Read Ebook: The Post-Girl by Booth Edward Charles

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Ebook has 2188 lines and 134203 words, and 44 pages

"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.

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."

"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."

"Ha!" Father Mostyn made haste to explain. "You must n't buy it out of the window. That 's where the deadliness comes in. The sunlight has a peculiar chemical action upon the tin, liberating certain constituents of the metal exceedingly perilous to the intercostal linings. Insist on having it from under the counter. Ask for tinned lobster--as supplied to his reverence the vicar...." He wrote out the instructions with his right forefinger upon the left-hand palm. "To be kept in a Cool, Dark Place under the Counter. The crayfish brand. Nothing but the crayfish brand. Ask for the vicar's lobster--they 'll know what you mean--and see that you get it."

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