Lark Rise to Candleford (54 page)

Even in his holiday attire of shabby Norfolk suit and
sandals, no one could have mistaken Mr. Mostyn for anything but what was then
spoken of openly and unashamedly as 'a gentleman'. Uncle Tom was a country
shoemaker. He had black thumbs, worked in an apron, and carried the odours of
leather and wax about with him; but he was the least class-conscious man on
earth, and Mr. Mostyn appeared equally so, though breeding may have had something
to do with that on his side. While Uncle Tom sewed, they would talk by the
hour; about books, about historical characters, new discoveries in science or
exploration, with many a tit-bit of local gossip thrown in and many a laugh,
especially when Tom told some story in dialect. Or they would sit silent if
that suited either of them better than talking. Mr. Mostyn would take a book
out of his pocket and read; or, in the midst of a conversation, Tom would say,
'Not another word, now, till I've got this seam joined up. I've cut the toecap
a bit short, I find.' In fact, they were friends.

But one year, when Laura arrived, she found things had
changed between them. Mr. Mostyn still called at the workshop once or twice a
week and they still talked—talked more than ever before, indeed—but upon a new
subject. Mr. Mostyn was thinking of changing his creed, 'going over to Rome',
Uncle Tom called it, and, surprisingly, for a man who believed in perfect
freedom of thought, he did not approve of this step.

It was strange to see how earnest he was about it; for,
although he went to church every Sunday, he had never appeared to take any
special interest in religion. Mr. Mostyn, probably, had hitherto taken less.
Laura had often heard him say that he preferred a good long tramp on a Sunday
to church-going. Now, something had stirred him; he had been reading Catholic
doctrine for months and was on the brink of being received into the Catholic
Church.

Uncle Tom must have read, too, at some time, for he appeared
to know the authors his friend quoted. 'That's Newman;' he said once. 'Methinks
his lordship doth protest too much'; and, at another time, 'He can write like
an angel, I grant you, but it's all spellbinding.'

Mr. Mostyn gritted his teeth. 'Tom, Tom,' he said, 'your other
name is Didymus!'

'Now, look here,' said Tom. 'We've got to get to grips with
this. If you want everything thought out for you and to be told what to think
and do, give your conscience to some priest to keep; go over to Rome. You
couldn't do better. It'll be a rest for you, I don't deny, for you've had your
problems, as many and hard as most men; but if, as a reasoning being, you
prefer to accept full responsibility for your own soul, you are going the wrong
road—you are, indeed!' Then Mr. Mostyn said something about peace, and Tom
retorted, 'Peace in exchange for liberty!' and Laura heard, or understood, no
more.

'Another good man gone over to the old enchantress,' he said,
as the door closed behind his friend; and Laura, who was by that time nearly fourteen,
asked, 'Do you think it wrong to be a Catholic, Uncle?'

It was some time before he answered. She thought he had
forgotten her presence and had been talking to himself. But, after he had
polished his spectacles and taken up his work, he answered, 'Wrong? No, not for
those born to it or suited to it. I've known some good Catholics in my time;
some the religion suited like the glove the hand. It was a good thing for them,
but it won't be for him. He's been over a year thinking it out and studying books
about it, and if you have to spend a year worrying and arguing yourself into a
thing, that thing's against your nature. If he'd been cut out for a Catholic,
he'd have just sunk down into it months ago, as easy as falling into a feather
bed, and not had to lash and worry himself and read his eyes out. But, for all
that, I've been a fool to try to influence him, trying to influence him against
being influenced. Never try to influence anybody, Laura. It's a mistake. Other
people's lives are their own and they've got to live them, and often when we
think they are doing wrong they are doing right—right for them, although it
might not be right for us. Come, get that book and see how Lucy Snowe's getting
on with her Frenchman, and I'll stick to my last, as every good shoemaker
should do, and not go airing my opinions again—until the next time.'

Once a commercial traveller called at the workshop to have a
stitch or two put in the shoes he was wearing. He was a stranger to Laura; but
not to her uncle, for one of the first questions he asked was, 'How is your
wife?'

'Lazier and more contrary than ever,' was the unconventional
reply.

