Post Haste

“Their progress, too, was a sort of royal progress—a triumphal march. Wherever they had to pass, crowds of people waited for them in subdued excitement, hailed them with delight, and waved them on with cheers, for they were almost the only means of distributing news; and when a great victory, such as Trafalgar, Vittoria, or Waterloo had to be announced, the mail-coaches—dressed in flowers and ribbons, with guards shouting the news to eager crowds as they passed through hamlet, village, and town—swept like a thrill of electric fire throughout the land. News was news in those days! You didn’t get it at all till you got it altogether, and then you got it like a thunderbolt. There was no dribbling of advance telegrams; no daily papers to spread the news (or lies), and contradict ’em next day, in the same columns with commentaries or prophetic remarks on what might or should have been, but wasn’t, until news got muddled up into a hopeless entanglement, so that when all was at last cleared up you’d been worried out of all your interest in it! Yes, my lads, although I would not wish to see the return of those stirring days, I’m free to assert that the world lost something good, and that it was not all clear gain when the old four-in-hand Royal Mail coaches drove out of the present into the past, and left the Iron Horse in possession of the field.

“But nothing can arrest the hand of Time. When mail-coaches were at their best, and a new Great North Road was being laid out by Telford, the celebrated engineer, another celebrated engineer, named Stephenson, was creating strange commotion among the coal-pits of the North. The iron horse was beginning to snort. Soon he began to shriek and claw the rails. Despite the usual opposition, he succeeded in asserting himself, and, in the words of a disconsolate old mail-coach guard, ‘men began to make a gridiron of old England.’ The romance of the road had faded away. No more for the old guard were there to be the exciting bustle of the start, the glorious rush out of the smoky town into the bright country; the crash through hamlet and village; the wayside changings; the rough crossing of snow-drifted moorlands; the occasional breakdowns; the difficulties and dangers; the hospitable inns; the fireside gossipings. The old guard’s day was over, and a new act in the drama of human progress had begun.

“The Railway Era may be said to have commenced about the time of the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester line in 1830, though the railway system developed slowly during the first few years. Men did not believe in it, and many suggestions were made to accelerate the speed of mails in other ways. One writer proposed balloons. Another—Professor Babbage—suggested a series of high pillars with wires stretched thereon, along which letter-bags might be drawn. He even hinted that such pillars and wires might come to be ‘made available for a species of telegraphic communication yet more rapid’—a hint which is peculiarly interesting when we consider that it was given long prior to the time of the electric telegraph. But the Iron Horse rode roughshod over all other plans, and finally became the recognised and effective method of conveyance.

“During this half-century of the mail-coach period many improvements and alterations had been made in the working of the Post-Office.

“Among other things, the mails to India were despatched for the first time by the ‘overland route’—the Mediterranean, Suez, and the Red Sea—in 1835. A line of communication was subsequently extended to China and Australia. In the following year the reduction of the stamp-duty on newspapers to one penny led to a great increase in that branch of the service.

“But now approached the time for the greatest reform of all—that reduction of postage of which I have already spoken—namely, the uniform rate of one penny for all inland letters not exceeding a certain weight.

“The average postage of a letter in 1837 was 8 pence three farthings. Owing to the heavy rates the net proceeds of the Department had remained stationary for nearly twenty years. To mend this state of matters, Sir Rowland Hill fought his long and famous fight, the particulars of which I may not enter on just now, but which culminated in victory in 1840, when the Penny Post was established throughout the kingdom. Sir Rowland still (1879) lives to witness the thorough success of his daring and beneficent innovation! It is impossible to form a just estimate of the value of cheap postage to the nation,—I may say, to the world. Trade has been increased, correspondence extended, intelligence deepened, and mental activity stimulated.

“The immediate result of the change was to raise the number of letters passing through the post from seventy-six millions in 1839 to one hundred and sixty-nine millions in 1840. Another result was the entire cessation of the illicit smuggling of letters. Despite penal laws, some carriers had been doing as large a business in illegal conveyance of letters as the Post-Office itself! One seizure made, a single bag in the warehouse of a well-known London carrier, revealed eleven hundred such letters! The horrified head of the firm hastened to the Postmaster-General, and offered immediate payment of 500 pounds to escape the penalties incurred. The money was accepted, and the letters were all passed through the Post-Office the same night!

