The post-girl

by Edward Charles Booth

"After that," said he, interrupting the sentence for a moment to give two or three reclamatory puffs at his pipe, "the rest 's as plain as print. She 'd made a bad bargain with her family, and she 'd made a worse with her husband. Depend upon it. Searle was a gambler—an improvident, prodigal, reckless rascal—who tapped what money she had like a cask of wine. As soon as Pamela was born, the wretched woman began to see where things were drifting. She dared n't suggest retrenchment to her husband, but she began to practise a few feeble economies in the house and upon her own person. No more silks and satins after that. No more embroidered chemises. No more fine linen. Nothing new for Pamela, where anything could be cut down. Nothing new for herself, where anything old would do. Cheapen the living here, cheapen the living there—until at last, thank God! in the fourth year of his reign, this monstrum nulla virtute redemptum a vitiis takes to his wife's bed—not having one of his own—and does her the involuntary kindness of dying in it. So our Blessed Lady leads Pamela and her mother to Ullbrig by gradual stages, and there, the mother's share in the work being done, she is permitted to fall asleep. Ha! Friend Morland"—he approached the tumbler to his lips under cover of the apostrophe, and sought the ceiling in drinking with a rapturous eye, "... you never drove a better bargain in your life than when you acquired a resident daughter of Mary with a premium of thirty pounds. Look at all the blessings that have been specially bestowed upon you for her sake. Look at the boots that get worn out in tramping backwards and forwards to the Post Office since Heaven put into our heads the notion of buying penny stamps in two ha'penny journeys, and calling round to let you know we shall be wanting a post-card in the morning. Did our young men do this before Pam's time? And where do we carry all our boots and shoes to when they have n't another ha'penny journey in their soles? Not to Cobbler Roden. Cobbler Roden does n't shelter a daughter of Mary. Cobbler Roden does n't shelter a daughter of anybody—not even his own—if he can help it. Not to Cobbler Dingwall. Cobbler Dingwall does n't shelter a daughter of Mary. Heaven sends down no blessing on Cobbler Dingwall's work. We find it 's clumsy and does n't last. No, we don't take 'em to any of these. We take 'em to Shoemaker Morland. That 's where we take 'em. Shoemaker Morland. He 's the man. All the rest are only cobblers, being under no patronage of Blessed Mary, but friend Morland 's a shoemaker. Moreover, the Post Office has n't lacked for lodgers since Pam came to it—there 's the schoolmaster there now. A strange, un-get-at-able sort of a fellow, to be sure, whom I strongly suspect of nursing secret aggression against the Church; still a payer of bills, and in that respect a welcome addition to the Morland household."

"Friend Morland, then," said the Spawer, "combines the offices of shoemaker and postmaster-general for Ullbrig?"

Father Mostyn forefingered the statement correctively.