Uncle Tom looked grave, but he said nothing. The visitor
needed no encouragement, however; he was soon launched on a long story of how
he had that very morning taken up his wife's breakfast to her in bed—so many
rashers, so many eggs, and toast and marmalade. Breakfast in bed for any one
who was not ill was a novel idea to Laura; but her Uncle Tom seemed to look
upon it as a slight attention any good husband might pay his wife, for he only
said, 'That was very kind of you.'

'And what did I get for my kindness?' almost shouted the
husband. 'No thanks, you'll bet! but only black looks and an order to be home
on time to-night for once in my life. Home on time! Me, who, as she ought to
know by this time, might be held up for hours on end by a customer. Of all the
spiteful, contrary cats… .'

Uncle Tom looked distressed. 'Hush! Hush! my lad,' he
interposed. 'Don't say things you'll be sorry for after. How long have you been
married? Two years, and no child yet? Well, you wait till you've been married
ten before You begin talking like that, and by that time, if vou do as you
should yourself, it's ten to one you'll not need to. Some women simply can't
understand what business is unless they see for themselves. Why not take her
out on the round a time or two in that smart little outfit of yours with the
high-stepper. The firm's done you well this time, I see, in that respect. A
nice bit of horseflesh, if I'm any judge! If you do that, she'll see for
herself, and the outing will do her good. It's dull for a young woman, shut up
by herself in the house all day, and when, towards night, her man's supper's
drying up in the oven through waiting, it gets on her nerves and maybe her welcome's
not all a husband might wish, after a trying day and not too many orders in his
notebook. And when you get a bit nettled yourself, bite on it, bite on it, my
boy; don't go opening your mouth to fill other folks's. They won't think any
better of you if you do. Truth of the matter is, most married folks have their
little upsets, especially for the first year or two; but they manage to pretend
that all is well and that everything in the garden of matrimony looks lovely,
and, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, before they know where they are,
all
is
well, or as well as can be expected in this imperfect world.'

During this long speech the young man had broken in several
times with such ejaculations as 'That's all very well' or 'Not half', but he
was spared the necessity for any formal comment upon what was almost a lecture
by a sound of scuffling and 'Whoa-a-s!' and 'Come up nows!' in the street,
which caused him to cram on the shoe which Tom had been attending to and run.
But, a few minutes later, very flushed and hot-looking, he came to the open
window and said: 'That mare of mine's got the spirit of a racehorse. A moment
more and she'd been off! Got an idea I'll bring my wife next week; she could
hold the reins and read her book while I was inside anywhere, and the outing
might do her good. So long, Mr. Whitbread. I must go or she'll kick the cart to
bits.'

Laura never knew if the mare kicked the cart to bits; or if
the young couple's own little applecart of happiness was overturned or
steadied; but she can still see the young husband's face, flushed and distorted
with indignation beneath the white straw 'boater', moored so modishly to his
button-hole by a black cord, and her Uncle Tom's pale and grizzled and serious,
looking up at him through his spectacles as he said: 'Bite on it, my boy. Bite
on it.'

On one of her visits to Candleford, Laura herself found a
friend, and one whose influence was to shape the whole outward course of her
life.

An old friend of her mother's named Dorcas Lane kept the Post
Office at Candleford Green, and one year, when she heard that Laura was staying
so near her, she asked her and her cousins to go over to tea. Only Molly would
go; the others said it was too hot for walking, that Miss Lane was faddy and
old-fashioned, and that there was no one to talk to at Candleford Green and
nothing to see. So Laura, Edmund, and Molly went.

Candleford Green was at that time a separate village. In a
few years it was to become part of Candleford. Already the rows of villas were
stretching out towards it; but as yet the green with its spreading oak with the
white-painted seats, its roofed-in well with the chained bucket, its church
spire soaring out of trees, and its clusters of old cottages, was untouched by
change.

Miss Lane's house was a long, low white one, with the Post
Office at one end and a blacksmith's forge at the other. On the turf of the
green in front of the door was a circular iron platform with a hole in the
middle which was used for putting on tyres to wagon and cart wheels, for she
was wheelwright as well as blacksmith and postmistress. She did not work in the
forge herself; she dressed in silks of which the colours were brighter than
those usually worn then by women of her age and had tiny white hands which she
seldom soiled. Hers was the brain of the business.