“Sir Rowland—then Mr—Hill had said that the Post-Office was ‘capable of performing a distinguished part in the great work of national education.’ His prophetic words have been more than justified. People who never wrote letters before write them now. Those who wrote only a few letters now write hundreds. Only grave and important subjects were formerly treated of by letter, now we send the most trifling as well as the most weighty matters by the penny post in such floods that there is scarce room to receive the correspondence, but liberal men and measures have been equal to the emergency. One objector to cheap rates prophesied that their adoption would cause the very walls of the General Post-Office to burst. Well, it has seemed as if his prophecy were about to come true, especially on recent Christmas eves, but it is not yet fulfilled, for the old place has a tough skin, and won’t burst up for a considerable time to come.” (Great applause.)

“Financially, too,” continued Solomon, “the Penny Post reform was an immense success, though at first it showed a tendency to hang fire. The business of the Money-Order Office was enormously increased, as the convenience of that important department became obvious to the public, and trade was so greatly improved that many tradesmen, at the end of the first three years, took the trouble to write to the Post-Office to tell how their business had increased since the introduction of the change. In short, the Penny Post would require a lecture to itself. I will therefore dismiss it with the remark that it is one of the greatest blessings of modern times, and that the nation owes an everlasting debt of gratitude to its author.

“With decreased rates came the other great requisites,—increased speed and security; and now, as you all know, the work of the Post-Office, in all its wide ramifications, goes on with the uniform regularity of a good chronometer from year to year.

“To the special duty of letter-carrying the Post-Office has now added the carriage of books and patterns, and a Savings-Bank as well as a Money Order department; but if I were to enlarge on the details of all this it would become necessary to order coffee and buns for the whole Society of literary message-boys, and make up our beds on the floor of Pegaway Hall—(Hear! hear! applause, and cries of ‘Go on!’)—to avoid which I shall bring my discourse to a close, with a humble apology for having detained you so long.”

Chapter Twenty One.

Tells of a Series of Terrible Surprises

“Well, what did you think of that, old girl?” asked Peter Pax of Tottie, on issuing from the Literary Message-Boys’ Hall, after having performed his duties there.

“It was wonderful. I ’ad no idear that the Post-Office was so old or so grand a’ institootion—But please don’t forget father,” said Tottie, with an anxious look at the battered clock.

“I don’t forget ’im, Tot. I’ve been thinkin’ about ’im the whole time, an’ I’ve made up my mind what to do. The only thing I ain’t sure of is whether I shouldn’t take my friend Phil Maylands into partnership.”

“Oh, please, don’t,” pleaded Tottie; “I shouldn’t like ’im to know about father.”

“Well, the less he knows about ’im the better. P’r’aps you’re right. I’ll do it alone, so you cut away home. I’ll go to have my personal appearance improved, and then off to Charing Cross. Lots of time, Tottie. Don’t be anxious. Try if you can trust me. I’m small, no doubt, but I’m tough.—Good-night.”

When Abel Bones seated himself that night in a third-class carriage at Charing Cross, and placed a neat little black hand-bag, in which he carried his housebreaking tools, on the floor between his feet, a small negro boy entered the carriage behind him, and, sitting down directly opposite, stared at him as if lost in unutterable amazement.

Mr Bones took no notice of the boy at first, but became annoyed at last by the pertinacity of his attention.

“Well, you chunk of ebony,” he said, “how much are you paid a week for starin’?”

“No pound no shillin’s an’ nopence, massa, and find myself,” replied the negro so promptly that Bones smiled in spite of himself. Being, however, in no mood for conversation, he looked out at the carriage window and let the boy stare to his heart’s content.

On drawing up to the platform of the station for Rosebud Cottage, Mr Bones seemed to become anxious, stretched his head out at the carriage window, and muttered to himself. On getting out, he looked round with a disappointed air.

“Failed me!” he growled, with an anathema on some one unknown. “Well, I’ll do it alone,” he muttered, between his teeth.

“O no! you won’t, my fine fellow,” thought the negro boy; “I’ll help you to do it, and make you do it badly, if you do it at all.—May I carry your bag, massa?” he added, aloud.

