Читать книгу The Post-Girl - Edward Charles Booth - Страница 4

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 from her to an interminable distance, falling faintly afar like the unreal voice that wanders aimlessly about the slopes of slumber. "And oh, please—will you give me a glass of water?"

With that, and a residuary shaky sigh of her little store of breath left over, her head fell limply forward. There was no mistaking this last tell-tale token of physical extremity; and he was by her side in a moment.

"Hello!" he called on the way, encouraging her by voice to resolution, till he reached her, "what a great iron-shod beast I am, jumping out and scaring you in this fashion. Hold up a little. You 're not going to give up the ghost on my account, surely!"

She made a futile effort to move her lips for reply, and lifted her head in the supreme spurt of conscious endeavor, but it tumbled straightway across the other shoulder uncontrolled, and swung a helpless semi-circle before her breast. She would have been down after that, all the length of her, but that his arms were quick to intercept the fall. The shock of sudden succor checked her in her collapse.

"Thank you," she panted, in a voice that stifled its words, and striving, in a half-unconscious and wholly incompetent fashion, to free him of the necessity of her further support. "... I 'm better now."

Words came no more easily to her under recovery than under the original discovery, though he knew well enough that it was because her lips were overburdened with them, and through no poverty of desire.

"Better?" he echoed, transplanting her own convictionless admission into the pleasantest prospect possible. "Come, come! That 's gladdening. There! ... Do you think you can stand all right?"

He loosened the clasp of his arms for a moment, and she swayed out impotently in their widening circle.

"I think so," she said, giving desperate lie to proof positive under the strenuousness of desire.

He laughed indulgently, and caught her in again.

"Capital!" he said, "if only you were trying to sit down. But you must n't sit down here. See." He took a tighter hold of her. "... If I help you—so.... Do you think you can manage to the door? It 's only a step."

He urged her into motion with a gentle insistence of arm, and set her the example of a leisurely foot forward. For the first time he felt the exercise of her power in resistance.

"Oh, no, no!" she told him, turning off the two little panting negatives in their sudden hot breath of shame, and stiffening at the suggestion of advance.

"No?" he queried, in audible surprise. "You 're not equal to that? But you must n't stay out here. You need to sit down and have something to pull you up." He brought the other arm about her in a twinkling. "Here, let me lift you," he said. "I 've helped drunken men up three flights of stairs before to-day, fighting every bit of the way. I ought to be able to tackle you as far as the door!"

Before she could absorb the intention through his words he had got her begirt for the raising. The consciousness, coming upon her at such short notice, in company with the action itself, found her without preparation other than a gasp of blank amaze. Then her hand went out to stay him.

"Oh, let me!" she said, with a horrified desire to avert this fresh imposition upon his credulity or good-nature. "I can walk—very well...."

She finished the petition in mid-air, and the sound of his amused, wilful laughter just beneath her ears, as he waded with her through that odious short sea of lamp-light to the black porch.

"There!" he said, to another note of laughter, lowering her carefully till her feet found the square slab of scoured stone, with the scraper set in it, and strove hastily to reassert themselves. "That 's better than bartering in yes's and no's. Thank you for keeping so beautifully still and not kicking me; you could if you 'd tried. So!"

He steered her down the narrow darkness of the porch, with his hands protectively upon her elbows from behind, through a rustle of leaves and the springing of flexible branches. She went before him, without any words. Only when his arm slid past her to throw open wide the door did she seem about to offer any furtherance of demur. But the dreadful publicity of burning wicks lay forward, and the still more dreadful publicity of his face lay behind against retreat, and she went dumbly round the door, and so into the room. He could feel the sudden shrinkage of her being as the full force of the episode surged back upon her in a vivid hot wave out of the lamp-light, and was sorry. She would have dropped down, in the penitential meekness of submission, upon the triangle of chair that showed itself from beneath a litter of the Spawer's music immediately by the door as they entered, but his arm resisted the tell-tale bend of her body.

"No, no," he said, realising her desire for the penance of discomfort rather than the comfort of repose, and jerking the chair out of consideration, "... not there." He thrust the table far out into the room with a quick scream of its castors at being so rudely awakened, and pushed her gently to the sofa.

