*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."
"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."
"Would n't one of Mrs. Dixon's pies come in rather handy there, even on
Friday?" the Spawer suggested.
"Ha!" said Father Mostyn, with a luminous eye. "I see you realize the
danger of them. The sin that comes in handy. That 's it! That we may
have strength of grace to turn away from the sin that comes in handy!
... Your tent has been pitched in the wilderness before?"
"Many times."
Father Mostyn made expressive comment with his eyebrows.
"Ha! I thought so. A misanthrope?" he asked, in genial unbelief.
"Shunning company for solitude!"
"On the contrary, I find solitude excellent company at times."
"A literary man?"
"No." The Spawer parted pleasantly with the word, unattached to any
further token of enlightenment.
"A visitor at large, I suppose!" Father Mostyn substituted, holding the
conclusion under his nose with the delicate non-insistence of a
collecting plate in church. "Here for rest and quiet."
The Spawer shook his head.
"Again no," he answered. "Rest and quiet are for the wealthy." Then he
laughed himself free of further dissimulation. "I will be frank with
you," he said. "I am none of these things. I am a poor beggar in the
musical line."
Father Mostyn's eyebrows arched.
"The musical line!" he exclaimed. "The musical line drawn through
Ullbrig! Geography upheaved! Mercator confounded! One might just as
well expect the equator. And yet ... I felt convinced ... a disciple of
art. You can't mistake it. But in Ullbrig. Is it possible?"
He wagged the staff in his hands to appreciative wonder, waltzing back
and forth over three paces as though he were performing the first steps
of a minuet.
"A singer?" he said, with a beaming eye of discovery. "Surely.... You
have the singer's eyes."
"Alas!" said the Spawer. "I have not the singer's voice."
The gaze of the Vicar went suddenly thin.
"But the eyes!" he said; and then, with a quick readjustment of vision:
"At least ... there can be no doubt.... An executant? You play?"
The Spawer sighed.
"Yes," he admitted, with smiling resignation. "I suppose I play."
"The piano, of course?" Father Mostyn conjectured, taking assent for
granted. "Ha! ..." His face melted in smiles, like golden butter, to
rapt appreciation at the vista of glorious possibilities that the
instrument conjured up before him. He lingered over the contemplation
down a long-drawn, eloquent "M-m-m-m," gazing out upon the infinite
plains of melody with a brightened eye. "You are not relying on our
aboriginal stone age pianos, of course," he said, recalling his eye to
the actual, with a sudden recollective jerk.
The Spawer showed a sunny glint of teeth.
"Hardly," he replied. "As soon as the railway people remember where
they saw it last, I hope to have one of my own."
"One of your own. Ha!" Father Mostyn's eye glistened to enthusiasm
again. "I judged so. Beautiful! Beautiful!" The ebony staff shook to
internal humor at a thought. "Fancy Mozart on an Ullbrig piano! ... or
Bach! ... or Beethoven! ..." He wagged the unspeakable with his head.
"I 'm afraid you won't find any music hereabouts."
"Thank Heaven!" the Spawer breathed devoutly. "I was afraid perhaps I
might!"
"Ha!" Father Mostyn caught quickly at the inference and translated it.
"I see; I see. A musical monastic! Coming into retreat at Cliff
Wrangham to subject his soul to a course of artistic purification and
strengthening!"
The Spawer accepted the illustration with a modest laugh.
"Well, yes," he said. "I suppose that 's it--only it 's rather more
beautiful in idea than in actuality. I should have said myself,
perhaps, that I 'd come into the country to be able to work in
shirt-sleeves and loosened braces, and go about unshaved, in baggy-kneed
trousers, without fear of friends. I 'm half a monastic and half
refugee. In towns so many of us are making music that one never gets a
chance to hear or think one's own; one's ears are full of other
people's. So I 've run away with my own little musical bone to a quiet
place, where I can tackle it all to myself and growl over the business
to my heart's content without any temptation to drop it for
unsubstantial shadows. Instead of having to work in a stuffy room, with
all the doors and windows closed and somebody knocking at you on the
next house wall, I have the sea, the cliff, the sands ... and the whole
sky above me for my workshop. It will take me all my time to fill it.
If a melody comes my way, I can hum it into shape without causing
unpleasant remarks. Nobody ever hears me, for one thing; and for
another, they would n't bother to listen if they did." Father Mostyn's
glance flickered imperceptibly for a moment, and then burned with an
exceeding steady light. "I can orchestrate aloud in the open air,
singing flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, ophicleide ... tympani ... just
whatever I please, without any risk of an official tap on the shoulder.
In a word, I can be myself ... and it 's a treat to be oneself for a
while. One gets tired of being somebody else so long, and having to go
about in fear of the great Unwritten."
"We have our great Unwritten here too," Father Mostyn told him. "I
doubt if any of us could write it if we tried. Ullbrig is weak in its
caligraphy. We do most of our writing in chalk. It suits our style
better. The pen has an awkward habit of impaling the paper, we find,
and carrying it back to the ink-pot."