Mr Bones replied with a savage kick, which the boy eluded nimbly, and ran with a look of mock horror behind a railway van. Here he put both hands to his sides, and indulged in a chuckle so hearty—though subdued—that an ordinary cat, to say nothing of a Cheshire one, might have joined him from sheer sympathy.

“O the brute!” he gasped, on partially recovering, “and Tottie!—Tottie!! why she’s—” Again this eccentric boy went off into subdued convulsions, in which state he was discovered by a porter, and chased off the premises.

During the remainder of that night the “chunk of ebony” followed Mr Bones like his shadow. When he went down to the small public-house of the hamlet to moisten his throat with a glass of beer, the negro boy waited for him behind a hay-stack; when he left the public-house, and took his way towards Rosebud Cottage, the boy walked a little behind him—not far behind, for the night was dark. When, on consulting his watch, with the aid of a match, Bones found that his time for action had not arrived and sat down by the side of a hedge to meditate, the chunk crept through a hole in the same hedge, crawled close up like a panther, lay down in the grass on the other side, and listened. But he heard nothing, for the burglar kept his thoughts, whatever they might have been, to himself. The hour was too still, the night too dark, the scene too ghostly for mutterings. Peering through the hedge, which was high and thick, the boy could see the red glow of Mr Bones’s pipe.

Suddenly it occurred to Pax that now was a favourable opportunity to test his plan. The hedge between him and his victim was impassable to any one larger than himself; on his side the ground sloped towards a plantation, in which he could easily find refuge if necessary. There was no wind. Not a leaf stirred. The silence was profound—broken only by the puffing of the burglar’s lips. Little Pax was quick to conceive and act. Suddenly he opened his mouth to its widest, took aim where he thought the ear of Bones must be, and uttered a short, sharp, appalling yell, compared to which a shriek of martyrdom must have been as nothing.

That the effect on Bones was tremendous was evinced by the squib-like action of his pipe, as it flew into the air, and the stumbling clatter of his feet, as he rushed blindly from the spot. Little Pax rolled on the grass in indescribable ecstasies for a few seconds, then crept through the hole, and followed his victim.

But Bones was no coward. He had only been taken by surprise, and soon stopped. Still, he was sufficiently superstitious to look frequently over his shoulder as he walked in the direction of Miss Stivergill’s Cottage.

Pax was by that time on familiar ground. Fearing that Bones was not to be scared from his purpose by one fright, he made a détour, got ahead of him, and prepared to receive him near the old well of an adjoining farm, which stood close by the road. When the burglar’s footsteps became audible, he braced himself up. As Bones drew near Pax almost burst his little chest with an inhalation. When Bones was within three feet of him, he gave vent to such a skirl that the burglar’s reason was again upset. He bounded away, but suddenly recovered self-possession, and, turning round, dashed at the old well, where Pax had prematurely begun to enjoy himself.

To jump to his feet and run like the wind was the work of a moment. Bones followed furiously. Rage lent him for the moment unwonted power. He kept well up for some distance, growling fiercely as he ran, but the lithe limbs and sound lungs of the boy were too much for him. He soon fell behind, and finally stopped, while Pax ran on until out of breath.

Believing that he had now rid himself of some mischievous boy of the neighbourhood, the burglar turned back to transact his business at Rosebud Cottage.

Peter Pax also turned in the same direction. He felt that things were now beginning to look serious. To thwart Mr Bones in his little game by giving information as to his intentions, would have been easy, but then that would have involved his being “took,” which was not to be thought of. At the same time, it was evident that he was no longer to be scared by yells.

Somewhat depressed by his failure, Pax hastened towards the cottage as fast as he could, resolved to give his enemy a last stunning reception in the garden, even although, by so doing, he would probably scare Miss Stivergill and her household out of their wits.

He reached the garden some minutes before Bones, and clambered over the wall. While in the very act of doing so, he felt himself seized by the throat and nearly strangled.

“Now then, young ’un,” growled a deep voice, which was not that of Bones, “what little game may you be up to?”

“Ease your grip and I’ll tell you,” gasped Pax.

It was the constable of the district who had caught him. That faithful guardian of the night, having been roused by the unwonted yells, and having heard Pax’s footsteps, had followed him up.

