THE POST-GIRL

BY

EDWARD C. BOOTH

New York GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers

Copyright, 1908, by THE CENTURY Co.

Published, June, 1908

THE POST-GIRL

CHAPTER I

When summer comes Mrs. Gatheredge talks of repapering her parlor, and Ginger gets him ready to sleep in the scullery at a night's notice, but the letting of lodgings is not a staple industry in this quarter of Yorkshire, and folks would fare ill on it who knew nothing of the art of keeping a pig or growing their own potatoes in the bit of garden at the back.

Visitors pass through, indeed, in large enough numbers between seed- and harvest-time (mostly by bicycle), staring their way round the village from house to house. But all that ever develops is an occasional request for a cup of water—in the hope, no doubt, that we may give them milk—or an interrogation as to the road to somewhere else. Steg's reply to the latter, through a long succession of summers, has waxed into a set formula, which he prepares with all the exactness of a prescription:

"There 's two rawds [roads] tiv it," he says, measuring out his words carefully against the light of inward understanding, like tincture in a chemist's vial. "A right un an' a wrong un. 'Appen ye 'd as lief gan right un. Wrong un 's a long way round."

These are mere migratory birds of visit, however—here this morning and gone by noon—leaving little trace of their passage beyond a footmark on somebody's doorstep or a mustard-stained sandwich-paper blowing drearily against the tombstones in the churchyard. Residential visitors are almost unknown to Ullbrig. One or two petty tradesmen bring their wives and families from Hunmouth for cheap sojourn during the summer months, but they are more residential than visitors, recurring each year with the regularity of harvest, and blending as imperceptibly with Ullbrig life as the water with Jevons' milk. They have become to all intents and purposes a part of us, and are never spoken of as "visitors"—they are merely said to be "wi' us again" or just "coom back." The class of visitor which is lacking to Ullbrig is the pleasure-seeking variety which comes for a month, is charged unprotesting for lights and fire, never lends a hand to the washing of its own pots, and pays town price for country butter. Our local designation for such guests—when we get them—is "spawers."

The word is apt to strike chill on urban understandings when heard for the first time. I remember when Ginger sprang it upon me on the initial occasion of my hearing it, I was filled for a moment with an indefinable sense of calamity.

"Well," were Ginger's words, greeting me and leaving me almost in a breath. "Ah wish ah mud stay longer wi' ye noo, but ah mun't. We 've gotten spawers i' 'oose [house]."

I shook his earth-worn hand with that degree of comprehensive warmth which should suggest sorrowing sympathy to a mind quickened through trouble, but nought beyond fervor to the ruder tissues of health.

"There 's always something ... for some of us..." I said oracularly.

"We mud as well 'ev 'em as onnybody," Ginger remarked, with what I took to be rare resignation at the time, and we parted.

It was in the green, early days of July, when the corn waved slumberously back and forth over the hedge-tops, beating time to soundless adagios like a sleepy-headed metronome, and as yet there were few scorched patches in summer's rippling gown of emerald silk, that the Spawer arrived. Steg was one of the first to give tidings of his advent to Ullbrig, and after him Mrs. Grazer, who met him on his way home, bearing the intelligence laboriously with his mouth open, like a brimming pail of milk.

"'Ev ye 'eard 'ow Mester Jenkison' mother' sister-in-law 's gettin' on, Steg?" she asked him, before he was ready to speak first.

"Ay," says Steg, with a watchful eye upon his own intelligence, set momentarily down, and waiting his turn.

"'Ow is she, then?"

"She 's deead."

"Nay! Is she an' all! Poor owd woman!"

"She is that!" says Steg, warming with a sense of triumph to the work, as though he had the credit of her demise. It is good to be the bearer of tidings, and feel oneself a factor in the world's rotation. "She deed ti morn [this morning] at aif-past six."

"An' when 's t' buryin'? Did y' 'ear?"

"Ay, they telt me," says Steg.

"It 'll be o' Thosday, ah 's think."

"Nay, bud it weean't," Steg replied, mounting up another step by contradiction toward the top rung of his ladder. "Wensday. There 's ower much thunder about for keepin'." Then he struck up still higher without loss of time. "They 've gotten a spawer up at Clift," he said.

The intelligence was a guest at every tea-table in Ullbrig the same day, Steg and Mrs. Grazer having done wonders in its dissemination under wholesome fear of forestalment. Mrs. Grazer beat Steg by a short head at Shep Stevens', but Steg cut the triumph away from under her feet at Gatheredge's. To all intents and purposes they ran a dead heat at the brewery, only Mrs. Gatheredge's superior riding put Steg's nose out on the post.

"Steg 'll 'a telt ye they 've gotten a spawer up at Clift Yend," she said, with diabolical cunning, just as Steg's mouth was opening for the purpose, snatching the prize from his very lips.