"That's better," he said, with a great evidence of content, as she sank back upon it before solicitous pressure. "The cushions are hard, but the passengers are earnestly requested to place their feet upon them." He drew in the table again, so that she might have its rest for her arm or her elbow, and deferring the moment for their eyes to make their first official meeting, bustled off to the sideboard. "Please excuse the grim formality of everything you find here," he continued, in light-hearted purpose, and commingling his words with an urgent jingling of glass, "but I 'm a musical sort of man, and like the rest of them, a lover of law and order. A time and place for everything, that 's our motto, and everything in its place. It 's a little weakness of ours.... Therefore"—his voice suddenly went cavernous in the recesses of the big cupboard—"... where on earth 's the brandy? Ah!" he emerged again on the interjection smiling, as on a triumphal car. "Here it is. Now I 'm going to give you a little of this ... it 's better than any amount of bad drinking water, and does n't taste half so nasty. Oh, no, no, no"—in answer to the intuition of a quick protesting turn of head from the sofa—"... not much. I won't let you have much, so it 's no use asking. Only as much as is good for you. Just a lit—tle drop and no more." He measured out the drop to the exact length of the accented syllable, and the stopper clinked home under a soft, satisfied "So-o-o!" The syphon took up the word, seething it vigorously into the glass, and next moment his arm had spanned the table to an encouraging: "Here we are! Take a good pull of this while it fizzes."

A soft, tremulous hand, nut-brown to the wrist, stole out in timid obedience over the table, and the Spawer perceived his visitor for the first time.

If the mere sound of her voice had aroused his wonder, the sight of the girl's face added doubly to his surprise. A face as little to be looked for in this place and at this time, and under these conditions, as to make quest for orchids down some pitmouth with pick and Davy lamp. He could not maintain the look long, for before satisfying his own inquiry he sought to establish the girl's confidence, but he noted the wide generous forehead, the big consuming eyes, burning deep in sorrowing self-reproach and giving him a moment's gaze over the uplifted tumbler; the dispassionate narrow nose, sprinkled about its bridge and between the brows with a pepper-castor helping of freckled candor; the small lips, parted submissively to the glass rim over two slips of milky teeth; the long, sleek cheeks; the slender, pear-shaped chin; the soft, supple neck of russet tan, spliced on to a gleaming shaft of ivory, where it dipped through her dress-collar to her bosom; the quick throbbing throat, and the burning lobes of red, like live cinders, in her hair.

As to the girl herself, her whence and where and whither, the Spawer could make no guess. She wore a shabby pale blue Tam-o'-Shanter, faded under innumerable suns, and washed out to many a shower, but on her head it appeared perfectly reputable and self-supporting, and identified itself with the girl's face so instantly and so completely that its weather-stain counted for preciousness, like the oaten tint of her skin. A storm-tried mackintosh-cape, looped over her arms and falling loosely down her back from the shoulders, and the print blouse, evidenced by her bust above the table and her sleeves, and the serviceable skirt of blue serge that the Spawer had caught sight of in the cleft between the table and sofa, completed the girl as revealed through her dress. Everything about her was for hard wear and tear, and had stood to the task. There was not a single button's worth of pretension in the whole of her attire; not a brooch at her throat, nor a bangle on either of her wrists to plead for her station. She had dipped her nose meekly into the tumbler and was letting the sparkles play about her lips momentarily, with dropped eyelids; then the glass went down to the table, and her eyes opened wide upon the Spawer as though casting up the full column of her liabilities, resolved to shirk nothing.

"You don't drink," he said, with a voice of solicitude. "I have n't made it too weak for you? ... Surely! I took great care—I might have been making it for myself. Or is there anything else you 'd rather have?"

He found her soft voice entangled in his inquiry, and stopped.

"... Ever so much," he drew up in time to hear. "But it 's not that..." The frank lips were wrestling to pronounce sentence upon her crime, but they broke down in the task and transferred their self-imposed judgment to him. "I don't know what you must think of me..." she said.

The Spawer laughed light-hearted indulgence upon the admission.

"To tell the truth," he said, "I hardly know what to think myself, so it 's no use saying I do. I thought perhaps ... poultry, first of all; but your voice does n't sound a bit like poultry, and I 'm sure you don't look it. And I don't think it was apples either, though you 'd got the right gate for those. Besides, apples don't count ... that way. I 've gathered them myself at this time of night before now, and been hauled back over the wall by a leg. We don't think anything of that."

"It was the piano," she explained unsteadily, and for a moment the steadfast flames in her eyes flickered under irresolute lids.

"The piano?" The Spawer raised his voice in amused interrogation. "Heavens! you were n't going to try and take that away, were you? It took ten of us and a bottle of whiskey to get it in, and threepence to Barclay's boy for sitting on the gate and telling us by clockwork 'Ye 'll get stuck wi' 'er yet before ye 're done,' and half-a-crown to the man that let the truss down upon my toes. Surely you were n't thinking of tackling an enterprise like that single-handed, were you?"