"Don't teach me anything of Ullbrig's great Unwritten," the Spawer put
in quickly. "Let me violate it with an easy conscience."
"By all means," Father Mostyn invited him genially. "It will be a
chastening mortification to our pride. We are swollen with local
pride--distended with the flatulence of dissent. A little pricking will
do us no harm. I should have thought, though," Father Mostyn went on,
"that you would have sought to feed your muse on richer fare than
turnip-fields. I imagined that mountains and valleys, with castles
looking over lakes and waterfalls by moonlight, were more the sort of
stuff for stimulating a musician's fancy. Is it possible there can be
music lying latent in our Ullbrig soil?"
The Spawer smiled a sympathetic appreciation of his perplexity.
"I think there may be," he told him. "Anyhow, I have come to make the
experiment, and I 'm very well satisfied with it so far."
"Heaven be with you," Father Mostyn prayed with fervor. "It passes the
mind of man to imagine the conversion of friend Joseph Tankard into a
symphony, or friend Sheppardman Stevens as a figure in a sonata. You
have your labor."
"I am not dismayed," the Spawer laughed, with light-hearted confidence.
"And you are staying here for any length of time--a month, at least, to
start with? ... I would suggest three, if you wish to study the
district."
"It might very well be three before I leave; certainly not less than a
month."
"Excellent! Your soul is my cure while you stay. It will be my duty as
parish priest to pay you parochial visits. I hope, too, that it will be
my privilege to receive your full musical confession. And as soon as
ever you grow tired of the company of solitude up at the Cliff End, just
drop down to Ullbrig and try me for an antidote, any time you happen to
be passing. If you 're tired, or want something to drink, don't
hesitate to make use of the parish priest. That 's what he 's for.
Just call in at the Vicarage as you would at the Ullbrig Arms; you 'll
find the attention as good, and the welcome greater. After eight
o'clock you can be almost sure of catching me ... without there be sick
calls. A pain in the umbilical vicinity is an excellent worker for the
Church. Unfortunately, it passes off too soon, and then we are apt to
forget that we called the vicar out of bed in a hurry one morning...."
The first stroke of three fell across his words from the church tower
round the corner, and on the instant his genial eye was wreathed in
priestly mysticism as with the spirals of incense. The mantle of a
mighty mission descended upon him, and he gathered its folds in dignity
about his being. "Ha!" he said, grasping his staff for departure, and
verifying the time from a handsome gold chronometer, "... I must leave
you. They 're waiting.... Priestly duties...."
He did not specify who were waiting or what the priestly duties were,
but exhaled the spirit of leave-taking in an ineffable smile without
words, and vanished round Hesketh's corner--a vague, ecclesiastical
vapor. A few moments later, by the time his Reverence could have
comfortably reached the belfry, the creaking of a bell-rope overtook the
Spawer on his way homeward, and the tongue of the stagnant hour-teller
roused itself once more in public reproof of schism.
A mile and a half of roadway lies between Ullbrig and Cliff Wrangham.
As near as may be it stretches straight to the halfway house, like a
yard of yellow ribbon measured against the rod. From there the rest of
it rolls away to the Cliff End in sweeping fold of disengaged material
and the gateways set in. There are four of these, with a music all
their own as they clash behind you, wagging their loose, worn, wooden
tongues, that sometimes catch and are still with one short note, and
sometimes reiterate themselves slowingly to sleep upon the gate-post
behind you as you go. The first lets you by Stamway's long one-story
farm-house, before Stamway's three front windows, hermetically sealed,
each darkened with a fuchsia and backed with white curtains drawn as
tight as a drumhead, and Stamway's front door, an arm's length behind
the wooden palisading, that Stamway has never gone in or come out by
since he happened through with some of the parlor furniture thirty years
ago--our front door, as Father Mostyn himself tells us, being no better
than the church door for all the use we make of it. Beyond Stamway's
third window is Stamway's big semi-circular duck-pond, where Barclay of
Far Wrangham suffered shipwreck one night in November, being found
water-logged up to his knees, and crying aloud (as it is attested):
"Lord 'ev mercy on me an' gie me strength ti keep my legs while tide
gans down." Adding when rescued: "Ah nivver knowed sea so 'igh i' all
my days, nor rise so sudden. She mun 'a done a deal o' damage, Stamway.
If ah 'ad n't been strongish o' my feet, like, ah sewd 'a been swep
away, for sure."
"Nay," Stamway told him bluntly, who does not hold with dissipations in
any shape or form, being a strict Good Templar himself, and never known
the worse for liquor more than six times in the year. "It 's Red Sea
i'side of ye, ah think, 'at 's most to blame. It 's drowned a deal o'
Phaarahs in its time. Gan yer ways 'ome wi' ye, an' div n't say nowt
about matter ti onnybody. They 'll know very well wi'oot."