"Nay, Steg 's telt us nowt," repudiated the brewer. "Steg 's nobbut just this minute walked i' yard. Ev' they an' all? Up at Clift Yend?"

"'E come o' Monday," Steg chimed in morosely, picking up what odd crumbs of attention were left him from the purloin.

"O' Monday, did 'e? There 's nobbut one on 'em, then?" said the brewer interrogatively.

"That's all," answered Steg, left in undisputed possession of the field by the departure of Mrs. Grazer into the internals of the brewer's house by the back.

"Ay.... So there 's nobbut one on 'em, then? It 'll be newspaper man fro' Oommuth [Hunmouth], ah 's think—'im 'at was 'ere last back-end."

"Nay, bud no," Steg answered, with decision, plucking up brightly at the sight of unspoliated pickings. "It 's a right new un this time."

"'E 'll be fro' Oommuth, though," said the brewer, going down squarely on the bilge of a beer barrel after a cautious look backward.

"Nay, an' 'e 's not fro' Oommuth naythur," said Steg, with zest.

"Why! Where is 'e fro', then?" asked the brewer, in genuine surprise. Visitors to Ullbrig who don't come from Hunmouth can hardly be conceived to come from anywhere. We divide the world into two constituents, town and country, Hunmouth being the town.

"Ah nivver thought to ask," said Steg, after a thinking pause; "bud 'e 's not fro' Oommuth.... Ah 'm none so sure," he added, straining the chords of his actual intelligence for the sake of a little extra effect, "'t 'e 's not fro' Lunnon!"

"Ah think not, Steg," said the brewer quickly, rejecting the probability without consideration, like the blind man's box of matches pushed under his nose in Hunmouth.

"Ah think not," the brewer repeated. "Lunnon 's a long way off 'n Clift Yend."

"Ay, but ah 'm none so sure, ah tell ye," Steg urged, real conviction growing in him out of contradiction, as is the way of all flesh. "'E 's lived a deal i' furrin parts, onny'ow," he said craftily, making a counter demonstration to relieve pressure on the main issue, and retiring under its cover from the assailed position.

"Which on 'em?" inquired the brewer, with disconcerting directness.

"T' most part on 'em, ah think," Steg replied, boldly.

"France, 'as 'e?" asked the brewer, testing this broad statement of fact by the application of specifics.

"Ay," said Steg, with a big bold affirmative like the head of a tadpole, thinning out all suddenly into a faint wriggling tail of protective caution—"ah think so."

"Jarmany?" asked the brewer.

"Ay," said Steg again, "... ah think so."

"Roo-shah?" the brewer went on judicially, suddenly of a mind to turn this interrogation into a geographical display, but with a keen eye for the limits of his territory.

"Ay," repeated Steg, gathering such momentum of assent that he had buried his reply in the brewer's second syllable before he could stop himself, with his tail sticking out by the interrogation mark—"ah think so."

"Hitaly?" queried the brewer, pausing through a futile endeavor to pronounce whether America was a foreign part or not. "Choina? Hindia?"

"Nay," Steg demurred, with wily scruple, "ah 'm none so sure about t' last."

"'E 's traviled a deal, 'owseumdivver," said the brewer. "What 's brought 'im to Clift Yend, ah wonder ... of all places i' world. 'E 's not for company, it seems, bi t' looks o' things. Did y' 'ear owt why 'e 's come?"

"Naw," said Steg. "They say 'e writes a deal of 'is time."

"'Appen 'e writes for t' paper," the brewer suggested.

"Nay, ah div n't think that 's it," Steg said, taking the brewer's conclusion into his own hands like an ill-sharpened pencil and repointing it. "'E 's nowt to do wi' papers, by what ah can mek oot. 'E 's ta'en rooms for a month at start, wi' chance o' stoppin' on if 'e likes 'em, an' 'e 's brought a hextry deal o' things wi' 'im. 'E 's brought a bath...."

"A bath!" said the brewer blankly, interrogation and interjection in visible conflict over the word. Complete house furnishing in Ullbrig stops at the wash-tub. Beyond this all is vanity. "What diz 'e want wi' a bath?"

"Nay..." Steg said, declining any conflict on the unaccountabilities of strange men from far places. "Ah 'm nobbut tellin' ye same as they 've telt me," he added half-apologetically, in fear lest he might be accused of sympathies with false worship. "It 's a rare great bath an' all, by what they say—like one o' them big drums wi' a cover tiv it. Ye 've nobbut to gie it a ding wi' yer 'and an' it sets up a growl same as thunder. Onny road, that 's what Jeff Dixon says, an' 'e ought to know. 'E wor dingin' it all last neet."