For the first time he drew forth the faint fore-glimmering of what the girl should be like in smiles; a sudden illuminated softening of the features, as when warm sunlight melts marble, that spread and passed in a moment.

"I was listening," she said.

"But that 's a dreadful confession." His eyebrows went up in tragic surprise and his voice departed to the mock-horrified aloofness of a whisper. "Listeners never hear any good of themselves, you know, and never come to any." He slipped from the pseudo-serious with a sly laugh. "Tell me the worst," he begged. "How much did you hear?"

"Oh! I don't know...." She searched his inquiry for a space with her luminous eyes. "Only very little. Perhaps ... perhaps I 'd been half an hour."

"Half an hour," he said, "with the classics. Lord! you 've been punished for your offence."

"But I was n't by the window all the time," she made haste to assure him. "I was standing in the lane ... by the kitchen gate." And then, with the vial of confession in her fingers, she let it drain before him in dropped sentences. "And I did n't mean to come any nearer than that. All I wanted was the music. Only ... when you played ... what you played last..." Her voice stumbled a little with her here, but she picked up the falter with a quick, corrective tilt of the nose, and walked more wardedly down the path of speech, her eyelids lowered, like one who moves by spiritual impulse. "I felt ... oh! I don't know how I felt—as though, somehow, somebody were beckoning me to the window, where the music was. And so I came. And then, when I 'd got there, all of a sudden things came back upon me that I knew I 'd known once ... and forgotten. I saw my mother ... as she was ever so many years ago, before she died, playing to me ... and crying over the keys; and the old room—ever so plain—that I could hardly remember, even when I tried. And all at once a great lump came up into my throat. I could n't help it.... And I sobbed out loud—as I 'd sobbed before when I was a little girl. And then..."

The tears, never wholly subjugated since their first turbulent rebellion, rose up swiftly against her words at the recital here. She made a valiant endeavor to ride through the tumult on her trembling charger of speech, but memory plucked at the bridle, and unhorsed her into the hands of her besetters; a fair, virginal captive—beautiful under subjection.

"And then..." he said, catching up the girl's own words, and simulating a careless stroll towards the window to give her time, "... I came in—came out, I mean." He flicked a chord off the treble end of the keyboard in passing that drew the girl's eyes towards him at once, watchful through tears. "But we won't talk about that part of the business, if you 'll be so good as not to mind. One of us needs kicking very badly for his share in it, and knows he does." He stooped down to resolve the chord briefly with both hands, and spun round, outspread against the piano, with his fingers behind him, touching extreme treble and bass. Only an inactive tear or two on the girl's lashes marked the recent revolt, and the way to her eyes lay clear. He sent his words pleasantly out to them at once in friendly hazard. "You don't mean to say you 're a neighbor of mine?" he suggested, smiling interested inquiry from his spread-eagle pinnacle by the piano, "... and I have n't known it all this time?" For who was this strange nocturnal visitant of his, with a soul for the sound of things? "... Or are you..."—the alternative came twinkling in time to join the previous inquiry under one note of interrogation—"just a ... spawer, I think they call it, like me?"

The girl shook her head at the latter suggestion.

"It 's my home here," she said.

"At Cliff Wrangham?" he asked, and brought his right leg over the left towards her, in attitude of increased attention.

"No-o."

She must have felt a sense of isolation in abiding by that one word; as though it were a gate snecking her off from the Spawer's friendly reach in conversation, for she passed through it almost immediately and added the specific correction: "At Ullbrig."

"Ah!" His internal eye was soaring over the Ullbrig of his remembrance in an endeavor to pounce upon stray points of association for the girl's identity. "I 'm afraid," he said, "that I don't know my Ullbrig very well. It 's a part of my education here that 's been sadly neglected. But you were n't going to walk back there alone? To-night, I mean?"

She looked at him with mild surprise.

"Oh, yes," she told him.

"Jove!" he said. "Are n't you afraid?"

"Afraid?" She gathered the word dubiously off his lips. "What of?"

"Oh," he laughed. "Of nothing at all. That 's what we 're most afraid of, as a rule, is n't it? Of the dark, for instance."

She smiled, shaking her head.

"I 'm not afraid of that," she said.

"Ah," he decided enviously, "you 're no newspaper reader. That 's plain." Then taking new stock of inquiry. "But we 're not in the habit of passing by ... at this time, are we?" he asked. "I thought all good people were between the blankets by nine in the country?"

A queer little flame of resolve began fighting for establishment about her lips, like the flickers of a newly-lighted taper, that burnt up suddenly in speech.