The second gate gives you your first foot on Dixon's land. The house
stands endwise to the sea, set deep in a horseshoe of trees; a big,
hearty, whitewashed building under bronze red tiles, two stories high in
front, that slope down backward over the dairy toward the stackgarth
till they touch its high nettles. If you are approaching it with
heelless boots and an apologetic tread, beware of the dog. The door
opens under the low scullery roof, with the sink to your right hand as
you go in, where the whole family takes turns at the _papier-mache_
basin before tea. To the left of the scullery lies the kitchen. You go
in as you go in at Stamway's: scrape your boots over a spade, knock both
heels alternately against the outer wall, skate inwards over two mats,
and give a twist sideways, watching the kitchen floor anxiously the
while to see whether the mats have done their work or will betray you.
The kitchen takes up the whole end of the house, facing two ways. The
first window watches the lane across the red tile path and the little
unclassified garden; the second comes on the broadside front of the
house, facing south, where the sun is a gorgeous nuisance after
mid-morning in summer, fading all the flowers on the figured print blind
drawn down against his intrusion. It is one of six that look out upon
the little green lawn of ragged grass, where invisible hens are
desperately busy under its long blades all day long, and chase the moths
with vehement beaks above the tangle at even. A rude rail fence bounds
it in front, that gives way at times when you dangle both legs on it,
and tints your trousers with a rich, powdery, green bloom where it
darkens under the trees by the orchard corner. Beyond this, dipping
below the sunk stone wall and the dry nettle-grown ditch in which the
ball buries itself instinctively whenever you hit it, is the big grass
field for cricket, with the wickets always standing. And beyond this,
sweeping away in every direction to right and left, go the great lagoons
of corn, brimming up to their green confines, and Barclay's farm
shimmering on the distant cliff hill against the sky-line; and the dim
Garthston windmill turning its listless sails over in dreamy soliloquy
across three miles of fattening grain and green hedge and buttercupped
pasture, with the cry of cattle and the chorus of birds, and the hum of
wings and the fiddling of hidden grasshoppers; and the celestial sound
of the sea, two fields off, lipping the lonely shore, and the basin of
blue sky above, with a burning round sun for trade mark; and the
stirring of lazy leaves, the cluck of poultry, the soothing grunt of
distant pigs, outstretched on the pungent straw and intoxicated with
content, the solaceful shutting of unseen gates, and all the thousand
things and doings, and sounds and sights and scents that lie expressed
in the words Cliff Wrangham and Dixon's by the sea.
And here the Spawer came in the early days of July, big with musical
enthusiasm and the themes for his second concerto.
They made the two end windows over to him, adjoining the orchard; the
best sitting-room--that is not even used by the family on Sundays--with
the best bedroom above; and he was very happy indeed. The diminutive
front door, all out of plumb under its three drunken panes of different
colored glass, and buried a yard deep behind its porch of flowering tea,
cut him off figuratively from the rest of the house; and the little
staircase, starting straight upward for the square yard of bedroom
landing from the sunk mat, cut him off in effect. Its tread is so steep
and so unwonted that it put him in mind of augmented seconds whenever he
went up or down, and the first step gives the door so little turning
space that you have to mount your foot upon it and twist round, with the
sneck in your stomach, to get into the Spawer's room. A little faded,
old-world, out-of-the-world room, like a faint last century sigh, dear
to the Spawer's heart on the first day; doubly dear on the second. The
dearest little room in all the world, perhaps, before the third. Even
the irresistible tide of modernity flowing into it through the Spawer's
possessions settled down in clear, hushed pools, as though the turbulent
current of Time had found rest here at last and was still. In its
nostrils the sweetest breath of decay; the pleasant, musty incense of
crumbling mortar and horse-hair, and curtains heavy in their folds with
the record of departed harvests; of air kept piously secluded under lock
and key, through a sacred life of Sundays, and never disturbed in its
religious brooding by any thoughtless gusts of worldly wind. On its
walls a choir of pink roses, seeking the ceiling in prim devotion--such
a paper as you shall no longer find at any shop in these days of
Lincrusta and Tynecastle and Anaglypta and Japanese leathers, though you
pile gold on the counter in pyramids and exhort the covetous glint in
the salesman's eye through tears.
From the hook in the center of the ceiling hangs the big brass duplex
lamp, beneath which the Spawer bends his head by the hour together,
orchestrating his concerto over a busy Jacob's ladder of full score; or,
in more material mood, where he draws up his chair to Mrs. Dixon's
immortal productions in pastry, with the little brass bell to his right
hand, that gives forth a faint, far, meadow-tinkle when he swings it.
Whereupon the twins, who have been waiting for the sound of it all the
time, under orders, barely a nose-width out of sight round the corner,
take up its expiring message with a business-like scuffle of boots and
run loudly to the kitchen in double harness, shouting as they go: "Mek
'aste wi' ye an' all. Bell 's gone."
By the left wall, abacking the staircase, the two-headed horse-hair
sofa, consecrate to Dixon, beneath the framed print of the Ponte dei
Sospiri and the twin china shepherds staring hard at the mantelpiece off
their Swiss brackets; where Dixon fills his pipe at night when the
Spawer's work is over, and puts a cheery retainer on the conversation
with his familiar:
"Noo then ... ah 'll tell ye."
And tells him in a confidential whisper, after a look at the door:
"They say Lunnon 's a rum place!"