“I’m not a burglar, sir,” pleaded Pax, not well knowing what to say. Suddenly he opened his mouth in desperation, intending to give one final yell, which might scare Bones from his impending fate, but it was nipped in the bud by the policeman’s strong hand.

“Ha! you’d give your pal a signal, would you?” he said, in a gruff whisper. “Come now, keep quiet if you don’t want to be choked. You can’t save ’im, so you’d better give in.”

Poor Pax now saw that nothing more could be done. He therefore made a virtue of necessity, and revealed as much of the object of his mission as he deemed prudent. The man believed him, and, on his promising to keep perfectly still, released him from his deadly grip.

While the policeman and the boy lay thus biding their time in the shrubbery, Bones got over the wall and quietly inspected the premises.

“I’ll let him begin, and take him in the act,” whispered the policeman.

“But he’s an awful big, strong, determined feller,” said Pax.

“So am I,” returned the policeman, with a smile, which was lost in the dark.

Now it so happened that Miss Lillycrop, who had been spending that day with Miss Stivergill, had been induced to spend the night also with her friend. Of course these two had much to talk about—ladies generally have in such circumstances—and they were later than usual in going to bed. Mr Bones was therefore, much against his will, obliged to delay the execution of his plans. Little dreaming that two admirers lay in ambush about fifty yards off, he retired to a dark corner behind a bit of old wall, and there, appropriately screened by a laurel bush, lit his pipe and enjoyed himself.

“My dear,” said Miss Stivergill to her friend about midnight, “we must go to bed. Do you go up to my room; I’ll follow after looking round.”

It was the nightly practice of this lady to go over her premises from cellar to garret, to make quite sure that the servant had fastened every bolt and bar and lock. She began with the cellars. Finding everything right there, she went to the dining-room windows.

“Ha! the gipsy!—unbolted, and the shutters open!” exclaimed Miss Stivergill, fastening the bolt.

“H’m! The old fool,” thought the burglar, observing her tall square figure while thus engaged, “might as well bolt the door of Newgate with a steel pen. Cottage window-gear is meant for show, not for service, old girl.”

“I look round regularly every night,” observed Miss Stivergill, entering her bedroom, in which Miss Lillycrop usually occupied a chair bed when on a visit to The Rosebud. “You’ve no idea how careless servants are (‘Haven’t I, just?’ thought her friend), and although I have no personal fear of burglars, I deem it advisable to interpose some impediments to their entrance.”

“But what would you do if they did get in?” asked Miss Lillycrop, in some anxiety, for she had a very strong personal fear of burglars.

“Oh! I have several little plans for their reception,” replied the lady, with a quiet smile. There’s a bell in the corner there, which was meant for the parish church, but was thought to be a little too small. I bought it, had a handle affixed to it, as you see, and should ring it at an open window if the house were attempted.

“But they might rush in at the door and stop you—kill you even!” suggested the other, with a shudder.

“Have you not observed,” said Miss Stivergill, “that I lock my door on the inside? Besides, I have other little appliances which I shall explain to you in the morning, for I scorn to be dependent on a man-servant for protection. There’s a revolver in that drawer beside you”—Miss Lillycrop shrank from the drawer in question—“but I would only use it in the last extremity, for I am not fond of taking human life. Indeed, I would decline to do so even to save my own, but I should have no objection to maim. Injuries about the legs or feet might do burglars spiritual as well as physical good in the long-run, besides being beneficial to society.—Now, my dear, good-night.”

Miss Stivergill extinguished the candle as violently as she would have maimed a burglar, and poor Miss Lillycrop’s heart leapt as she was suddenly plunged into total darkness—for she was naturally timid, and could not help it.

For some time both ladies lay perfectly still; the hostess enjoying that placid period which precedes slumber; the guest quaking with fear caused by the thoughts that the recent conversation had raised.

Presently Miss Lillycrop raised herself on one elbow, and glared in the direction of her friend’s bed so awfully that her eyes all but shone in the dark.

“Did you hear that, dear?” she asked, in a low whisper.

“Of course I did,” replied Miss Stivergill aloud. “Hush! listen.”