"I was n't ... passing by," she said, the flame reddening her to candor.

"No?"

"I came ... on purpose."

The Spawer's eyebrows ran up in a ruffle of surprise and friendly amusement.

"Not ... to hear me?"

She clasped her teeth in repression upon her lower lip, and nodded her head.

"And you 've actually trudged all the way out from Ullbrig?"

"It 's nothing," she said apologetically.

"But at night!" he expostulated, in friendly concern.

"There was no other time..." she explained. "Besides ... I thought—They said ... it was only after supper."

"Only after supper?" echoed the Spawer. "What 's that? Indigestion? Nightmare?"

"The music," she said.

"I see." He laughed, nodding his head sagaciously. "So they 've got my time-table. And I thought I was n't known of a soul! What an ostrich I 've been!"

"Everybody knows of you," she said, in wonder he should think otherwise.

"I 'm sure they do," he assented. "What sort of a character do they give me? ... Would just about hang me at the Assizes, I suppose?"

"They say you 're a great musician..." she said, with watchful eyes of inquiry.

"Palestrina!" he exclaimed. "However did they come by the truth?"

"... And no one can play like you...."

"Yes?"

"... And you 've come here away from people to compose a great piece ... and don't want anybody to ... to hear you."

The tide of her words ebbed suddenly there, leaving her eyes stranded upon his. The same thought came up simultaneously to them both.

"And so ... that 's why you did n't come."

She dropped her eyes.

"I knew it was mean," she said humbly, "taking things when your back was turned. I felt like stealing, at first. I could n't listen for shame."

"And what 'll be to pay for it all ... when you get back?" said he.

The fringe of her lashes was raised while her eyes reconnoitred, and dropped again.

"Nothing," she told him.

"And no questions asked?"

"No."

"And nobody sitting up for you, ready to put the clock on half an hour, and point a finger at it when you return?"

"No-o...." She twirled the tumbler jerkily between soft thumb and forefinger. "They think I 'm in bed. And I did go," with a sudden resurrection of self-righteousness. "Only"—the self-righteousness went under here—"... when they were all asleep ... I slipped out and came to Cliff Wrangham."

"So-o-o!" said the Spawer, spraying his comprehension hugely this time with the word, as though it were a shower-bath to enlightenment. "That 's the secret of things at last, is it?" His eyes were spinning on the girl like peg-tops in delicious amusement. "And I suppose I 've got to guard it with my life's blood?"

A grateful face flashed thankfulness up at him for its relief from the necessity of appeal.

"Here 's the bond," said he. "Subscribe, and say done." He threw out an open palm of contract across the table, and the small hand crept into it with the timorous, large-hearted trust for an unfamiliar shelter. "And I 'm afraid," he said self-reproachfully, "that you 've torn your dress?"

"Oh, no, ... a little." She made-believe to look at her skirt between the table and sofa, and take stock of the damage done. "It 's nothing."

"At the time," said the Spawer, "it sounded terrible enough. I hope it is n't as bad as the sound."

She drew up what appeared to be the ruined remnants of a phylactery, and held it above the table-edge for his scrutiny, saying: "It does n't matter," with a hopeful smile.

"But that 's awful," he said distressfully.

"It 's only an old skirt," she explained, making light of the raiment with true feminine instinct, lest perhaps he might think she had no better. "I can soon mend it."

"Shall I fetch you a needle and some cotton?" he asked, in a penitential voice. "I have both upstairs."

The girl's eyes made a quick clutch at the needle and cotton, but her lips hung back meekly to a suggestion of pins, with some murmur about "trouble."

"Trouble!" said the Spawer.

He spun the word up in contemptuous disregard as though it were a shuttlecock, and slipped blithely up the little staircase. A second or so later, when she had heard him drop the matches and rake over the carpet for them with his finger-ends, and weave sundry spiderous tracks across the ceiling, he was down again triumphantly extending the objects of his quest.

All too quickly the girl whipped the serrated edges of serge together, while he watched her—with a busy back and forth of needle—snapped the thread round a determined small finger, shook the skirt into position, and rose (conscientiously sheathing the needle in the cotton bobbin), showing parted lips for gratitude and farewell. The latter, taking the Spawer somewhat by surprise, awakened all at once his dormant solicitude.

"But you 're not going ... now!" he said. The girl said softly, "If he pleased." "Why, you have n't half finished!" he exclaimed, pointing to the desolate tumbler, its contents untasted. The girl looked remorsefully at the object of her neglect, and said, still more softly, "If he did n't mind...."

