They entered Anglebury Station in the dead, still time of early morning,
the clock over the booking-office pointing to twenty-five minutes to
three. Manston lingered on the platform and saw the mail-bags brought
out, noticing, as a pertinent pastime, the many shabby blotches of wax
from innumerable seals that had been set upon their mouths. The guard
took them into a fly, and was driven down the road to the post-office.
It was a raw, damp, uncomfortable morning, though, as yet, little rain
was falling. Manston drank a mouthful from his flask and walked at once
away from the station, pursuing his way through the gloom till he stood
on the side of the town adjoining, at a distance from the last house in
the street of about two hundred yards.
The station road was also the turnpike-road into the country, the first
part of its course being across a heath. Having surveyed the highway up
and down to make sure of its bearing, Manston methodically set himself
to walk backwards and forwards a stone’s throw in each direction.
Although the spring was temperate, the time of day, and the condition
of suspense in which the steward found himself, caused a sensation of
chilliness to pervade his frame in spite of the overcoat he wore. The
drizzling rain increased, and drops from the trees at the wayside fell
noisily upon the hard road beneath them, which reflected from its glassy
surface the faint halo of light hanging over the lamps of the adjacent
town.
Here he walked and lingered for two hours, without seeing or hearing a
living soul. Then he heard the market-house clock strike five, and soon
afterwards, quick hard footsteps smote upon the pavement of the street
leading towards him. They were those of the postman for the Tolchurch
beat. He reached the bottom of the street, gave his bags a final
hitch-up, stepped off the pavement, and struck out for the country with
a brisk shuffle.
Manston then turned his back upon the town, and walked slowly on. In two
minutes a flickering light shone upon his form, and the postman overtook
him.
The new-comer was a short, stooping individual of above five-and-forty,
laden on both sides with leather bags large and small, and carrying a
little lantern strapped to his breast, which cast a tiny patch of light
upon the road ahead.
‘A tryen mornen for travellers!’ the postman cried, in a cheerful voice,
without turning his head or slackening his trot.
‘It is, indeed,’ said Manston, stepping out abreast of him. ‘You have a
long walk every day.’
‘Yes--a long walk--for though the distance is only sixteen miles on the
straight--that is, eight to the furthest place and eight back, what with
the ins and outs to the gentlemen’s houses, it makes two-and-twenty for
my legs. Two-and-twenty miles a day, how many a year? I used to reckon
it, but I never do now. I don’t care to think o’ my wear and tear, now
it do begin to tell upon me.’
Thus the conversation was begun, and the postman proceeded to narrate
the different strange events that marked his experience. Manston grew
very friendly.
‘Postman, I don’t know what your custom is,’ he said, after a while;
‘but between you and me, I always carry a drop of something warm in my
pocket when I am out on such a morning as this. Try it.’ He handed the
bottle of brandy.
‘If you’ll excuse me, please. I haven’t took no stimmilents these five
years.’
‘’Tis never too late to mend.’
‘Against the regulations, I be afraid.’
‘Who’ll know it?’
‘That’s true--nobody will know it. Still, honesty’s the best policy.’
‘Ah--it is certainly. But, thank God, I’ve been able to get on without
it yet. You’ll surely drink with me?’
‘Really, ‘tis a’most too early for that sort o’ thing--however, to
oblige a friend, I don’t object to the faintest shadder of a drop.’ The
postman drank, and Manston did the same to a very slight degree. Five
minutes later, when they came to a gate, the flask was pulled out again.
‘Well done!’ said the postman, beginning to feel its effect; ‘but guide
my soul, I be afraid ‘twill hardly do!’
‘Not unless ‘tis well followed, like any other line you take up,’ said
Manston. ‘Besides, there’s a way of liking a drop of liquor, and of
being good--even religious--at the same time.’
‘Ay, for some thimble-and-button in-an-out fellers; but I could never
get into the knack o’ it; not I.’
‘Well, you needn’t be troubled; it isn’t necessary for the higher class
of mind to be religious--they have so much common-sense that they can
risk playing with fire.’
‘That hits me exactly.’