They listened and heard “that” again. There could be no doubt about it—a curious scratching sound at the dining-room window immediately below theirs.

“Rats,” said Miss Stivergill in a low voice.

“Oh! I do hope so,” whispered Miss Lillycrop. She entertained an inexpressible loathing of rats, but compared with burglars they were as bosom friends whom she would have welcomed with a glad shudder.

In a few minutes the scratching ceased and a bolt or spring snapped. The wildest of rats never made a sound like that! Miss Lillycrop sat bolt up in her bed, transfixed with horror, and could dimly see her friend spring from her couch and dart across the room like a ghostly phantom.

“Lilly, if you scream,” said Miss Stivergill, in a voice so low and stern that it caused her blood to curdle, “I’ll do something awful to you.—Get up!”

The command was peremptory. Miss Lillycrop obeyed.

“Here, catch hold of the bell-handle—so. Your other hand—there—keep the tongue fast in it, and don’t ring till I give the word.”

Miss Lillycrop was perfect in her docility.

A large tin tea-tray hung at the side of Miss Stivergill’s bed. Beside it was a round ball with a handle to it. Miss Lillycrop had wondered what these were there for. She soon found out.

Miss Stivergill put the dressing-table a little to one side, and placed a ewer of water on it.

At that moment the dining-room window was heard to open slowly but distinctly.

Miss Stivergill threw up the bedroom window.

The marrow in Miss Lillycrop’s spine froze.

Mr Bones started and looked up in surprise. He received a deluge of water on his face, and at the same moment a ewer burst in atoms on the gravel at his feet—for Miss Stivergill did nothing by halves. But Bones was surprise-proof by that time; besides, the coveted treasure was on the sideboard—almost within his grasp. He was too bold a villain to be frightened by women, and he knew that sleeping country-folk are not quickly roused to succour the inmates of a lonely cottage. Darting into the room, he tumbled over chairs, tables, work-boxes, fire-irons, and coal-scuttle.

“Ring!” said Miss Stivergill sharply. At the same moment she seized the tea-tray in her left hand and belaboured it furiously with the drumstick.

“Ring out at the window!” shouted Miss Stivergill.

Miss Lillycrop did so until her spinal marrow thawed.

The noise was worse than appalling. Little Pax, unable to express his conflicting emotions in any other way, yelled with agonising delight. Even the hardened spirit of Bones trembled with mingled feelings of alarm and surprise. He found and grasped the coveted box, and leaped out of the window with a bound. It is highly probable that he would have got clear off but for the involuntary action of Miss Lillycrop. As that lady’s marrow waxed warm she dashed the great bell against the window-sill with such fervour that it flew from her grasp and descended full on the burglar’s cranium, just as he leaped into the arms of the policeman, and both fell heavily to the ground. The guardian of the night immediately jumped up uninjured, but Bones lay prone on the green sward—stunned by the bell.

“That’s well done, anyhow, an’ saved me a world o’ trouble,” said the constable, looking up at the window as he held the burglar down, though there was little necessity for that. “You couldn’t shy me over a bit of rope, could you, ma’am?”

Miss Stivergill, to whom nothing seemed difficult, and who had by that time stopped her share in the noise, went into a cupboard and fetched thence a coil of rope.

“I meant it to be used in the event of fire,” she said quietly to her friend, who had thrown herself flat on her bed, “but it will serve other purposes as well.—There, policeman.”

She threw it down, and when Bones recovered consciousness he found himself securely tied and seated in a chair in the Rosebud kitchen—the policeman looking at him with interest, and the domestics with alarm. Miss Stivergill regarded him with calm severity.

“Now he’s quite safe, ma’am, but I can’t venture to take ’im to the station alone. If you’ll kindly consent to keep an eye on him, ma’am, till I run down for a comrade, I’ll be greatly obleeged. There’s no fear of his wrigglin’ out o’ that, ma’am; you may make your mind easy.”

“My mind is quite easy, policeman; you may go. I shall watch him.”

When the man had left, Miss Stivergill ordered the servants to leave the kitchen. Little Pax, who had discreetly kept out of range of the burglar’s eye, went with them, a good deal depressed in spirit, for his mission had failed. The burglary had not indeed, been accomplished, but—“father” was “took.”