"Some folks 'as fancies," said the brewer, with impersonal scorn.

"Ay ... an' ah was nigh forgettin'..." Steg struck in. "'E 's gotten a 'armonium comin' an' all. It 'll ought to be 'ere before so very long, noo."

"A 'armonium!" exclaimed the brewer, trying the word incredulously upon his understanding. "Nay," he said, after testing it with his own lips, "nay, ah think ye 're wrong this time, Steg."

"A pianner, then," Steg hazarded, after staring fixedly for a space with a wrestle going on laboriously behind his eyes. "It's all same thing i' yend."

"Nay, nor a pianner naythur," ruled the brewer, refusing the substitute with equal disregard. "Folks dizz n't tek 'armoniums nor pianners about wi' 'em fro' place to place i' that road. It 'll be a concerteeny ye 're thinkin' on, 'appen."

"Nay, it weean't," Steg said slowly.

"What'll it be, then?"

"It 'll be a pianner," he said, carrying the contention relentlessly in his mouth as a dog does a bone, and, seeing that, the brewer did not risk wresting it from him by force.

"'Oo says it will?" he inquired, temporising warily after this convincing display of faith.

"I do," said Steg, toll-gathering masterfully for himself.

"Ay, bud 'oo telt you?" demanded the brewer.

"Gyles' lad," said Steg.

"An' 'oo telt 'im?" the brewer continued, pursuing the inflexible interrogative path to fundamentals.

"Arny."

"Arny Dixon?"

"Ay, 'e did."

"Arny Dixon 'issen?"

"Ay, Arny Dixon 'issen. There 's not two of 'em."

"Arny Dixon telt Gyles' lad and Gyles' lad telt you, ye say?"

"Ay, ah do," said Steg, with a voice that cried for no abatement of its responsibility.

The brewer gave one thigh a moment's respite off the hard cask, and after that the other.

"Well!" he said, sententiously. "There 'll be time enough an' all, Steg. Them 'at lives longest sees most, they say."

"Ay!" Steg assented, with equanimity.

A shadow fell across the brewer's yard; an irresolute, halting shadow—the shadow of one with half a mission and two minds.

"'Neet, James," greeted the brewer to the yard-end, and the shadow deepened, falling finally over an adjacent beer barrel with a couple of nods and an expectoration.

"We 've gotten company up at Gift Yend, then," it said.

CHAPTER II

Where the roadway splits on the trim, green prow of Hesketh's high garden-hedge, dipping down like the trough of a wave and sliding along the cool, moss-grown wall beneath a tangle of leafy rigging towards the sunlit opens of Cliff Wrangham, Father Mostyn, deep in his own thoughts, came suddenly upon the Spawer, going homeward.

He was a tall, lithe figure of young manhood, in snowy holland, with the idle bearing of one whose activity is all in the upper story; eyes brown, steadfast, and kindly, less for the faculty of seeing things than of thinking them; brows lying at ease apart, but with the tiny, tell-tale couple-crease between them for linked tussle—brows that might hitch on to thought with the tenacity of a steel hawser; a jaw fine, firm, and resolute, closing strongly over determination, though void of the vicious set of obstinacy, with a little indulgent, smiling, V-shaped cleft in the chin for a mendicant to take advantage of; lips seemingly consecrate to the sober things of this life, yet showing too a sunny corner for its mirthmakings and laughters beneath the slight slant of moustache—scarcely more tawny than its owner's sun-tanned cheeks where it touched them. Father Mostyn awoke suddenly from his musing to the awareness of a strange presence, encompassing it with the meshes of an inquiring eye. Before the Spawer could extricate his glance from the toils of its inadvertent trespass, the dread "Ha!" had completed his enslavement and brought him up on his heel sideways at the moment of passing.

"... A stranger within our gates!" Father Mostyn observed, with courteous surprise, rocking ruminatively to and fro on his legs in the roadway, and dangling the ebony staff in both palms. He drew a comprehensive circle with its ferrule in the blue sky. "You bring glorious weather," he said, contemplating the demarcated area through rapt, narrowed lashes, and sensing its beneficence with the uplifted nostrils of zest.

The Spawer unlocked his lips to a frank, boyish smile that lighted up his face in quick response like the throwing open of shutters to the sunlight. Also, just a little emanative twinkle that seemed to suggest previous acquaintance with the Vicar over some Cliff Wrangham rail.

"To be truthful," he laughed, "it 's the weather that brings me. One feels it almost a sin, somehow, to let such a sun and sky go unenjoyed. The rain always comes soon enough."

