Lark Rise to Candleford (55 page)

The grandfather's clock was kept exactly half an hour fast,
as it had always been, and, by its time, the household rose at six, breakfasted
at seven and dined at noon; while mails were despatched and telegrams timed by
the new Post Office clock, which showed correct Greenwich time, received by
wire at ten o'clock every morning.

Miss Lane's mind kept time with both clocks. Although she
loved the past and tried to preserve its spirit as well as its relics, in other
ways she was in advance of her own day. She read a good deal, not poetry, or
pure literature—she had not the right kind of mind for that—but she took in
The
Times
and kept herself well-informed of what was going on in the world,
especially in the way of invention and scientific discovery. Probably she was
the only person on or around the Green who had heard the name of Darwin. Others
of her interests were international relationships and what is now called big
business. She had shares in railways and the local Canal Company, which was
daring for a woman in her position, and there was an affair called the Iceland
Moss Litter Company for news of which watch had to be kept when, later, Laura
was reading the newspaper aloud to her.

Had she lived later she must have made her mark in the world,
for she had the quick, unerring grasp of a situation, the imagination to
foresee and the force to carry through, which mean certain success. But there
were few openings for women in those days, especially for those born in small
country villages, and she had to be content to rule over her own small
establishment. She had been thought queer and rather improper when, her father
having died and left his business to her, his only child, instead of selling
out and retiring to live in ladylike leisure at Leamington Spa or
Weston-super-Mare, as her friends had expected, she had simply substituted her
own name for his on the billheads and carried on the business.

'And why not?' she asked. 'I had kept the books and written
the letters for years, and Matthew is an excellent foreman. My father himself
had not put foot inside the shop for ten months before he died.'

Her neighbours could have given her many reasons why not, the
chief one being that a woman blacksmith had never been known in those parts
before. A draper's or grocer's shop, or even a public-house, might be inherited
and carried on by a woman; but a blacksmith's was a man's business, and they
thought Miss Lane unwomanly to call herself one. Miss Lane did not mind being
thought unwomanly. She did not mind at all what her neighbours thought of her,
and that alone set her apart from most women of her day.

She had consented to house the Post Office temporarily in the
first place, because it was a convenience badly needed on and around the Green,
and no one else could be found willing to undertake the responsibility. But the
work soon proved to be a pleasure to her. There was something about the strict
working to a time-table, the idea of being a link in a great national
organization and having some small measure of public authority which appealed
to her businesslike mind. She liked having an inside knowledge of her
neighbours' affairs too—there is no denying that—and to have people coming in
and out, some of them strangers and interesting. As she ran the office, she had
many of the pleasures of a hostess without the bother and expense of
entertaining.

She had arranged her Post Office with its shining counter,
brass scales, and stamps, postal orders, and multiplicity of official forms
neatly pigeonholed, in what had been a broad passage which ran through the
house from the front door to the garden. The door which led from this into the
front kitchen, where meals were taken, marked the boundary between the new
world and the old. In after days, when Laura had read a little history, it gave
her endless pleasure to notice the sudden transition from one world to the
other.

It was still the custom in that trade for unmarried workmen
to live-in with the families of their employers; and, at meal-times, when the
indoor contingent was already seated, sounds of pumping and sluicing water over
hands and faces would come from the paved courtyard outside. Then 'the men', as
they were always called, would appear, rolling their leather aprons up around
their waists as they tiptoed to their places at table.

The foreman, Matthew, was a bow-legged, weak-eyed little man
with sandy whiskers, as unlike as possible the popular picture of a village
blacksmith. But he was a trustworthy foreman, a clever smith, and, in farriery,
was said to approach genius. The three shoeing-smiths who worked under him were
brawny fellows, all young, and all of them bashful indoors; although, by
repute, 'regular sparks' when out in the village, dressed in their Sunday
suits. Indoors they spoke in a husky whisper; but in the shop, on the days when
they were all three working there together, their voices could be heard in the
house, above the roaring of the bellows and the cling-clang of the anvil as
they intoned their remarks and requests to each other, or sang as an anthem
some work-a-day sentence, such as 'Bil-h-l-l, pass me o-o-o-ver that s-m-m-a-ll
spanner.' When Matthew was out of the way, they would stand at the shop door
for 'a breather', as they called it, and exchange pleasantries with passers-by.
One had recently got into trouble with Cousin Dorcas for shouting 'Whoa, Emma!'
after a girl; but no one who only saw him at table would have thought him
capable of it.

There, the journeymen's place was definitely below the salt.
At the head of the long, solid oak table sat 'the mistress' with an immense
dish of meat before her, carving knife in hand. Then came a reserved space,
sometimes occupied by visitors, but more often blank table-cloth; then
Matthew's chair, and, after that, another, smaller, blank space, just
sufficient to mark the difference in degree between a foreman and ordinary
workmen. Beyond that, the three young men sat in a row at the end of the table,
facing the mistress. Zillah, the maid, had a little round table to herself by
the wall. Unless important visitors were present, she joined freely in the
conversation; but the three young men seldom opened their mouths excepting to
shovel in food. If, by chance, they had something they thought of sufficient
interest to impart, they always addressed their remarks to Miss Lane, and
prefixed them by 'Ma-am'. 'Ma-am, have you heard that Squire Bashford's sold
his Black Beauty?' or 'Ma-am, I've heard say that two ricks've bin burnt down
at Wheeler's. A tramp sleeping under set 'em afire, they think.' But, usually,
the only sound at their end of the table was that of the scraping of plates, or
of a grunt of protest if one of them nudged another too suddenly. They had
special cups and saucers, very large and thick, and they drank their beer out
of horns, instead of glasses or mugs. There were certain small delicacies on
the table which were never offered them and which they took obvious pains not
to appear to notice. When they had finished their always excellent meal, one of
them said 'Pardon, Ma-am,' and they all tiptoed out. Then Zillah brought in the
tea-tray and Matthew stayed for a cup before he, too, withdrew. At tea-time
they all had tea to drink, but Miss Lane said this was an innovation of her
own. In her father's time the family had tea alone, it was their one private
meal, and the men had what was called 'afternoon bavour', which consisted of
bread and cheese and beer, at three o'clock.