‘In fact, a man I know, who always had no other god but “Me;” and
devoutly loved his neighbour’s wife, says now that believing is a
mistake.’
‘Well, to be sure! However, believing in God is a mistake made by very
few people, after all.’
‘A true remark.’
‘Not one Christian in our parish would walk half a mile in a rain
like this to know whether the Scripture had concluded him under sin or
grace.’
‘Nor in mine.’
‘Ah, you may depend upon it they’ll do away wi’ Goddymity altogether
afore long, although we’ve had him over us so many years.’
‘There’s no knowing.’
‘And I suppose the Queen ‘ill be done away wi’ then. A pretty concern
that’ll be! Nobody’s head to put on your letters; and then your honest
man who do pay his penny will never be known from your scamp who don’t.
O, ‘tis a nation!’
‘Warm the cockles of your heart, however. Here’s the bottle waiting.’
‘I’ll oblige you, my friend.’
The drinking was repeated. The postman grew livelier as he went on, and
at length favoured the steward with a song, Manston himself joining in
the chorus.
‘He flung his mallet against the wall,
Said, “The Lord make churches and chapels to fall,
And there’ll be work for tradesmen all!”
When Joan’s ale was new,
My boys,
When Joan’s ale was new.’
‘You understand, friend,’ the postman added, ‘I was originally a mason
by trade: no offence to you if you be a parson?’
‘None at all,’ said Manston.
The rain now came down heavily, but they pursued their path with
alacrity, the produce of the several fields between which the lane wound
its way being indicated by the peculiar character of the sound emitted
by the falling drops. Sometimes a soaking hiss proclaimed that they were
passing by a pasture, then a patter would show that the rain fell upon
some large-leafed root crop, then a paddling plash announced the naked
arable, the low sound of the wind in their ears rising and falling with
each pace they took.
Besides the small private bags of the county families, which were all
locked, the postman bore the large general budget for the remaining
inhabitants along his beat. At each village or hamlet they came to, the
postman searched for the packet of letters destined for that place, and
thrust it into an ordinary letter-hole cut in the door of the receiver’s
cottage--the village post-offices being mostly kept by old women who had
not yet risen, though lights moving in other cottage windows showed that
such people as carters, woodmen, and stablemen had long been stirring.
The postman had by this time become markedly unsteady, but he still
continued to be too conscious of his duties to suffer the steward to
search the bag. Manston was perplexed, and at lonely points in the road
cast his eyes keenly upon the short bowed figure of the man trotting
through the mud by his side, as if he were half inclined to run a very
great risk indeed.
It frequently happened that the houses of farmers, clergymen, etc., lay
a short distance up or down a lane or path branching from the direct
track of the postman’s journey. To save time and distance, at the point
of junction of some of these paths with the main road, the gate-post was
hollowed out to form a letter-box, in which the postman deposited his
missives in the morning, looking in the box again in the evening to
collect those placed there for the return post. Tolchurch Vicarage
and Farmstead, lying back from the village street, were served on this
principle. This fact the steward now learnt by conversing with the
postman, and the discovery relieved Manston greatly, making his
intentions much clearer to himself than they had been in the earlier
stages of his journey.
They had reached the outskirts of the village. Manston insisted upon the
flask being emptied before they proceeded further. This was done, and
they approached the church, the vicarage, and the farmhouse in which
Owen and Cytherea were living.
The postman paused, fumbled in his bag, took out by the light of his
lantern some half-dozen letters, and tried to sort them. He could not
perform the task.
‘We be crippled disciples a b’lieve,’ he said, with a sigh and a
stagger.
‘Not drunk, but market-merry,’ said Manston cheerfully.
‘Well done! If I baint so weak that I can’t see the clouds--much
less letters. Guide my soul, if so be anybody should tell the Queen’s
postmaster-general of me! The whole story will have to go through
Parliament House, and I shall be high-treasoned--as safe as houses--and
be fined, and who’ll pay for a poor martel! O, ‘tis a world!’
‘Trust in the Lord--he’ll pay.’
‘He pay a b’lieve! why should he when he didn’t drink the drink? He pay
a b’lieve! D’ye think the man’s a fool?’
