The Post-Girl. Edward Charles Booth
of the seventeenth prelude, with the muffled A-flat bell booming its solemn death-message over the waters, and the little tear-laden boat of melody cradling its grief to silence on the ripples below.
The bell tolled no more; the little boat lay tremulous upon the echoes, and in the lingering stillness that followed, before yet the player's fingers had dared to break that sacred communion with the keys, fell all abruptly a sudden human sob.
A sudden human sob out of the darkness beyond the blind. So near and real and necessitous that the Spawer's elbows kicked backward from the keys, and the pedals went off like triggers under his feet as he spun round to the window. And yet, so far, so remote in probability, that even while he turned, he found far easier to account for it as some acute, psychical manifestation of his own emotions, rather than the expression of any agency from without. Through faith in this feeling, and no fear of it, he flung up the blind abruptly, and thrust forth his head with a peremptory "Who's there?"
Outside, the world lay wrapped in a great breathing stillness. Night's ultramarine bosom was ablaze with starry chain of mail. From the far fields came faint immaterial sounds, commingled in the suspended fragrance of hay, in warm revelations of ripening corn, in the aromatic pungency of nettles, and all the humid suffocation of herbs that open their moist pores at even. Distant sheep, cropping in ghost-like procession across misty, dew-laden clover, contributed now and again their strange, cutting, human cough. Came, as the Spawer listened, the slow, muffled thud-thud of some horse's hoofs on the turf, as it plodded in patient change of pasture, and the deep blowing of kine along the hedge-bottoms. But these, with the soft sound of the sea, spreading its countless fans of effervescing surf upon the sandy shore, were the only answer to his challenge.
He threw it out again, with the mere indolent amusement of casting pebbles into a pool, and swung one leg over the sill. Night allured him with all her mystic altar lights. He was of a mind to sit there and fling open his soul like a lattice to her seductive minstrelsy; drain deep draughts of celestial gladness from the overflowing tankard of stars. In the dead black porch of flowering tea, with one pale planetary flame shining through its tabernacled branches, no stir. No stir in the square black rug of long grass, softened in its centre to grey silver-point. No stir in the massed shadow of trees, uprising rigid like dim marine growths in a dense ocean of azure.
"Well?" he asked of the stillness, swinging his leg with a complacent tattoo of heel against the brickwork, and smiling indulgence at his own little extension in folly. "For the last time! One ... two ... three. Or must I fire?"
The stars twinkled him in irresistible summons to the sea. Even the sea itself raised its supplicative song a little louder, he thought, as he listened, and called "Come!" The night was too full of blessings to be suffocated untimely beneath the blankets; all his senses were making outcry for its bounty, and the soul of him hearkened. Just one stroll to the edge of the water and back before bed. It was no new thing for him to do. He reached his hat from its insecure slant upon the pile of music topping the piano, and clasped the sill with both hands for descent.
As he did so, in the still pause presaging the act, he heard the frenetic tugging of someone at the sticky orchard gate, that takes six pulls to open and three and a kick to close, ever since Jabe Stevens painted it drab, with black latch pickings. He heard the quick repeated pant of the pulls; felt in a flash the desperate occasion that was urging them; felt the very prayers surging about him on their way from a soul in turbulent tussle against destiny, and next moment was down on his feet before the window with a clear, arrestive "Hello!"
The click of the liberated latch; garments in swift full stir; a prolonged rending, like the descent of some four-octave chromatic, and a sudden breath-held, death-like stillness fell upon his landing. For a moment he could elucidate nothing by the look. Sight was sealed up in yellow lamplight. Two steps forward and the bondage was burst. He made out the line of flat wood stakes bounding the orchard to its half width, whence rough green rails complete the demarcation; and the gate, thrown three quarters open; and by it, the dim, motionless figure of a girl.
CHAPTER III
All that had been silence before was swallowed up at a gulp in the sudden deeps of discovery. The Spawer, with legs planted forcefully apart, chin thrown forward, and sidelong listening ear, tugged at the tawny end of his moustache. It is not altogether a child's task, whatever may be thought to the contrary, to address discreetly a panting feminine figure in the darkness at five paces, that has drawn the undesirable fire of our attention nearing midnight, and may be either a common garden thief or a despicable henroost robber; or a farm wench, deflected by the piano on her way home; or a mere tramp, bungling the matter of a free straw bed, and in trouble because appearances are against her; or none of these things at all, but something quite other, utterly beyond the scope of divination. And since it is neither generous to approach distress through the narrow portals of suspicion, nor desirable to doff one's hat in premature respect to what may turn out, after all, mere unworthy fraud, the Spawer held his peace a while in courteous attendance upon the girl. Before him her black silhouette remained rigid, stilled unnaturally, like a bird, in that last tense moment of surrender beneath the fowler's fingers. She stood, part way through the gate, with averted head—one hand straining the gate-post to her for strength and stay—the other clutched to quell the turbulence at her breast. In such wise, for a short century of seconds, discoverer and discovered waited motionless the one upon the other.
Pity for the girl's confusion, after a while, moved the Spawer when it seemed she meant to make no use of the proffered moments. He broke up silence with a reassuring swing of heel, though without advancing.
"I 'm sorry if I frightened you," he said, in an open voice, devoid of any metallic spur of challenge or odious trappings of suspicion. "I did n't mean to do that.... But..." He paused there for a moment, with the conjunction trailing off in an agreeable tag of stars for the girl's use, and then, when she caught her breath over a troubled underlip, took it up himself. "... We 're not accustomed to callers quite so late ... and I came out in a bit of a hurry. Is there anything I can do for you?"
Beautiful question of solicitude for a guilty conscience, that he smiled over grimly as he said it. He knew well enough that the very utmost he could have done for her would have been to keep the other side of the sill till she made good her escape. And he knew, too, that some part of her must have suffered tear by a couple of yards or so, but that was a matter might very well wait over awhile. For the present, all he wanted was a little enlightenment; later, the floodgates of compassion could be liberally loosened if required. He despatched his words, and dipped a hand into his trouser's pocket, making a friendly jingle of keys and coppers. The unperemptory tone of his voice, the kindness of the undiminished distance he kept, and this last show of leisurely dispassion did their work and raised the girl's head.
"Oh, I 'm sorry ... and ashamed!" she gulped, battling forth into the open through a threatening tumult of tears. "It 's all my fault ... every bit of it. I ought never to have come." She stopped momentarily, midway through her words, gripping on to fortitude in silence as to a hand-rail, till the big looming sob had gone by. "... So close. And I ought n't to have come ... at all, I know. But it 's too late now. Wishes won't do any good. Oh ... forgive me, please."
Her voice, even in the listening stillness of leaves, was almost inaudible, but there was the rare mellow sweetness of blown pipes about it such as the Spawer had not been prepared to hear at this time, and in this place. The musical ear of him opened swiftly wide to its magic like a casement to some forerunning spring breeze; and his heart stirred on a sudden to wakefulness—keen bird with a most watchful eye. Whatever else, it were absurd to couple vulgar delinquencies with so soft a mouthpiece. He flung the lurking idea afar, and a delightful flame of wonder grew up within him, illuminating possibility.
"Certainly," he said, in answer to her petition, striving to lull the girl's alarms with his manner of easy consequence. "I 'll do my best. But tell me first what for."
"For ... for what I 've done," said the girl unsteadily, each word tremulous with a tear. "I did n't mean—to disturb you. I ought to have spoken—when you called—first of all. But I could n't—somehow—and I never expected you—by the window. I thought—perhaps—the door. And I feel so mean—and miserable—and wretched...." Her voice suddenly went