Edward Charles Booth
The Post-Girl
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066095512
Table of Contents
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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