As a child, Laura thought the young men were poorly treated
and was inclined to pity them; but, afterwards, she found they were under an
age-old discipline, supposed, in some mysterious way, to fit them for becoming
in their turn master-men. Under this system, such and such an article of food was
not suitable for the men; the men must have something substantial—boiled beef
and dumplings, or a thick cut off a gammon, or a joint of beef. When they came
in to go to bed on a cold night, they could be offered hot spiced beer, but not
elderberry wine. They must not be encouraged to talk and you must never discuss
family affairs in their presence, or they might become familiar; in short, they
must be kept in their place, because they were 'the men'.

Until that time, or a few years earlier in more advanced
districts, these distinctions had suited the men as well as they had done the
employers. Their huge meals and their beds in a row in the large attic were
part of their wages, and as long as it was excellent food and the beds were
good feather beds with plenty of blankets, they had all they expected or wished
for indoors. More would have embarrassed them. They had their own lives
outside.

When a journeyman was about to marry, it was the rule for him
to leave and find a shop where the workers lived out. There was no difficulty
about this, especially in towns, where the living-out system was extending, and
a good workman was always sure of employment. The young men who still lived in
did so from choice; they said they got better food than in lodgings, better
beds, and had not to walk to their work at six o'clock in the morning.

Miss Lane's own father had come to the Green as a journeyman,
wearing a new leather apron and with a basket of tools slung over his shoulder.
He had walked from Northampton, not on account of poverty, for his father was a
master-man with a good smithy in a village near that town; but because it was
the custom at that time that, after apprenticeship, a young smith should travel
the country and work in various shops to gain experience. That was why they
were called 'journeymen', Miss Lane said, because they journeyed about.

But her own father journeyed no farther, for his first
employer had a daughter, Miss Lane's mother. She was an only child and the
business was a flourishing one, and, although the new journeyman was the son of
another master-smith, her parents had objected to the match.

According to her daughter's story, the first intimation they
had of the budding attachment was when her mother found her Katie darning the
journeyman's socks. She snatched them out of her hand and threw them into the
fire and her father told her he would rather see her in her coffin than married
to a mere journeyman. After all they had done for her, she should marry at
least a farmer. However, they must have become reconciled to the match, for the
young couple married and lived with the parents until the father died and they
inherited the house and business. There was a painting of them in their wedding
clothes in the parlour; the bridegroom in lavender trousers and white kid
gloves (How did he manage to squeeze his smith's horny and ingrained hands into
them?), and the dear little bride in lavender silk with a white lace fichu and
a white poke bonnet encircled with green leaves.

When she was old enough, little Dorcas had been sent to
school as a weekly boarder and the school must have been even more
old-fashioned than her home. The girls, she said, addressed each other as Miss
So-and-So, even during playtime, and spent some time every day lying flat on the
bare board floor of their bedroom to improve their figures. Their punishments
were carefully calculated to fit their crimes. The one she remembered best and
often laughed about later was for pride or conceit, which was standing in a
corner of the schoolroom and repeating 'Keep down, proud stomach', patting the
said organ meanwhile. They learned to write a beautifully clear hand, to 'cast
up accounts', and to do fine needlework, which was considered a sufficient
education for a tradesman's daughter eighty or ninety years ago.

Once, when she was turning out a drawer to show Laura some
treasure, she came upon a white silk stocking, which she held up for
inspection. 'How do you like my darning?' she asked; but it was not until Laura
had drawn the stocking over her own hand to examine it more closely that she
saw that the heel and the instep and part of the toe were literally made of
darns. The silk of the original fabric had been matched exactly and the work
had been exquisitely done in a stitch which resembled knitting.

'It must have taken you ages,' was the natural comment.

'It took me a whole winter. Time thrown away, for I never
wore it. My mother turned it out from somewhere and gave it me to darn at such
times as the men were indoors. It was not thought proper then to do ordinary
sewing before men, except men's shirts, of course; never our own underclothes,
or anything of that kind; and as to reading, that would have been thought a
waste of time; and one must not sit idle, that would have been setting a bad example;
but cutting holes in a stocking foot and darning them up again was considered
industrious. Be glad you weren't born in those days.' Although she could darn
so beautifully, she no longer darned her own stockings. She left them to
Zillah, whose darns could easily be seen across the room. Probably she felt she
had done enough darning for one lifetime.

Belonging to the establishment was a light spring-cart and a
bright chestnut mare named Peggy and, three times a week, Matthew and two of
the shoeing smiths drove off with strings of horseshoes and boxes of tools to
visit the hunting stables. Sometimes the remaining smith was out also and the
forge was left, cold and silent and dark, save for the long streamers of
daylight which filtered through the cracks in the shutters. Then Laura would
steal in through the garden door and inhale the astringent scents of iron and
oil and ashes and hoof-parings; and pull the bellows handle and see the dull
embers turn red; and lift the big sledge hammer to feel its weight and made the
smaller ones tinkle on the anvil. Another lovely sound belonging to the forge
was often heard at night when the household was in bed, for then the carrier,
returning from market, would fling down on the green in front of the shop the
long bars of iron for making horseshoes.
Cling-cling, cling
, it would
go, like a peal of bells. Then the carrier would chirrup to his tired horse and
the heavy wheels would move on.