"Those are his offices. But he does n't combine them. He keeps them scrupulously distinct. One half of him is postmaster-general and the other is shoemaker. I forget just at the moment which half of him you 've got to go to if you want stamps, but you might just as well try to get cream from a milk biscuit as buy stamps at the shoemaking side. Apart from these little peculiarities, however, he 's as inoffensive a specimen of dissent as any Christian might hope to find. Without a trained theological eye one might take him any day for a hard-working, respectable member of the True Body. His humility in spiritual matters is almost Catholic. You 'd be astonished to find such humility in the possession of a Non-conformist—until you knew what exalted influence had brought it about. He repudiates the Nonconformist doctrine that the Divine copyright of teaching souls goes along with the possession of a fourpenny Bible. His view on the question is that the Book 'takes overmuch understanding to try and explain to anybody else.' On this point, with respect to Pamela, I 'd never had any trouble with him. She 's been born and brought up in the Church; she 'd true Church blood in her veins. Her mother was a Churchwoman. Her grandfather, like the gallant old soldier that he was, was a Churchman; a strong officer of the Church Militant, occupying the family pew every Sunday morning, who would have died of apoplectic mortification at the thought that any descendant of his should ever sink so low as to sit on the varnished schismatical benches of an Ullbrig meeting-house. All which, when I put it before him, Friend Morland saw in a clear and catholic spirit. It 's true for a short time he wished to make a compromise—at the instigation of his wife, undoubtedly—whereby Pamela was to attend church in the mornings and meeting-house in the evening—a most odious and unscriptural arrangement, quite incompatible with canonical teaching. However, special light of grace was poured into his heart from above, and he perceived the aged General in such a vivid revelation trembling with martial anger at this act of indignity to one of his flesh and blood, that he woke up in a great sweat two nights successively, and came running before breakfast to tell me that the spiritual responsibility of a general's granddaughter was proving too much for him, and he 'd be humbly grateful if his Reverence the Vicar would take the matter on his own shoulders, and bear witness (should any be required) that he (John William Morland) had in all things done his utmost to act in conformity with what he thought to be the General's wishes. So I made him stand up in the hall and recite a proper declaratio abjurationis before me then and there, gave him his coveted ego te absolvo Joannes, and received Pamela forthwith as spiritual ward in our most Catholic Church."

"But is she going to consecrate all her days to the carrying of letters?" asked the Spawer, in a voice of some concern. "A dieu ne plaise."

Father Mostyn knocked the ashes cautiously out of his pipe into a cupped palm and threw them over the hearth. "There 's the rub. That 's what I 've been wanting to have a little talk with you about. Her bringing up has been in the nature of a problem—a sort of human equation. We 've had to try and develop all her latent qualities of birth and breed, and maintain them in a state of exact equilibrium against the downward forces of environment. Just the slightest preponderance on one side or other might have done us. Two things we had to bear constantly in mind and reconcile, so far as we were able, from day to day." He ticked them off on his fingers like the heads of a discourse: "First. That she was a lady; the daughter of a lady; the granddaughter of a lady. Second. That she was become by adoption a daughter of the soil, dependent on her own exertions for her subsistence and happiness. At one time, so difficult did the two things seem to keep in adjustment, I had serious thoughts of taking her bodily under my own charge and packing her off to school. But after a while, I came to reflect that it would be an act of great unwisdom—apart from the fear that it might be making most impious interference with the designs of Providence. Providence plainly had brought her, and to send her off again for the purpose of having her trained exclusively in the accomplishments of a lady would simply have been contempt of the Divine laws and a deferment of the original difficulty to some more pressing and inopportune moment. My work, you see, was here in Ullbrig. His Reverence is tied to the soil like the rest of us—ploughing, sowing, harrowing, scruffling, hoeing, and reaping all his days—though, for the matter of that, there 's precious little ear he gets in return for his spiritual threshing. Moreover, there 's always the glorious uncertainty of sudden death in the harvest field; and then what would be likely to happen to a girl thrown on her own resources at the demise of her only friend and protector? Would she be better circumstanced to face the world bravely as a child with his Reverence helping her unostentatiously by her elbow and accustoming her to it, or as a young lady in fresh bewilderment from boarding-school, with his Reverence fast asleep in the green place he 's chosen for himself under the east window? Ha! no mistake about it. His Reverence has seen too many nursery governesses and mothers' helps and ladies' companions recruited straight from the school-room, with red eyes and black serge, to risk Pamela's being among the number. Out in the world there 's no knowing what might happen or have happened to her. Here in Ullbrig, you see, she stands on a pedestal to herself, above all our local temptations. Temptations, in the mundane sense of the word, don't exist for her. One might as well suppose the possibility of your being tempted from the true canons of musical art by hearing Friend Barclay sing through the tap-room window of the Blue Bell, or of his Reverence the Vicar's being proselytised to Methodism by hearing Deacon Dingwall Jackson pray the long prayer with his eyes shut. No; our local sins fall away from Pamela as naturally and unregarded as water off a duck's back. Such sins as she has are entirely spiritual—little sins of indiscrimination, we may term them. The sin of generosity—giving too much of her favor to the schismatical; the sin of toleration—inclining too leniently towards the tenets of dissent; the sin of forbearance—making too much allowance for the sins and wickednesses of others; the sin of equanimity—being too little angered by the assaults and designs of the unfaithful against Holy Church—all beautiful qualities of themselves when confined to the temporal side of conduct, but sinful when thoughtlessly prolongated into the domain of spirituals, where conduct should subordinate itself to the exact scale of scientific theology. Spiritual conduct without strict theological control is music without bars; poetry without metre; a ship without a rudder; free-will; nonconformity; dissent; infidelity; agnosticism; atheistic darkness. Ha! but our concern for her future is n't on these counts. The question that 's bothering us now, as you rightly put it, is: Is she going to consecrate all her days to the carrying of letters?"

