for her, except to protect her as much as

possible from harmful excitement. If you don't mind the dark for a

moment"--the first shutter creaked upward--"we 'll fasten ourselves in

before making use of the matches. The strain of looking into his

reverence's room when he lights the lamp and has a guest inside might

prove too much for her--bring about a fatal congestion of the _glans

curiosus_. His reverence, you see, has got to think for others as well

as himself. Ha! that's better." The second shutter closed upon the

first like the great jaw of a megalosaurus, swallowing up the dwindling

remains of daylight at a gulp. "Now we can light up in all good

Christian faith and charity."

He struck a match, and so far as the Spawer could observe--since the

Vicar's back was turned--appeared to be setting fire to the stack of

papers on his writing-table. After a moment, however, when the flame had

steadied, he drew it forth transferred to the wick of a composite

candle, which he held genially horizontal while he beckoned the Spawer

forward by virtue of the signet finger.

"That 's it," he said, wagging appreciative grease-drops from the

candle. "Come along! come along! Let's see if we can't manage to find

some sort of a seat for you. We ought to do--I was sitting down in one

myself not so long ago." Still wagging the candle and performing an

amiable bear-dance on both feet in a revolving twelve-inch circle as he

considered the question on all sides of him, presently he made a pounce

into the central obscurity and dragged out a big leather-backed chair by

the arm, like a reluctant school-boy. "Here we are," says he, rejoicing

in the capture. "The very thing I had in my mind. Try that. You 'll

want to beg it of me when you 've known its beauties a time or two.

That 's the chair of chairs, _cathedra cathedrarum_. There 's comfort

for you!"

Negligently wiping the leather-work with a corner of his cassock, he

declared the chair open for the Spawer's accommodation.

From the fender, bristling with the handles of saucepans, all thrust

outward like the quills of a porcupine, he commanded a block tin

kettle--and a small spirit-lamp. Other journeyings to and fro provided

him with water in a glorious old John Bull mug, with a lemon, with a

basin of lump sugar, with two spoons, with whiskey, with a nutmeg and

grater, with cigars, contained in a massive case of embossed silver,

with cigarettes, of which the Spawer was constrained to acceptance,

having previously disappointed Father Mostyn by a refusal of his choice

Havanas; with tobacco in a fat, eighteenth-century jar, lavishly

pictured and proverbed; and with a colored, clay churchwarden as long as

a fiddlestick, that looked as if it would snap brittly in two of its own

weight at the first attempt to lift it. Lastly, all these things being

accumulated one by one, and laid out temptingly on the little round

table, with the blue flame established at the bottom of the kettle, and

tapering downwards to its junction with the wick like a sea-anemone,

Father Mostyn permitted himself to sink back hugely upon the chair,

lifting both feet from the ground as he did so, in supreme testimony to

the full ripe fruits of ease.

"Well," said he, setting his fingers to work in the depths of the

tobacco jar, "and what about the music?" His tongue appeared

reflectively in his cheek for a moment, and his keen eye fixed the far

wall on a nice point of remembrance. "Let 's see.... A symphonium?"