"Not in the least," the Spawer reassured her. "But are you quite sure," he said anxiously, "that you 're strong enough to start back—just yet? Do you think it 's altogether wise?"

The girl thought it so wise that the Spawer had no alternative but to accept the cotton bobbin from her, a thing which his fingers (in their concern for her welfare) showed a certain disinclination to do.

"At least," said he, "you 'll let me see you back as far as Hesketh's corner?" But the girl said, "Oh no, please ... and thank you.... I 'm accustomed to walk alone," so once again he felt constrained to abide by her decision, not knowing how many secret considerations might have gone to the making of it.

"But ... look here," he said, in a conclusive spurt of candor, brought about by the imminence of their parting; "... we 're not saying good-by for good, are we?"

"I—I hope not," said the girl, and something stirred her lips and lashes as though a breeze had blown across them.

"Well, I hope not too," said the Spawer. "For that would make me feel sad. I must n't keep you any longer now, I know, for I don't want you to get into trouble; but it 's awfully good of you to have come, and believe me, I 'm really grateful. If there 's anything in music I can do for you, I want you to know that you 've only to ask, and it shall be done for you with pleasure. Honest Injun. You won't forget, will you?"

The girl said she could never forget ... his kindness.

"It 's a promise, then?" said the Spawer.

Again the little unseen breath blew across her features at the question, and to his surprise he could have almost sworn to tears upon her lashes when he looked up for affirmation in the girl's eyes. To cover any confusion that his words might have wrought, he put out a friendly hand for parting.

"All right," said he, in voice of cheerful agreement. "So that's settled," though a dozen questions were fighting for first place on his lips as he said it. The little brown hand stole for the second time into the shelter of his own with a solemnity that, at other moments, he could have laughed at, and a moment later the Spawer was left gazing at the orchard gate, thrown three quarters open, as he had done in that first memorable moment, with the girl's soft footsteps merged every second more deceptively in the starry stillness of night.

CHAPTER IV

Whatever the Spawer might choose to say of himself for purposes of humor (not, I am afraid, an invariable pole-star to truth), he was no sluggard. By agreement, dated the first night of his arrival, Jeff Dixon was to get a penny a day for bringing up the bath-water and having him into it at seven in the morning. Something short of the hour Jeff would stumble up the little steep staircase, with his tongue out, behind a big bucket of cold water (the last of three drawn to get the full freshness of the pump), and anticipating a few minutes in his statement of the time, make preliminary clamor for the Spawer's acknowledgment before departing to fetch the hot. From which moment forth the Spawer was a marked man, whom no subterfuge or earthly ingenuity could save. Once a drowsy voice begged Jeff to be so good as to call again.

"An' loss my penny!" cried Jeff, with fine commercial scorn at the suggestion. "Nay, we 'll 'ave ye oot o' bed an' all, noo we 've gotten started o' ye."

And tramped diabolically downstairs after the second bucket.

But though a little comedy of this sort, now and again, served to test the validity of the agreement, and show the Spawer that nothing—short of repealing the penny—could save him from the inexorable machinery that his own hand had set in motion, there was little real need of the bond, except to guarantee that the bath-water should be up to time. More often than not Jeff came upon a man alertly drawn up in bed, with a full score spread across his knees, who had been writing and erasing hard since sunrise.

Early in the morning after the girl's visit the sun peeped over the Spawer's sill according to custom, and the Spawer jumped out of bed to let him in. Already Nature's symphony was in full swing—a mighty, crescive, spinning movement of industry, borne up to him on a whirr of indefatigable wings. The sun had cleared the cliff railings and was traveling merrily upward on an unimpeded course, though still the grassland lay grey in the shadow beneath its glistening quilt of dew, and every spider's web hung silver-weighted like a net new-drawn with treasure from the sea. He stayed by the window a space, and then let go the curtain with an amused, reminiscent laugh.

"I wonder who on earth she is?" he said.

He scooped up the bulky armful of music-sheets that constituted his present labors at the concerto, and went back to bed with them. But though he made a determined desk of his knees and spread the papers out with a business-like adjustment of pages, the work prospered but poorly when it came to the pencil. After a short spell of it he sat back in bed, with his hands locked under his neck staring at the window. For the events of last night were a too inviting vintage to be left uncorked and untasted, and out of this glowing wine of remembrance he attempted to win back the girl's face, and did not altogether succeed. He reclaimed certain shifting impressions of red lips exaggeratedly curled; of great round eyes; of multiplied freckles about the brows and nose; of a startling white throat beyond where the sun had dominion; of a shabby blue Tam-o'-Shanter and a perfect midnight of hair—but all of them seen grotesquely, as it might be at the bottom of the cup, with himself blowing on the wine.