"As a career," commented the Spawer, "I 'm afraid there 's not much to recommend it. The office of post-girl seems, from what I know about the subject, peculiar to Ullbrig. There 's precious little chance of promotion, I should think. She might slip into the telegraph department, perhaps, but from a place like Ullbrig even that 's something of a step."

"I was n't so much thinking of the telegraphic department," Father Mostyn explained, "... though, of course, it had suggested itself to me. But I 'd been thinking ... it came upon me rather forcibly ... partly since your arrival ... after our first little talk together ... and I wondered. Of course, the telegraph department could be held in view as a reserve. But I 'd rather got the idea..." a certain veil of obscurity seemed to settle down upon his Reverence at this point, as though a sea-mist were drifting in among his words. "You see," he said, suddenly abandoning the attempt at frontal clearance and making a detour to come round the thickness of his difficulty, "Pamela 's altogether a remarkable girl. She 's not the least bit like the rest of us. She can do everything under the sun, except kill chickens. She can't kill chickens; but she can cook 'em. And she can make Ullbrig pies till you could swear Mrs. Dixon had done 'em. And she can bake bread—white bread, as white as snow for Friend Morland's delicate stomach; and brown bread as brown as shoe-leather and mellow as honey for his Reverence the Vicar. Three loaves a week without fail, because there 's nobody else in Ullbrig can make 'em to his satisfaction—and she wanted to have the paying for 'em herself into the bargain. And she can paper-hang and paint. She and his Reverence are going to undertake a few matters of church decoration shortly. And she can milliner and dressmake. If it was n't for Pamela, Emma Morland would soon lose her reputation as our leading society modiste. Not even the brass plate would save her—if she polished it three times a day. Ullbrig does n't want brass plates; Ullbrig wants style. So when Ullbrig goes to Emma Morland for a new dress and Pamela 's not there, Ullbrig says, 'Oh, it does n't matter just then, it 'll call again.' Ha! says it 'll call again. But what I wanted to illustrate ... with regard to telegraphic departments, of course ... you see ... her remarkable versatility. Not only that..." the old fog showed signs of settling over him once more, but he shook it off with a decisive spurt. "She 's inherited music from her mother in a marked degree. It seems to come naturally to her. I think you 'd be surprised. What little bit I 've been able to do for her I 've done—taught her the proper value of notation, the correct observance of harmonies, clefs, solfeggio, scales, legato, contra punctum, and so forth. The amazing thing is the way she 's picked it up. Not a bit of trouble to her, apparently. What I should have done without her at the organ—she 's our ecclesiastical organist, you know—I dare n't think. And it occurred to me ... I felt it would be such a pity to let the chance go by ... if we could only induce you.... You see, she 's not exactly an ordinary girl. Different from the rest of us altogether.... And I thought if we could only induce you to give her the benefit of a little musical advice..." He paused inferentially.

"With a view," asked the Spawer, "to what is diabolically called the profession?"

Father Mostyn caught the note of dissuasive alarm.