The post-girl

by Edward Charles Booth

Let him see....

Exactly. He could n't count the number. He had mentioned with some small degree of detail a man who was but a cypher in his visit, and he had overlooked altogether the figure which was its numerator, so to speak.

Suppose he had put the case, as it stood, before a referee, chosen from the Sons of the World. Suppose he 'd said, for instance: There was a fellow once, engaged to a girl. The girl went with a maiden aunt by marriage to Switzerland for the aunt's health. It was arranged that while they were there the fellow was to go into obscurity by the sea-coast and complete some great compositional work he had the vanity to think he could achieve, and that, after the girl's return, either towards the end of November or the early part of January, these two were to be married. But during this obscurity the fellow came upon an altogether unusual sample of a post-girl. She was supposed to be derived from a family of importance; had all the inherited gifts of a lady; the low, musically-balanced voice; the symmetrical, graceful figure and carriage; beautiful teeth and a smile like dawn. Suppose everything about the girl appealed to this fellow tremendously. Suppose they became ... well, call it friends. Suppose he taught her music and French, and met her as often as possible. Suppose all his moments were occupied in thinking of her. Suppose the life he had left and the life (presumably) he was going back to were receded so far away that he could scarcely distinguish them, or his obligations to them. Suppose that the girl was to all intents and purposes his little cosmos, out of which he indited letters to the Other Girl—letters that made no mention of the existing state of things. Suppose, now, he laid this case, just as it stood, before any man of the world. What, did he imagine, would that man of the world decide upon him? What would he think of him?

Another man of the world, perhaps.

Probably so. And suppose this other girl had been his sister, and he had been some other man, and the circumstances were as they were, and some enlightened friend had informed him of them. Well?

On the face of it, he might be tempted to step in and send the fellow to the devil.

And in his own case?

In his own case? Summarising like that, without any partiality, but condensed into a cold-blooded abstraction, he supposed he might seem deserving of being sent to the devil, too—if he were not there already. Every case looked black when it was formularised. The facts had accumulated without his perceiving them. It was easy now to go and roll them up like an increasing snowball of accusation against him, but at the time they had seemed slight enough. When he had scribbled off the letters it had been with a consciousness of the shuffle, but with the inward resolve, clearly defined, to atone for it by a longer letter next day, or some other day.

And he had done so?

Unfortunately, no. Fate, there again, had seemed against him. But the intention had not been wanting—it was the flesh only that had been a little weak.