"The thing is," he decided, "I was a fool not to stare harder and ask more questions. This comes of trying to act the gentleman."

Duly before seven came Jeff Dixon stumbling up the staircase, and dumped the first bucket down at the Spawer's door with a ringing clash of handle.

"Noo then," he called under the door, when he had summoned the Spawer lustily by name, and hit the panel several resounding flat-handers (as specified in the agreement). "It 's tonned [turned] seven o'clock, an' another gran', fine day for ye an' all. Arny 's gotten ye some mushrooms—some right big uns an' some little conny [tiny] uns, a gret basket full oot o' big field. Will ye 'ev 'em for breakfast?"

"Will I?" The Spawer shot together the loose sheets gathered in attendance upon an idle muse, and tossed them dexterously on to the nearest chair, as though they were a pancake. "Ah, me bhoy! me bhoy!" he called out, in the rich, mellow brogue of one whose heart was on a sudden turned to sunlight.

"Ay, will ye?" inquired the mouth behind the door-crack.

"Ay, wull Oi?" echoed the voice of glowing fervor. "Wull Oi, bedad! me bhoy? Mushrooms, ye say! Is 't me the bhoy for mushrooms! Arrah, thin, me bonny bhoy, is 't me the bhoy for mushrooms!"

After a pause: "D' ye mean yes?" asked the mouth dubiously, and with meekness.

"Ah, phwat a bhoy it is to read the very sowl o' man an' shpake it! Yis 's the word, bi the beard o' St. Pathrick, iv he had wan (which Oi 'm doubtin'), an' a small, inconsiderable jug o' rale cowld boilin' wather whin ye retoorn convanient wid yer next bucket, me bhoy, bi yer lave an' savin' yer prisince!"

"Will yon little un wi' yaller stripes do?" says the mouth, brimming with the enthusiasm of willing, and making from the door-crack for immediate departure.

Whereupon, in receipt of the Spawer's agreement, the boots stumbled down the stairs again, as though there were no feet in them, but had been thrown casually from top to bottom. A minute or so later, when they had staggered up with the second bucket, and been cast down again to fetch the jug, and come back with it, the owner of them bestrode all these accumulated necessities laid out upon the little landing, and let himself into the Spawer's room—a blue-eyed, fair-haired Saxon of thirteen, with white teeth and a quick smile, sharpened like a razor on the cunning whetstone of the district.

"'Ere 's yer cold," said he, stooping to lift it in after him. "An' 'ere 's yer warm," bringing to view the steaming wooden pail, with as much reminiscence of milk about the water as we have to pay for by the gill in town. "An' 'ere 's yer rale cold boilin'. 'Ow div ye fin' yersen this mornin'?"

"In bed," says the Spawer, "thanking you kindly, where I put myself last night."

"Noo then, noo then!" with that indulgent tone of grown-up wisdom which is the birthright of every baby in Ullbrig, and on which it practises its first lisp; "are ye agate o' that road already? Ye mun 'a got the steel i' bed wi' ye, ah think—ye seem strange an' sharp, ti-morn." He pulled the bath from its hiding under the bed, set the mats about it, and brought the pails over within reach. "Noo, it 's all ready an' waitin', so ye 'ad n't need to start shuttin' yer eyes. Let 's see ye movin', an' ah 'll be away."

The Spawer made a feeble shuffle of legs under the blankets, and smiled with the seraphic content of one who has done his duty.

"Nay, ah s'll want to see ye on end, an' all," Jeff said sternly, "before ah gan mi ways. Come noo, Mr. Wynne—one, two, three!"

Thus adjured, the Spawer found strength to raise his eyelids after a few moments of bland inertness under Jeff's regard, and turned out affably (with them down again) on to the pegged rug alongside.

"That 's better," said Jeff, with conciliatory admiration.

"Is it?" the Spawer inquired sweetly, sitting down on the bedside to think over the matter, and rubbing form contemplatively into his hocks. "Oh! ... Then get me the third razor from the right-hand side of the case, and I 'll kill myself. Also the strop and the brush and jug and soap-tube...."

"D' ye mean a shave?" asked Jeff, with some curiosity.

"Merely another name for it," the Spawer told him.

"What div ye want ti get shaved for?" Jeff persisted.

"Oh!" ... The Spawer sifted a few replies under rapid survey, as though he were rolling a palmful of grain, and picked out one at random. "... For fun."

"Ah thought ye was n't gannin' to shave no more while ye 'd gotten that there piece o' yours written!"