To go to see Cousin Dorcas, as they had been told to call
her, was an exciting event to Laura and Edmund, for they hoped to be shown her
famous telegraph machine. There had been some talk about it at home when their
parents heard it had been installed, and their mother, who had seen one,
described it as a sort of clock face, but with letters instead of figures, 'and
when you turn the handle,' she said, 'the hand goes round and you can spell out
words on it, and that sends the hand round on the clock face at the other Post
Office where it's for, and they just write it down, pop it into an envelope,
and send it where it's addressed.'

'And then they know somebody's going to die,' put in Edmund.

'After they've paid three and sixpence,' said their father,
rather bitterly, for an agitation was being worked up in the hamlet against
having to pay that crushing sum for the delivery of a telegram. 'For Hire of
Man and Horse, 3s. 6d.' was written upon the envelope and that sum had to be
found and paid before the man on the horse would part with the telegram. But
about that time, the innkeeper, tired of having to lend three and sixpence with
little prospect of getting it back, every time the news arrived that some
neighbour's father or mother or sister or aunt was 'sinking fast' or had
'passed peacefully away this morning', had, in collaboration with a few
neighbours of whom the children's father was one, written a formal and
much-thought-out protest to the Postmaster General, which resulted in men
coming with long chains to measure the whole length of the road between the
hamlet and the Post Office in the market town. The distance was found to be a
few feet under, instead of over, the three-miles limit of the free delivery of
telegrams. This made quite an interesting little story for Laura to tell Cousin
Dorcas. 'And to think of those poor things having paid that sum! As much as a
man could earn in a day and a half's hard work,' was her comment, and there was
something in the way she said it that made Laura feel that, although, as her
cousins said, Miss Lane might be peculiar, it was a nice kind of peculiarity.

Laura liked her looks, too. She was then about fifty, a
little, birdlike woman in her kingfisher silk dress, with snapping black eyes,
a longish nose, and black hair plaited into a crown on the top of her head.

The famous telegraph instrument stood on a little table under
her parlour window. There was a small model office for the transaction of
ordinary postal business, but 'the telegraph' was too secret and sacred to be
exposed there. When not in use, the dial with its brass studs, one for every
letter of the alphabet, was kept under a velvet cover of her own devising,
resembling a tea-cosy. She removed this to show the children the instrument and
even allowed Laura to spell out her own name on the brass studs—without putting
the switch over, of course, or, as she said, Head Office would wonder what they
were up to.

Edmund preferred the forge to the telegraph office, and Molly
the garden where Zillah, the maid, was picking greengages bursting with
ripeness. Laura liked all these; but, best of all, she liked Cousin Dorcas
herself. She said such quick, clever things and seemed to know what one was
thinking before a word was spoken. She showed Laura her house, from attic to
cellar, and what a house it was! Her parents had lived in it. and her
grandparents, and it was her delight to keep all the old family possessions
just as she had inherited them. Other people might scrap their solid old
furniture and replace it with plush-covered suites and what-nots and painted
milking-stools and Japanese fans; but Dorcas had the taste to prefer good old
oak and mahogany and brass, and the strength of mind to dare to be thought
old-fashioned. So the grandfather's clock in the front kitchen still struck the
hours as it had done on the day of the Battle of Waterloo. The huge, heavy oak
table at the head of which she carved for the workmen and maid, sitting in
higher or lower seats according to degree, was older still. There was a legend
that it had been made in the kitchen by the then village carpenter and was too
large to remove without taking it to pieces. The bedrooms still had their
original four-posters, one of them with blue-and-white check curtains, the yarn
of which had been spun by her grandmother on the spinning wheel lately rescued
from the attic, repaired and placed with the telegraph instrument in the
parlour. On the dresser shelves were pewter plates and dishes, with a few
pieces of old willow-pattern 'to liven them up', as she said; and in the
chimney corner, where Laura sat looking up into the square of blue sky through
the black furry walls, a flint and tinder box, used for striking lights before
matches were in common use, stood on one ledge, and on another stood a deep
brass vessel with a long point for sticking down into the embers to heat beer.
There were brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece, and, flanking it, a pair of
brass warming-pans hung on the wall. These were no longer in use, nor was the
sandbox for drying wet ink instead of using blotting-paper, nor the nest of
wooden chopping bowls, nor the big brewing copper in the back kitchen, but they
were piously preserved in their old places, and, with them, as many of the old
customs as could be made to fit in with modern requirements.