In a way it was the appearance on the scene of Miss Katy Scott that finally revealed to Jim the degree to which he was, in fact, in love with Pam Beesly. He had known before that he had a particular attraction towards her, and that he wished intensely that she were not already riveted—much less to somehow he held in such disesteem as Roy Anderson. But he had managed to avoid truly considering how much that attraction and that wish had been united with an ardent desire for her company, a deep-seated affection for her lively personality, and a firm belief that the two of them were meant to be together by some eternal Fate. In short, he had been aware that he could fall in love with her, but had denied to himself until this time that he was already so. The arrival of Miss Scott disrupted this equilibrium. It could not be denied that, as Kevin had so infelicitously observed, she was quite similar to Pam. To other eyes, perhaps, she was as Kevin had suggested (and Roy, boorishly, confirmed) a superior iteration of the same basic model: the same friendly smile set into a more classically beautiful face; the same delightful framing of that face accomplished by a redder and more delicate set of curls; the same kind and endearing manner crowned with a greater and more charming vivacity. But while Jim could and did acknowledge the wonder of the picture so conveyed, he could not help but have brought home to him most effectively that he could see it only as a picture, as if Katy were a mere two-dimensional representation of the reality that Pam embodied in the full three.
This realization was not entirely welcome. Jim had, in fact, been endeavouring to convince himself of the opposite: that he was entirely capable of serving Miss Beesly solely as a friend and confidante, as that role seemed all that was left to him given the inevitable presence of Roy. He could not help but think that Roy’s forgetfulness about his engagement was somehow symbolic of the whole affair: what Pam most scrupulously held to he was willing to forget whenever it suited his purpose—and although Jim was too good of a person to imagine that Roy truly had any further designs on Katy than mere rhetoric, that in turn made the situation worse, from a certain angle. If Roy truly had no intention of wooing Miss Scott, why waste the breath to say that he would have done so if not for Pam? It was merely gratuitous, and it grated.
Had Jim but known it, it grated with Pam as well. She spent a sleepless night and most of the following day in a state of botheration ensuing from both her fiancé’s inconsiderateness and her general sense that everyone present had approved of Lord Malone’s thoughtlessly cutting remark in her direction. She had at first imagined Jim above such thoughts, but the fact that he danced two dances with Miss Scott in the ensuing party convinced her that he too felt much the same contrast between her charms and Katy’s. Had she examined her bosom more rigorously, she might have realized that her disappointment in Jim’s behaviour was not entirely the result of the platonic feelings that she professed to have in his direction. After all, if a bosom friend of hers showed interest in a lady, and she herself was taken, should she not wish him every success? From this perspective, was it not indeed flattering that Jim would express that interest in a lady described by all as similar to her (if in unflattering terms towards her)? Indeed, was it not wrong of her to feel what could only be described as jealousy over a man she had not the slightest intention of fixing upon for herself? But of course she did not think these things, only feeling a vague and inchoate discomfort with Jim’s attentions towards Miss Scott, and believing herself hard done by almost as much by Jim’s actions as by Roy’s choice of words. She did not dislike Miss Scott herself, finding her actually a delightful improvement over her distant cousin’s manners and behaviour, but her dislike for her power over the men in her life was a powerful motivator against her new acquaintance.
Of course, she would not have been Pam Beesly if she had fully given into this dislike. Instead, she did the opposite, throwing herself into entertaining her employer’s new house guest with a wild abandon normally foreign to her. She engaged herself to show Katy the town, rejoicing in the opportunity to explore the city without Miss Martin’s somewhat conservative chaperonage (not that she disliked Angela, but it was certainly a relief to be able to converse with a man for longer than a few minutes without hearing a huff of disapproval from behind her). She took immediate advantage of this freedom as she ran into Jim Halpert and Dwight Schrute on the high street—and to her surprise, it was Dwight who took Miss Scott aside and whispered in her ear, while she herself was treated to the pleasure of Jim’s company.
“What on earth is he doing?”
“Oh, I put a bug in our good lieutenant’s ear last night, suggesting that he could better fix his interest with the young lady by carrying one of her family’s bags on his arm. He is merely taking the opportunity to confer with her about which particular bag might best suit such a formal man as himself.”
“But Jim…” here Miss Beesly forgot, in her mirth, her annoyance with Mr. Halpert, and with it the formality with which she was accustomed to treat him, referring to him instead by the name she thought of him by—the name she had heard his best friends use for him. He beamed warmly down upon her, delighted to hear her forget herself so far. “…aren’t Scott bags for ladies?”
“Indeed they are. I wonder how that could have slipped my mind?”
She laughed up at him, and all was, for the moment, right with the world. It was right enough, indeed, that she was barely disconcerted when, as was only natural, Dwight’s conversation with Miss Scott came to a close and Jim’s salutation to that lady was greeted with what could only be called a blushing simper.