"Whatever put that idea into your head?" asked the Spawer, in surprise.

"You," said Jeff, with forceful directness. "It was you telt me."

"I? How wicked of me to tell such a story," the Spawer said warmly.

"Ah do believe you 're gannin' after some young lady or other," Jeff declared, by a quick inspiration.

"How dare you," said the Spawer, rising from the bed in protest, "try to put such ideas into the head of an innocent young man, old enough to be your father. Hither with the razor at once," he commanded, "and let 's shave your head."

But inside, out of sight behind all this laughter, he sent a knowing, sagacious glance to his soul.

"The young divil!" he said.

He shaved, like the Chinese executioners, with despatch; whistled blithely through his bath as though he were a linnet hung out in the sun, and was downstairs as soon as might be. The little room greeted him cheerfully in its cool breakfast array, holding forth a great, heavenly-scented garland of wall-flowers and sweet-williams and mignonette—for all the world like some dear, diminutive, old-fashioned damsel in white muslin—and his eye softened unconsciously to an appreciative smile. There, too, was the sofa consecrate to Dixon. He looked at it with a more conscious extension of smile—thinking, no doubt, of Dixon. Then he shook the bell for breakfast, being an-hungered, and smelling the mushrooms.

The door flew wide to Miss Bates' determined toe, as she entered with the mushrooms in company with the bacon and toast and steaming hot milk and coffee on the big, battered tray of black Japan, securely held at either foremost corner with a salmon-colored fist.

Now Miss Bates was Dixon's orphan niece, whose case deserves all the pity you can afford to give it, as we shall see. Left quite alone in the world by the death of her father (who had no more thought for her future than to fall off his horse, head downwards, in the dark), she was most cruelly abducted by her wicked uncle to Cliff Wrangham (much against her will—and his own), and imprisoned there under the humiliating necessity of having to work like one of the family. You must not call her the scullery-maid or the dairy-maid or the kitchen-maid, but rather, with the blood-right to give back word for word and go about her day's work grumbling, you must appoint her a place among the ranks of unhappy heroines—reduced, distressed, and down-trodden beneath the iron-shod heel of labor. She was, indeed, the persecuted damosel of mediæval romance, brought up to modern weight and size and standard—not the least of her many afflictions being that she was forcibly christened Mary Anne by heartless parents, while yet a helpless infant, and that nobody called her anything else. Her lips were full of prophetic utterances as to last straws; as to what certain people (not so very many miles away) would find for themselves one morning (not so very far ahead) when they got up and came downstairs, and said, "Where 's somebody?" and never an answer, and no need to say then they were sorry, as if they had n't been warned!

"Now who," the Spawer inquired craftily, dipping a liberal measurement of spoon into the mushrooms, and smiling confidentially at Miss Bates, who was balanced gently by the door, with its edge grasped in her red right hand, and her cheek pressed touchingly against the knuckles—"who is the prettiest girl in Ullbrig?"

Miss Bates threw up her nostrils at this direct challenge of romance, and squirmed with such maidenly desire to insist her own claims through silence, that the tray in her left hand banged about her knees like distant thunder.

"Cliff Wrangham allus reckons ti count in wi' Oolbrig," she said, coyly.

"But leaving Cliff Wrangham out of the question," suggested the Spawer, in a voice of bland affability.

Miss Bates' knees stiffened.

"Ah see no ways o' doin' it," she declared, tossing her head as though she were champing a bit.

So the Spawer was left smiling over his cup, knowing no more about the blue Tam-o'-Shanter than ever. He enjoyed his mushrooms very much, and went twice to coffee. Then, breakfast over, he crossed over to the piano, ran his hands over the keys, and set himself to his daily occupation without loss of time.

Thick saffron of sunlight filled the little room. Down below the window-sash, about the shelterless roots of the rose-tree, moored along the wall line in barge-like flotilla and at anchor over the hard, sunbaked path, lay gathered the Spawer's faithful band of feathered friends, awaiting recurrence of the bounty so liberally bestowed upon them at meals. Each time the blind stirred they uprose in spires of expectant beak, whereat the Spawer, squinting sideways, would see the window space set with jeweled, vigilant eyes, while afloat on the wavy green border of grass beyond the pathway a snow-white convoy of ducklings drew their bills from beneath fleecy breasts and got under soft cackle of steam, ready to sail for the window at the first signal of crumbs.

After his departure, for an hour or more nothing but sunlight stirred the Spawer's blind. Then the voice of Miss Bates was heard in close proximity outside, and the next moment the Spawer's first crop of Cliff Wrangham letters was extended to him in Miss Bates' gentle fist.