"Not till we 've prayed for it," Father Mostyn decided with prompt reassurance, making critical diagnosis of the sky above. "... Prayed for it properly," he hastened to explain. "Indiscriminate Ullbrig exhortation won't do any good—with a sky like that. You can't mistake it. The meteorological conditions point to prolonged set fair." He dismissed the weather with a sudden expulsion of glance, and put on his atmospheric courtesy of manner for personal approaches. "... A pilgrim to the old heathen centre of Ullbrig?" he inquired, diffusing the direct interrogation over the Spawer's holland trousers. "Brig, the Bridge, and Ull, or Uddle, the Idol—the Village of Idols on the Bridge. The bridge and the idols have departed ... the church is partly built of stones from infidel altars ... but the heathen remain. Large numbers of them. Do you come to study our aboriginal habits and superstitions? ... A student of Nature at all?"

The Spawer exchanged a happy negative.

"Hardly a student," he said, rejecting the title with pleasant demur. "I 'm afraid I can't lay claim to that. A lover, perhaps," he substituted. "That leaves ignorance free scope. Love is not among the learned professions."

"Ha!" Father Mostyn commented, considering the reflection, like the scent of a cigar, through critical nostrils. "A lover of Nature; with a leaning towards philosophy. You come far to do your love-making?"

"Fairly far—yes. I am fond of the country," the Spawer explained, with simple confession of fact, "and the sea."

"We have not much country to offer you hereabouts, I fear," Father Mostyn said, looking deprecatingly round it. "We have land." He leaned interrogatively on the proffered alternative. "If that 's any good to you. A fine, heavy, obstinate clay like the rest of us. We are sweaters of the brow in these parts. We find it an excellent substitute for soap. All our life is given over to the land. We are born on it, brought up on it, buried in it. We worship it. It is the only god we bow to. Notice the back of an Ullbrig man; it is bent with devotion to the soil. We don't bend like that in church. To bend like that in church is idolatry. So we go to chapel and unbend instead, and hold mighty tea-meetings in honor of Jehovah. Notice our eyes too; take stock of them when we give you 'Good day' in the road. There is a peculiar, foxy, narrow-grooved slant in them through incessant following of the furrow. You can't mistake it. You don't need any pretensions to metoposcopy to read our faces. We are of the earth, earthy. When we turn our eyes towards Heaven, we are merely looking for rain. If we turn them up again, we are merely looking for the rain to stop. Our lives are elemental and our pleasures few. To speak ill of one's neighbor, to slander the vicar, to deride the church, to perpetuate heresy, to pasture untruths—spargere voces in vulgum ambiguas—to fly off at a tangent on strong beer—these are among our catalogue of homely recreations.

"If you were staying here to study us for any length of time—but I suppose you are the mere sojourner of a day, gone from us again in the cool of the evening with the night-moths and other flitting things?"

The Spawer laughed lightly.

"Not quite so soon as that," he said. "And you make me glad of it. No; I am pitching my tent in this pleasant wilderness awhile."

Father Mostyn opened his roomy eye to the reception of surprise.

"Ha! Is it possible? Within measurable distance of us?"

"At Cliff Wrangham."

"Cliff Wrangham!" The ecclesiastical eyebrows elevated themselves up out of sight under Father Mostyn's cap-rim. "So near and yet so far! Friends?" he added, as the eyebrows came down, casting over the word a delicate interrogative haze.

The Spawer cleaved its meaning.

"I am making them," he said. "At present I am merely a lodger."

"Merely a lodger," Father Mostyn repeated, using the words to nod over, as was his wont. "And Mrs. Dixon, I suppose, is our landlady? Ha! I thought so. She has the monopoly hereabouts. A tower of nonconformity in a district pillared with dissent—but a skilled cook. A cook for an abbot's board. Only describe what a dish smells like and she will come within reasonable approach of its taste on the table. You won't have much fault to find with the meals—I 've tried 'em. Her chicken-pies are a specialty. There 's not a single crumb of vice in the whole crust, and the gravy glues your lips together with goodness. The pity is they are not even Protestant pies, and are impiously partaken of on Fridays and other holy fast days. You need never fear for a dinner. All you have to do is to go out into the yard and point your finger at it. We possess an agreeable knack of spiriting poultry under the crust hereabouts without unnecessary formula. It is inherited. Beef will give you trouble, and mutton; both in the buying and the masticating. We kill once a week. Killing day falls the day after you want steak in a hurry—or has fallen some days before. That is because we sell first and slaughter second. Our Ullbrig butchers leave nothing to chance. They keep a beast ready in the stall, and as soon as the last steak 's sold by allotment, they sign the execution warrant. Not before, unless the beast falls ill. In the matter of fish we are better off. We don't go down to the sea in ships for it—we should come back without it if we did. We get it at Fussitter's. Ready tinned."

"Ready tinned!" said the Spawer. "It sounds rather deadly, does n't it? It puts me in mind of inquests, somehow."