‘Well, well, I had no intention of hurting your feelings--but how was I
to know you were so sensitive?’
‘True--you were not to know I was so sensitive. Here’s a caddle wi’
these letters! Guide my soul, what will Billy do!’
Manston offered his services.
‘They are to be divided,’ the man said.
‘How?’ said Manston.
‘These, for the village, to be carried on into it: any for the vicarage
or vicarage farm must be left in the box of the gate-post just here.
There’s none for the vicarage-house this mornen, but I saw when I
started there was one for the clerk o’ works at the new church. This is
it, isn’t it?’
He held up a large envelope, directed in Edward Springrove’s
handwriting:--
‘MR. O. GRAYE,
CLERK OF WORKS,
TOLCHURCH,
NEAR ANGLEBURY.’
The letter-box was scooped in an oak gate-post about a foot square.
There was no slit for inserting the letters, by reason of the
opportunity such a lonely spot would have afforded mischievous
peasant-boys of doing damage had such been the case; but at the side was
a small iron door, kept close by an iron reversible strap locked across
it. One side of this strap was painted black, the other white, and white
or black outwards implied respectively that there were letters inside,
or none.
The postman had taken the key from his pocket and was attempting to
insert it in the keyhole of the box. He touched one side, the other,
above, below, but never made a straight hit.
‘Let me unlock it,’ said Manston, taking the key from the postman. He
opened the box and reached out with his other hand for Owen’s letter.
‘No, no. O no--no,’ the postman said. ‘As one of--Majesty’s
servants--care--Majesty’s mails--duty--put letters--own hands.’ He
slowly and solemnly placed the letter in the small cavity.
‘Now lock it,’ he said, closing the door.
The steward placed the bar across, with the black side outwards,
signifying ‘empty,’ and turned the key.
‘You’ve put the wrong side outwards!’ said the postman. ‘’Tisn’t empty.’
‘And dropped the key in the mud, so that I can’t alter it,’ said the
steward, letting something fall.
‘What an awkward thing!’
‘It is an awkward thing.’
They both went searching in the mud, which their own trampling had
reduced to the consistency of pap, the postman unstrapping his little
lantern from his breast, and thrusting it about, close to the ground,
the rain still drizzling down, and the dawn so tardy on account of the
heavy clouds that daylight seemed delayed indefinitely. The rays of
the lantern were rendered individually visible upon the thick mist, and
seemed almost tangible as they passed off into it, after illuminating
the faces and knees of the two stooping figures dripping with wet; the
postman’s cape and private bags, and the steward’s valise, glistening as
if they had been varnished.
‘It fell on the grass,’ said the postman.
‘No; it fell in the mud,’ said Manston. They searched again.
‘I’m afraid we shan’t find it by this light,’ said the steward at
length, washing his muddy fingers in the wet grass of the bank.
‘I’m afraid we shan’t,’ said the other, standing up.
‘I’ll tell you what we had better do,’ said Manston. ‘I shall be back
this way in an hour or so, and since it was all my fault, I’ll look
again, and shall be sure to find it in the daylight. And I’ll hide the
key here for you.’ He pointed to a spot behind the post. ‘It will be too
late to turn the index then, as the people will have been here, so that
the box had better stay as it is. The letter will only be delayed a day,
and that will not be noticed; if it is, you can say you placed the iron
the wrong way without knowing it, and all will be well.’
This was agreed to by the postman as the best thing to be done under
the circumstances, and the pair went on. They had passed the village and
come to a crossroad, when the steward, telling his companion that their
paths now diverged, turned off to the left towards Carriford.
No sooner was the postman out of sight and hearing than Manston stalked
back to the vicarage letter-box by keeping inside a fence, and thus
avoiding the village; arrived here, he took the key from his pocket,
where it had been concealed all the time, and abstracted Owen’s letter.
This done, he turned towards home, by the help of what he carried in
his valise adjusting himself to his ordinary appearance as he neared the
quarter in which he was known.
An hour and half’s sharp walking brought him to his own door in
Knapwater Park.