The Post-Girl. Edward Charles Booth
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?"
The Spawer adjusted the balance gently: "A concerto."
"Ha! a concerto." Enlightenment swept over the Vicar's face like a tide of sunlight, and his shoulders shook as with the laughter of gladsome things. "Beautiful! beautiful! To think of our stubborn Ullbrig soil's being made to yield a concerto. Had it been a turnip now. But a concerto! Ullbrig knows nothing of concertos. It would know still less if you were to explain. Explanations only confuse us—besides being an unwarrantable violation of our precious rights of ignorance. Tell friend Jevons you 're at work upon a concerto, and see what he says. He 'll tell you, yes, his son 's got one." Father Mostyn cast the forefinger of conviction at him. "Depend upon it, that 's what he 'll tell you. His son 's got one. A beauty with bells that he gave eighteenpence for. Meaning one of those nickel-silver mouth-organs such as we can't go to Hunmouth Fair without bringing back with us—unless we plunge for a concertina. It 's got to be one or the other, or people might n't think we 'd been to Hunmouth Fair at all, and that 's a light too glorious to be hid under a bushel. But it 's all one in name to us whatever we get. We call it a 'music.' Whether it 's a piano, or a fiddle, or a song, or a symphonium, or a sonata, or a Jew's harp, or a concertina, or a sackbut—the definition does n't alter. We call it a 'music.' 'So-and-So 's gotten a grand music.' 'It 's a grand music, yon.' That 's our way."
The little black cat of a kettle, after purring complacently for a while over the blue flame, suddenly arched its lidded back and spat out across the table.
"Ha!" Father Mostyn turned gladsomely at the sound. "There 's music for you. Come; you 're a whiskey man? Say when and fear not."
"If you don't mind, I 'll say it now," said the Spawer, with laughing apology.
"No?" His Reverence held out the uncorked bottle by the neck, persuasively tilted. "Think twice, my son, before committing yourself to hasty judgments." Then seeing the Spawer was not to be moved: "A glass of sherry, then? Benedictine? Capital! You won't beat Benedictine for a standard liqueur. Apart from its pleasant effect upon the palate, it has a valuable corroborant action on the gastric juices, and tends to the promotion of chyme."
All in speaking he produced the familiar flagon from the sideboard, poured out a cut-glass thumbful of amber. This act of hospitality fulfilled, he turned, with no diminished zeal, to the serving of his own requirements. He sipped warily from an edge of his smoking glass to verify his expectations of the flavor, nipped his lips for a moment in judicial degree, and subsided slowly upon the chair in a long breath of rapture, extending the tumbler towards the Spawer for wassail—"here 's success to our concerto, and may your days be long in the land with us. We 're a stiff-necked and obstinate generation, who worship gods of our own making, and have more than a shrewd idea that the devil 's in music (we know for certain he 's in the Church); but we bake good pies for all that, and our nonconformist poultry can't be beaten."
The Spawer laughed. "And our postman?" he asked.
CHAPTER VII
"Ha!" Father Mostyn played upon the note momentously, as though he were throwing open the grand double gates of discussion. "Pamela, you mean! I knew we should come to that before long. No help for it." He subpoenaed the Spawer for witness to the wisdom of his conclusions with a wagged forefinger. "But Pamela 's not Ullbrig. Pamela was n't fashioned out of our Ullbrig clay. She 's not like the rest of us; comes of a different class altogether. You can't mistake it. Take note of her when she laughs—you 're a musical man and you 'll soon see—she covers the whole diapason. Ullbrig does n't laugh like that. Ullbrig laughs on one note as though it were a plough furrow. There 's nothing of cadence about our Ullbrig laughter—that 's a thing only comes with breed. Notice her eyebrows, too, when she 's speaking, and see how beautifully flexible they are." The Vicar warmed to the subject with the enthusiasm of a connoisseur.
"No—there 's nothing of our clay in Pamela's construction. Pam is like charity; suffereth long and is kind. Envieth not; vaunteth not herself; is not puffed up. Doth not behave herself unseemly; seeketh not her own; is not easily provoked; thinketh no evil. Ullbrig does n't understand Pam any more than it understands the transit of Venus or the rings of Saturn. Pam 's above our heads and comprehension. Because she goes to church on Sunday, and does n't walk with our Ullbrig young men down Lovers' Lane at nightfall, we say she 's proud. Because she 's too generous to refuse them a word in broad daylight, when they ask for it, we say she 's forward. Because she never says unkind things of us all in turn behind our backs, and won't listen to any, we say she 's disagreeable. Because she does n't read the post-cards on her way round, and tell us whether Miss So-and-So ever hears from that Hunmouth young gentleman or not, we say she keeps a still tongue in her head—which is our Ullbrig idiom for a guilty conscience. That we had only a few more Pams—with due gratitude to Blessed Mary for the one we 've got."
"As a postman," said the Spawer, entering into the Vicar's appreciation, "she 's