"Three letters, a post-card, an' a fortygraft," said Miss Bates, relaxing the proprietary clench of thumb (tightened recently for dominion over the downcast Lewis), and suffering the Spawer to gather them from her confiding hand with all the romantic symbolism of a bouquet. "It 's good to be you an' 'ev letters sent ye wi'oot nobody pesterin' where they come fro'. Will there be onnything for 'post' to tek back?"

"Let 's see..." said the Spawer, skimming the postcard more rapidly than Miss Bates had done before him. "Is he waiting?"

"It 's not a 'e," Miss Bates replied, with no manifest relish of the fact. "An' she 's stood at kitchen door. 'Appen she 's waitin' to be asked twice to come in an' sit 'ersen down—bud she 'll 'ave to wait. Once is good enough for most folk, an' it mun do for 'er."

The Spawer finished the post-card, tossing it on the table, and forced his fingers beneath the flap of the next envelope.

"What?" said he, with a smile of amused surprise. "Is the postman a lady, then?"

"Nay," repudiated Miss Bates, stripping the amusement off his surprise, and treating the question in grim earnest. "She 'd onnly like to be. It 'd suit 'er a deal better nor tramplin' about roads wi' a brown bag ower 'er back."

"It sounds charming enough," said the Spawer, throwing himself with a diabolical heartiness into the idea. "What sort of a postman is she?"

"No different fro' nobody else," Miss Bates gives grudgingly, "though she 's 'ods [holds] 'er chin where most folk's noses is. They gie 'er six shillin' a week for carryin' letters to Cliff Wrangham an' Far Wrangham an' round by Shippus—an' it mud be ten bi t' way she sets up."

"Six shillings a week," the Spawer mused wonderingly. "Just a shilling a day and be a good girl for nothing on Sunday. She 'll need all the pride she can muster to help her through on that."

"There 's twenty for t' job onny day she teks into 'er 'ead to leave it," Miss Bates reflected, with callous indifference. "She's n' occasion to keep it agen [unless] she likes."

The Spawer put down the first letter and opened the second. It was a bill. "There 'll be no answer to this," he said grimly, and passed on to the third. He gave one glance at the green Helvetian stamps under the Luzern post-marks, and toyed with it irresolutely unopened. "I don't think the post need wait," he said, this time casting the office considerately into the neuter gender.

"Ah 'll tell 'er to gan, then," Miss Bates decided, with a foretaste of the asperity that would characterise the dismissal.

"Please," said the Spawer. "With my thanks for her kindness in waiting."

"There 's na kindness in it," Miss Bates disclaimed. "She 's got to gan back, onny road. An' 'appen she would n't 'ave offered bud ah was ower sharp to call of 'er before she 'd chance to get away. She mun gan 'er ways ti Far Wrangham, then."

The Spawer had opened the third envelope, and Miss Bates was blowing herself out in great gusts like a strenuous candle, fighting hard against extinction, when she heard herself suddenly recalled.

"After all," he said, "I 'm going to be a woman and change my mind. Who writes quickly writes double, and saves two pages of apology. Then I can get back to work with a clear conscience."

"Ah 'll tell 'er she 's got to stop, then," said Miss Bates. "An' if ye 'll ring bell when ye 've finished, Lewis 'll let me know, an' ah 'll come for letter. Ye need n't trouble to bring it."

She blew herself out to total extinction this time, and the Spawer, throwing a leg over the table-end, turned his attention to the letter in hand—a thin sheet of foreign note-paper, covered on three of its pages with a firm feminine handwriting. He read it very carefully and earnestly, his eyes running from end to end of the lines like setters in a turnipfield, as though they followed a scent, till they brought up to a standstill by the signature. Then he took up the photograph.

It was the face of a girl, and he studied it in such stillness and concentration that his eyelids, lowered motionless over the downward gaze, gave him the semblance of a sleeper. Without being beautiful, the face had beauty, but though it took all its features under individual scrutiny, it seemed, less as though he were concerned with their intrinsic worth than that he was searching through them the answer to a hidden train of inquiry. Whether he came near it or not would be difficult to tell. The smile with which he looked up at last and dispersed the brooding cloud of concentration might have been purely recollective, and with nothing of the oracular about it; for it set him straightway to pen and ink and writing-paper, staying with him the while, and through the next few minutes the sound of his industry was never still. Not until well over on the fourth page did the pen stay behind in the ink-pot, as he sat back to review what was written. Then the pen was rapidly withdrawn again, to subscribe his name, and he addressed the letter: