The Post-Girl. Edward Charles Booth
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 mediæval 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,